Have you ever wondered how many of your employees were really with it?

You know, really trying to do what the company was trying to do, to the best of their ability? People can put on a good show.

It’s hard to tell who is really with the program and who is just doing a good job of “looking the part.”

A shocking new study recently reported that Only 52% of employees were engaged in their work and their jobs.

That means that roughly half of your people are going in a different direction or just going through the motions.

This study was conducted among 2,000 employed individuals, in more than 25 industries in the US and Europe.

You may think your company is not that bad, but what arguments can you make that your people would be much different or better on this?

Gallup found similar results about 20 years ago. They found that 50% of workers were only doing enough to get by. 75% said they could be significantly more effective.

It’s so powerful to have data to clarify what we may have suspected to be true, but really had no way of verifying from our vantage point as employers.

Getting into the details . . .

An “Engaged” employee means they “Know What To Do” (understand the “vision” of the company) and “Want To Do It” (demonstrate “commitment” to the company).

So really we have a double challenge:

We need to get our vision across to people and

we need to motivate them to be committed to the company and to carrying out the mission.

So what can be done about this?

There was a bit of good news in the study. It found that employees who perceive a pay-for-performance culture are seven times more likely to be “Engaged.”

This helps point the way . . .

So another way of stating this finding is if you don’t have pay-for-performance, you are dramatically reducing the likelihood that your employees will be engaged.

This makes sense if we consider that in specifying what performance is, we are at least to some degree, defining the mission or vision. It’s telling them what we want to a certain degree. And by tying their pay to it, we are making it more likely that they will “go after” the things we want them to – the performance. So this makes sense that it would increase or promote engagement.

“Engagement” can be such an elusive thing. It’s useful to have this insight and clarity about how to make it happen.

High Performance Attitude

Creating environments where employees love their work has been a priority and a resounding theme for me my entire work life.

When I was in grade school, I lived in Indianapolis.

I actually attended a school that was so close to the Indy 500 race track that you could hear the cars on the track. When you’re a six-year-old boy, it doesn’t get much better than that!

The high performance attitude got into my blood.

For the racers, being on the track was living. Everything else was just waiting.

They would literally die doing their job. I didn’t know how I was going to do it, but I wanted to be that excited about my work too.

People should have a great time at work and be making powerful, meaningful contributions to the work and themselves. It’s a deplorable shame if they aren’t.

Many clients have told me that they wanted to create what Gainsharing represents, but just didn’t know how, in a detailed way, to make it happen.

Do you have pay-for-performance now — for your management team, for your supervisors, for your hourly workers? If pay-for-performance is a good idea for your management, wouldn’t it be a good idea for everyone as well?

What would it be like if all of your employees knew where we need to be performance-wise in a week, knew if they were “carrying their weight,” what the problems were, and could see that you were aggressively attacking the problems keeping us from the weekly goals.

Would that be valuable? Do you think it would make a difference?

So what can you do to take advantage of this study’s findings?

This first step is to gather information.

If you would like to “put your toe in the water” (without needing to talk with anyone), you can request our Gainsharing Executive Briefing DVD by clicking here.

If you find it interesting, we can put some data together for your Company to get into the specifics of how this would work for you.

That fact that it’s currently working for so many other companies puts you at greater risk for not exploring your options than taking a quick look at what is possible for you. Don’t you agree?