Research shows that employee disengagement costs the United States economy a staggering $550 billion dollars every year. Yet still, many employers are unaware of what disengaged employees are and the negative affect they can have within all areas of their business.

Let’s cut a long story short for now, if a disengaged employee is left to run their course, they could end up costing you thousands in lost revenue and you won’t even know it.

In fact, if you’re curious about how much revenue your business could be losing to employee disengagement, try out our engagement rate calculator here – *warning* results may surprise you.

Fortunately, there are some sure-fire ways in which we can combat the effects of a disengaged employee and we’re going to talk you through them. But first, let’s understand the difference between an engaged employee and a disengaged employee.

What is an Engaged Employee?

Engaged employees are easy to spot. They’re the ones who work with a passion and have a genuine connection with the company ethos. You’ll likely see them engaging with other co-workers and performing well within their projects.

How about Disengaged Employees?

Complainers, gossipers and liars. These are just a few of the personalities of a disengaged employee. They don’t care about the success of the organisation they work for and their negative nature only aims to drag it down.

A disengaged employee will likely put in the time but without any real effort or motivation. Although these can be detrimental to the success of your business, what you really need to keep an eye out for are actively disengaged employees.

This group aren’t just unhappy with their work, they’re actively letting others know about it and spreading that negative attitude across the business. It is these individuals in particular which we need to pay close attention to.

How do Disengaged Employees Affect Team Morale?

Here’s a quick fact for you – almost 70% of the American workforce is made up of disengaged employees. This means that disengaged employees are actually outnumbering the employees which are passionate about their work!

This highlights the effect which disengaged employees can have on team morale, especially if they are trying to spread their negativity amongst their co-workers. By allowing disengaged employees to remain within the business, they will soon start to discount the hard-work put in by the remaining 30% – something we cannot allow to happen!

How do Disengaged Employees Affect Your Brand?

Your disengaged employees aren’t just sleepwalking through their office hours, they’re also likely costing your organisations thousands in lost revenue which you won’t even notice. Their half-hearted, lacklustre attitude will translate into the work which they produce which can be extremely damaging in most cases as it will trickle down to the product or service on show to your customers.

Ultimately, turning unhappy employees into brand ambassadors or, getting rid of them altogether, will lead to more happy customers, greater engagement within the workplace, better team morale and overall, a greater bottom line.

Now that we’ve gone over the impact of a disengaged employee… it’s time for the good stuff. Let’s find out how you can minimise employee disengagement across your organisation.

How to minimise employee disengagement in 4 steps

1. Collect Feedback From Your Employees

A lot of us use feedback as a means of gaining insight from our customers into improving our service but, have you ever thought of collecting feedback from your employees? Reading what your employees are saying is vital and, by using GroHawk Insights, you have the power to identify both positive and negative trends arising amongst your teams.

2. Take Action

Spotted a trend or a particular problem arising again and again amongst your teams?

Don’t just take feedback from your employees and do nothing about it. Now that you have the information in front of you it’s time to make a change and re-engage those impassionate employees. Discuss your feedback with the management team and put a plan into place.

3. Put a Plan in Place to Reduce Employee Disengagement

It’s one thing to re-engage employees but it’s equally important to ensure future employees do not become disengaged as well. By putting a plan together to reduce disengagement, you’re ensuring this won’t happen.

Our advice – take a good look at your feedback and identify what exactly might be the cause of employee disengagement, compile your information into one document and chat with your team members about how this can be improved.

4. Continue the Feedback Process

If there’s one thing we’ve learnt here at GroHawk, it’s that feedback should never be just a one off! Feedback is a long-term strategy for continuous improvement, and the same goes for ensuring all your employees are happy, engaged and passionate about their work.

In fact, using a measuring metric such as NPS could be a turning point in driving productivity and engagement levels. If you’d like to take a 10 minute chat about this with us, don’t hesitate to get in touch!