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The 2007 ASTD Employee Engagement Survey answers the questions: How many workers are engaged? How much does it matter to the learning function?
Employee engagement results from a host of workplace factors, such as compensation, quality of work, I personality characteristics, and even the existence of a friend in the same work location. But maintaining worker satisfaction across such a wide array of domains can be a daunting task.
While it is widely accepted that employee engagement is vital to business success, there is no obvious path in pursuit of it. Many organizations have started to rely heavily on the learning function for engagement support. As a result, employee engagement has become a salient topic for many workplace learning and performance professionals.
Volumes of advice on increasing employee engagement exist because of its significance to organizational outcomes, but there is little quantitative data on the relationship between employee engagement and the learning function.
ASTD addressed the link between employee engagement and learning in an online survey conducted in October 2007 in conjunction with Dale Carnegie and Associates and the Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp). Learning executives, HR professionals, and other business leaders were asked to report on their organizations' practices related to measuring, facilitating, and supporting engagement among their workers.
Responses were collected from more than 750 people, with 84 percent being managers, directors, vice presidents, or CEOs. Thirty-eight percent of the organizations represented had less than 500 employees; 33 percent had between 500 and 4,999 employees; and 29 percent employed 5,000 or more people.
Fifty-two percent of respondents had operations in one country, while 48 percent were multinational. Thirty-five percent of the organizations had revenues under $50 million, and an additional 35 percent had revenues between $50 million and $999 million. The organizational revenues of the remaining 30 percent were $10 billion or more. Responding firms were evenly divided by industry sector.
How many workers are engaged?
According to the executives surveyed, roughly one-third of their employees meet the criteria for high engagment, but nearly one-quarter are minimally engaged or disengaged.
The survey respondents tended to agree that engagement is important for multiple reasons that are crucial to business success, such as enhancing customer service, boosting productivity, and driving bottom-line results.
The factors...