Employee Engagement Plunges as Employers Employ Stress-fighting Strategies

Employees’ level of engagement in the U.S. workforce has been troubling low over the past 12 months, according to research from Modern Survey earlier this year, and a new study from the same organization shows that this drop has been pronounced in the financial sector: The number of disengaged employees in finance has skyrocketed from 11 percent of the population in 2009 to 29 percent in 2010, a statistically significant increase of 18 percentage points.

Modern Survey’s Employee Engagement Index uses five questions to gauge the extent to which employees take pride in their company, believe they have a promising future at their company, recommend their company as a great place to work, go “above and beyond” their normal job duties to help their company succeed, and intend to stay with their company. All five of these items saw steep declines from 2009 to 2010, including twenty-plus percentage point drops in the degree to which employees take pride in their organization, and the degree to which they are willing to put forth extra effort on the job.

Notably, finance sector employees’ intent to stay has dropped from 65 percent in 2008 to 55 percent in 2010. ”Traditionally, the financial services industry has scored well above the U.S. workforce in this category,” said Modern Survey President Don MacPherson, in a press statement. “Now the percentage of financial services workers who intend to stay with their company is slightly below the US workforce. This is an important warning for executives because if employees leave their organizations there will be an incredible amount of damage control necessary to offset the knowledge and relationships that go with the exiting employees.”

Common sense says absenteeism correlates with the level of an employee’s engagement with his or her employer. Absenteeism also happens to be an outgrowth of workplace stress, and research by Buck Consultants into the steps organizations are taking to combat their workplace stress reveals that 79 percent of participating employers see a significant or moderate impact of stress on the level of absenteeism. Other workplace dynamics that take a hit, according to the Stress in the Workplace survey, include health care costs (82 percent significantly or moderately impacted) and workplace safety (77 percent significantly or moderately impacted).

Most employers that actually do something to combat stress at the workplace implement an employee assistance program (EAP), followed by allowing flexible work schedules and a slew of additional tools and tactics. Whether or not some of these would help to combat waning employee engagement, as well, may be worth studying.

Posted by RecruitingTrends.com on July 22, 2010. Filed under Data Watch. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry