10 Reasons Why Your Employees are Disengaged at Work 

Increasing employee engagement is one of the primary goals for organizations across the world. Find out what may be some of the biggest reasons why your employees may be disengaged, unsatisfied and unproductive in the workplace.

November 14, 2019 By Kristina Martic Share on Twitter! Share on Facebook! Share on LinkedIn!
employee disengagement
reasons for employee disengagement

Increasing employee engagement is one of the primary goals for organizations across the world.  

However, driving employee engagement is not easy to achieve if you don’t have the right engagement strategy in place.  

In this blog, we will go over some of the biggest challenges and reasons why your employee engagement rates may be low.  

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10 Factors Influencing Employee Disengagement 

According to Gallup 52% of American employees were disengaged, with another 18% actively disengaged. That 18% alone costs the United States between $450 billion to $550 billion each and every year due to lack of productivity.  

cost of disengaged employees

Therefore, organizations can not afford to have disengaged employees.  

Let’s take a look into some of the main reasons why employees are disengaged at work.  

1. Poor leadership 

Relationships with managers and leaders is crucial for employee engagement. Many employees still don’t trust their leaders, and that is often the biggest cause of employee disengagement.  

2. Lack of feedback 

Employees who don’t receive feedback for their work, don’t work as hard to achieve their goals.  

Still, only one in five employees is not confident their manager will provide regular, constructive feedback.

employee-feedback-guide

Still, companies have to understand that there are different types and best practices for giving feedback. Today, they don’t want to have to wait for performance reviews, but they want to have the ability to give and ask for feedback at any time. 

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Try FeedBck, our continuous employee feedback solution.

3. Poor communication 

Transparent, honest and continuous communication in the workplace can significantly boost employee engagement 

Unfortunately, only 15% of employees say that their companies are doing a good job fostering communication in the workplace.  

employee engagement and communication

4. Inability to grow careers 

Career growth is one of the main factors why candidates choose new employers and why existing employees stay within their companies.  

Moreover, 87% of millennials say professional development or career growth opportunities are very important for them.  

Therefore, if you are expecting more engagement from your employees, they have to understand how their career path may look within the organization. 

5. No or poor recognition programs 

Employee recognition programs are considered one of the most successful approaches for increasing employee engagement.  

Who doesn’t want to be recognized for good work? 

employee recognition and engagement

However, not any recognition program is a good recognition program. Companies should strive towards providing personalized experiences through recognition.

For example, if your employees prefer non-monetary rewards, then it doesn’t make sense to reward them with monetary gifts.  

Luckily, there are software solutions like JobPts that enable employers to really adjust their recognition programs according to company’s specific needs and employees’ preferences.  

Check out our ideas for employee recognition programs

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Start recognizing today with JobPts!

6. Dissatisfaction with pay and benefits 

Even though money alone is not enough for employee engagement, fair compensation is important to employees.  

This basic point in the employee engagement hierarchy must be met in order for an employee to continue moving up the hierarchy, be entitled for raises and become more engaged. 

7. Lack of necessary resources 

25% of employees would be more satisfied if they were given the opportunity to do what they do best, and 74% of employees feel like they are not reaching their full potential. 

Poor internal technology solutions can cause big frustrations among employees. Therefore, you should always make sure that your employees have all the necessary tools and resources to do their best.   

8. Lack of sense of purpose 

Disengaged employees are the ones that don’t feel like their contribution drives business growth and success.  

Employees want their work to be meaningful, so managers have to do a better job explaining how their employees’ work contributes to the overall business performance.  

9. No alignment with company’s goals and objectives 

For employees to be engaged in the workplace, they must believe and be aligned with the company purpose, vision and goals.  

Studies have shown that when managers help employees to set performance goals, employee engagement reaches an incredible 69%. If managers do not help employees with setting these goals, 53% will consider themselves to be disengaged at work. 

10. Lack of interest in employee well-being 

Employee well-being and work-life balance are important factors that have impact on employee engagement.  

Employers that show interest in their employees well-being are more likely to build highly-engaged workplaces 

However, the biggest problem here is that the employees’ and employers’ perceptions differ significantly.  

88 % of employers say they take a genuine interest in employee well-being, but only 43 % of employees agreed. 

employee engagement and well-being

Therefore, companies should consider investing more into employee wellness initiatives.  

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Start a health and wellness program within your company!

How to Test Employee Engagement Rates 

To better understand the engagement levels of your workforce, it is important to collect data directly from the employees 

Remember, however, that if you are not ready to act on your employee feedback, better don’t ask! 

Here is a set of employee survey questions that can help you better understand how engaged your employees are.  

  1. Do you usually look forward to coming to work?  
  2. Do you feel like your job provides you with a sense of meaning and purpose?  
  3. Do you feel like you belong to this company?  
  4. Do you see yourself working here in 2 years?  
  5. Do you enjoy working with your team?  
  6. Do you feel like this is a good place to develop your career?  
  7. Do you feel inspired to do your best?  
  8. Do you feel like your work is being recognized?  
  9. Do you feel like you have all the resources necessary to do your job well?  
  10. Do you feel aligned with company’s goals? 
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Create your own employee survey!

Drive More Engagement With Our Employee Experience Suite 

Semos is all-in-one Human Experience Management suite designed to help employers deliver experience that employees are expecting.   

Semos cloud is the most complete HR tech solution covering the most important stages of employee lifecycle. Our focus on user interface and ease of use has resulted in remarkable user adoptions by employees at enterprise companies across the world.   

Check out our 6 products and schedule a demo to see how we can help you improve employee experience:   

  • JobPts– employee rewards & recognition  
  • FeedBck– employee feedback  
  • SurveyRocks– employee surveys  
  • Healthain– employee health & well-being  
  • BoardFlo– employee collaboration & productivity  
  • WorkVibe– complete HXM solution 

all-in-one-employee-experience-suite