On January 6th it was widely reported to be Blue Monday – so called as it is reputed to be the most depressing day of the year. A day when the weather is bleak, everyone has run out of money following Christmas, the rate of people filing for divorce is at a year high and, according to the Daily Telegraph it ‘could be costing businesses as much as £93 billion in lost productivity’, due to ‘work-place malice’.
Of course, it could all be – as the Guardian claims – a myth. However, the point about employee engagement, its effect on productivity, and (as a result) loss of capital, still stands. If an employee is truly unengaged for them every day is a (real or otherwise) Blue Monday.
Becoming disengaged at work leads to staff who ‘quit and stay’ – the most damaging people for your organisation to have. It is a fairly succinct way to describe employees who have effectively quit their jobs psychologically and emotionally, while still working for their organisation. When this happens people lose the motivation to work effectively and they are more likely to waste time. Rather than being invested in their company and looking for ways to move their role forward and benefit the business, they just go through the motions.
The problem is that they are hard to identify. As Microsoft Medium Business blog says “may take on the appearance of being busy – but all they are really completing is busywork”. It could even be that an employee does not realise that they have fallen into this mentality, especially if they have been in the same job for a long time to the point where their work and attitude has just become routine.
Attempts at engaging employees who ‘quit and stay’ is a challenge. It requires their involved co-operation. They need to want to be engaged with. Employee engagement is a two-way street and your staff should help you identify what causes feelings of disengagement, and help you move towards solutions. To improve engagement there needs to be a culture of trust. Workers need to feel that there is a person, hopefully their line manager, who they can approach to effectively talk about feeling disengaged and what can be done to change this. Managers should be accountable for their employee engagement and their progress should be tracked.
A recent article by Gallup Business Journal makes clear the importance of implementing local strategies for engagement, stating that “managers and employees must feel empowered to make a significant difference in their immediate environment”. Although organisational change is also needed, you can see why it would be effective for employees to see localised changes happening in their offices, which they had a hand in themselves. Instead of allowing for a ‘one-size fits all’ idea when working on company-wide organisation changes, focusing upon engagement at a local level allows campaigns and plans to be more personal, more targeted and therefore, effective.
Beyond the Blue Mondays, which should only happen once a year, employee disengagement is a significant issue – Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace report [2014] says “only 13% of employees worldwide are engaged at work”. Long-term plans need to be put in place to encourage change. Whatever the reasons an employee falls into the quit and stay category there are reasons for it, and there are always ways to address and improve.