The great corporate disengagement epidemic

Here’s a number for you - 21. What immediately springs to mind? I imagine for most of you, it’ll conjure up memories (at least what you can remember), from the celebrations you had when turning 21 years old.*

*Did you know that the origin of 21st birthday celebrations comes from a boy being groomed for knighthood? In medieval times, there were 3 stages to becoming a knight, all of which were 7 years apart - a page at 7 years old, a squire at 14 … and then if both of these stages were passed, a knight at 21 years old.

But here’s the #21 in another context. The latest Gallup Global Workplace report shows that employee engagement fell to 21% in 2024, down two percentage points from 2023.

Now, given this measure reflects employees' involvement and enthusiasm at work, you’ve got to be thinking ‘surely we can all do better’? 4 in 5 employees are disengaged. Wow!

I find this incredibly sad, in part because I know from first hand experience what this can feel like. Believe me, it’s no fun going to bed at night hoping that the feeling in the pit of your stomach, or the tightness in your chest, won’t be what you wake up with the following morning. And that this feeling will, more than likely, stay with you the whole day.

So, what to do?

Well, I think the employer and the employee need to share the blame for this pitiful score. And it all starts before the employment contract is signed.

The word engagement emanates from the early 17th century French word engager - to pledge. In a general sense, this means ‘a legal or moral obligation’ i.e., the conditions that someone must agree to before they can be employed by an organisation.

Which begs the question, what does the dance between a potential future employer and interested candidate look like? We say, ‘it takes two to tango’ and indeed, both parties need to get up off their seat and onto the proverbial dancefloor.

If a definition of employee engagement is the degree to which an employee is committed to helping their organisation achieve its goals, it makes sense to establish this even prior to a first interview.

Have we conveyed our vision, mission, purpose and strategic intent, so that candidates have an emotional connection before the dance starts?

All too often, employers try to get ‘bums on seats’, so that the resourcing gap can be quickly filled. But this is a flawed strategy. We’ve all seen the carnage that plays out a few days, weeks or months down the line, after new joiners (who we knew, deep down, weren’t really right for the organisation), were afforded the opportunity to join the business. Which, by the way, is not on the employee, but moreso the employer!

So, it’s fair to say that our employer brand, along with excellent Interviewing techniques, are critical to engagement. Let’s make it hard for people to join our business i.e., thoroughness in the recruitment process to ensure we find the right people to get on the bus.

And are we then making it really easy for the right new joiners to stay? What are we doing to welcome and embrace new talent before their first day, on their first day, in their first week, month and 100 days?

Get all of this right and the #21 will be redundant and inaccurate. Get it wrong and it might be as good as it gets.

In your corridors there will be a number of creatures more elusive than Bigfoot and less enthusiastic than a Monday morning - The Disengaged Employee.

These fascinating beings roam open-plan offices and Zoom meetings alike, expertly camouflaged among their high-performing peers by the ancient art of ‘looking busy’. With browser tabs carefully arranged (Outlook front, Netflix back), they’ve elevated the phrase ‘working hard or hardly working’? to an existential mantra.

Why do we have 79% disengagement, when you’d think with all the free fruit, team-building escape rooms and ‘mandatory fun Fridays’, people would be skipping to work like Julie Andrews through an Austrian meadow? How did the modern workplace become a breeding ground for apathy?

Here’s a starter for ten - ‘Our people are our greatest asset’. Sounds great, but much like the motivational posters in the break room, it’s often more decoration than doctrine. If people are the greatest asset, why are they managed like printer toner - only noticed when they run out?

Why is People & Culture the last agenda point for the weekly or monthly Exec. Team meeting?

Disengaged employees aren’t born, they’re made. It starts with a few small things - being left off a meeting invite, an annual performance review delivered via generic template, or being told ‘we’re like a family’, right before a restructuring announcement. Slowly, motivation is replaced by ever greater cynicism.

Leaders may have tried everything. Surveys. Gameification. Ping-pong tables. One visionary even implemented ‘Bring Your Pet to Work Wednesdays’, which only resulted in a Chihuahua urinating on the CEO’s ergonomic chair. Engagement remained unaffected.

Real engagement isn’t about perks, it’s about purpose. People want to feel that their work matters. That they feel proud to wear the badge of an organisation that’s doing all it can to make a positive, sustainable impact on the world. That they’re more than a human cog in a profit-generating machine.

So, what’s the cure?

It’s surprisingly unsexy. Listen - really hear your employees. Micro-manage less, lead more. Say thank you without sandwiching it between ‘opportunities for improvement’. Give people meaningful work, or at least the autonomy to make their work mean something.

And maybe, just maybe, stop calling it ‘employee engagement’, like it’s a software upgrade. It’s people. Tired, brilliant, wonderfully complex people who would like a little less jargon and a little more humanity.

Ultimately, the antidote to disengagement isn't found in software, snack drawers, or snappy mission statements. It’s in relationships, recognition, and a little reminder that the humans in the system are not just resources - they’re the whole damn point.

Until then, the disengagement epidemic will continue, silently spreading from cubicle to cubicle, from breakout area to breakout area - one passive-aggressive Teams meeting at a time.

And with no end in sight for the #21.

Mike