4 tips from Gallup for engaging your employees

“Disengaged? What do you mean they’re disengaged? The whiners are lucky they even have jobs!”

If that’s what your bigwigs think of employee engagement, Gallup managing partner Larry Emond has a few statistics to flap in their faces.

Seventy percent of U.S. workers are not reaching their full potential, and these disengaged workers cost the U.S. economy an estimated $450 billion to $550 billion a year, he says. In Germany the figure is as high as €138 billion ($148 billion).

These numbers drag down efficiency and the bottom line—and boost the blood pressure of purple-faced managers trying to prod slothful hirelings into giving it their all, for a change.

The problem isn’t limited to the U.S. and Germany, Emond says in a Ragan Training session titled “The global state of engagement.” A total of 63 percent of workers worldwide is not engaged, and 24 percent are actively disengaged, making them ideal understudies for the role of Wally in “Dilbert.”

“Active disengagement is an immense drain on economies throughout the world,” Emond says.