Employee engagement problems swept under boardroom carpet

The vast majority of senior executives admit that employee disengagement is one of the biggest threats facing their business. But despite this, issues round morale and motivation are rarely discussed at board level and most companies simply choose to ignore the problems caused by disengaged staff.

According to a new report from the Economist Intelligence Unit more than eight out of 10 top executives in companies across Europe and the Middle East view disengagement as one of the three biggest threats to their business.

Yet almost half (43%) of th3 board directors questioned for the research admit that engagement issues – things like staff motivation, identification with the company goals or the willingness to go the extra mile for the firm are occasionally, rarely or never discussed at board level. Even more disturbingly barely more than one in ten say their companies regularly take action to tackle staff with continually low engagement.

This disconnect is exacerbated by the fact that many senior execs appear to have a fundamentally flawed view of what – and who – influences the levels of engagement within their organisation. Perhaps the most enlightening statistic to emerge from the report is the fact that nearly half (47%) of C-suite execs believe they are personally responsible for generating the levels of employee engagement in their firm – a view shared by just 16 per cent of senor directors outside the C-suite.

This self inflated view of their own impact on employees is also apparent in the staggeringly low proportion (13%) of C-suite execs who believe that line managers and middle managers are chiefly responsible for staff engagement – despite the raft of evidence pointing to line managers as being the key to morale and productivity.

Meantime UK workers find the levels of employee engagement from their bosses so low that they are the most disengaged in Europe. A study from consultancy firm the Hay Group found that in the UK workforce 29 per cent of the 300 executives and 3,000 managers it surveyed were disengaged from their company.

The group defined this as being reluctant to "go the extra mile" for their firm, compared with just 11 per cent who felt the same in the Netherlands. The UK also had the highest figure of workers who felt 'not enabled', with 44 per cent stating they lacked the resources needed to do their job as effectively as they would like.

Graeme Yell, director at Hay Group, said: "Employee engagement is understandably vulnerable after two years of recession and uncertainty, and disengaged employees can have a detrimental effect on a business' bottom line."

This study follows an earlier report from the Customer Contact Association, which also found low employee engagement, with just 18 per cent of workers 'very committed' to their role.