Employee engagement isn’t as bad as the surveys say

Many articles on engagement present alarming figures about disengaged employees who are actively looking for new jobs. That’s not the whole story by a long shot, this author says.

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How come every other article I read on employee engagement begins by quoting alarming figures on the state of the global workforce?

They all seem to be a variation of this:

Less than 15 percent of employees worldwide are engaged in their work. The majority of employees are psychologically absent from their workplace and are unlikely to make positive contributions.”

We should be concerned about engagement, but …

I understand why the authors of these articles dwell on these numbers. They want to emphasize the huge employee engagement problem.

I don’t blame them and don’t disagree.

Every organization should be concerned about engagement. That’s obvious. But these articles usually go on to prescribe solutions to the “employee engagement crisis.”

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