In the movie Ocean’s Eleven, George Clooney’s character asks Brad Pitt’s character if he’s suicidal. Pitt’s answer is direct: “Only in the mornings.”
We’ve all felt this way when we wake up and dread going to work. Every day, you have the debate in your own mind about whether you want to go to work that day or not. Some jobs you only feel that way about sometimes. The job is fine, but you don’t really enjoy it, and the work you do, even if you’re paid well to do it, is meaningless in the grand scheme of things.
According to Gallup’s recent State of the Global Workplace research, more than two-thirds of U.S. workers are either not engaged or actively disengaged at work. Many business leaders would answer by saying, “Go find a job you like to do, then, and stop wasting your current company’s time.” The truth is that they, at least, believe they can’t find another job, or, if they do, it will be little better than what they have now.
No matter if your company produces highly detailed widgets or intellectual output in the form of plans or software, that doesn’t bode well for you. Common sense and research both confirm that employees who enjoy their jobs and are mentally engaged are more productive than those who aren’t.
“Little Johnny doesn’t produce at his peak when he’s moping around at work, no matter how often you yell at him.”
The goal of the next 20 years isn’t how to implement AI or manufacture things in a more efficient way (we seem to have mastered that with things like Six Sigma), but rather how to keep employees happy enough that they actually produce at that level on a consistent basis. Little Johnny doesn’t produce at his peak when he’s moping around at work, no matter how often you yell at him.
Imagine if your company could produce even 5% more with your current workforce. What would that mean to your bottom line? Now, if you assume that your company is like most and only one out of every three employees is happy enough at work to give their focused maximum effort, what would the improvement be if only half of the rest of your employees could produce at that level? Are we talking about a 20% increase in productivity and efficiency? What does that do to your bottom line?
Employee engagement is the elixir that solves almost all of your problems. This is the pursuit of every future-dominating company in existence. … Or at least it should be.
I’m not suggesting that you install ping-pong tables and create a hundred different ways for your employees to goof around at work. I am suggesting, however, that the number one way to improve your company’s margins and EBITDA is engagement. Employees who find self-actualization in improving your company will stop at nothing until your company is king of the world.
That’s where HR comes in. A good Human Resources department, managed correctly, works on this problem more than any other.
If you have five employees or 10,000, now is the time to start working on it.