Nearly 30% of employees aren’t engaged at work, and some of those are actively disengaged – meaning they intentionally damage what others have built. While the cost of disengagement can be as much as 34% of an employee’s salary, it also impacts your ability to attract top talent, voluntary turnover rates, stress and low morale among other employees and customer satisfaction. Clearly, worker engagement should be a serious business concern.
Two Key Factors that Lead to Disengagement
Effective employee engagement can’t be achieved using a one-size-fits-all approach because every worker has different needs, motivations and work experiences. This means disengagement can be caused by a number of factors and vary by each individual. However, there are two primary factors that can contribute to disengagement for most workers – poor job fit and poor team fit.
Poor Job Fit.
When employees are hired for a job that doesn’t match their skills, behavioral or personality style, they can quite quickly become checked out. One of the best ways to avoid this misalignment is to hire for behavioral fit by using pre-hire talent assessments. For example, by better understanding what competencies and style is most successful in a specific role, you can utilize talent assessments to measure and assess how a candidate matches up to the job requirements.
When organizations make better job fit decisions, the performance, satisfaction and engagement of employees remains high. And, workers will remain at the organization longer.
Poor Team Fit.
Another large contributor to employee disengagement is a poor fit with team members or peers, resulting in a lack of trust, dysfunction and poor performance. When workers feel out of place or at odds with their team, they will begin to feel isolated and ready to jump ship.
The commonly held phrase “there’s no I in team” may be a misguided concept. The fact is, teams are made up of a lot of “I’s” and arguably the best performing teams are those comprised of a diverse set of individuals, all bringing unique and often-conflicting styles and values to the group. To ignore this fact is one of the many ways a team can be dysfunctional rather than a well-oiled, top producing one.
Today, leading organizations are tapping into sophisticated team assessment solutions, such as the XBInsight 3C Team Assessment, that delivers extensive insight into how your team stacks up against the three broad components of exceptional teams:
- Conditions: A team’s organizational environment can either hinder or facilitate a team’s success. High performing teams have solid leaders who create an environment where people can do their best work, re empowered to set goals and make decisions, and have the resources they need to succeed.
- Competence: Teams need to have established processes for task coordination, goal alignment and decision-making to achieve results and develop innovative solutions. High performing teams do better work when their roles are clear, they know how to do their job, and why they are striving for those goals.
- Connectedness: Interpersonal relationships are based on trust and lead to performance. Positive work relationships among team members build trust, a strong climate and team effectiveness. The fastest path to team dysfunctionality is a lack of trust among members, creating an environment where everyone is watching their back, development of cliques within the group and secrecy
The XBInsight 3C Team Effectiveness Assessment applies smart analytics to deliver extensive insight and direction into each of the key components of exceptional teams. Knowing how your teams measure up against these proven benchmarks will lead to realistic, concrete action plans for creating high performing teams that deliver unprecedented business results.
- Understanding the primary behavioral styles of all team members in relation to each other
- Identify the problem-solving and decision-making approach of all team members, better managing how different styles work best together to achieve results
- Uncover the strengths and overextensions of each team members’ behavioral style, delivering a holistic view of the overall team’s effectiveness and areas for improvement
- Understand the communication preferences of team members and how to approach different styles including key words and phrases that facilitate effective team communication.
Fix the Fit to Avoid Disengagement.
When you take the time to understand what drives each employee, you can better recognize what might be causing disengagement at work. Maybe they’re not aligned with the role they’re in. Maybe they feel out of place on their team. Understanding these areas of disconnect is the first step in turning engagement around.