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Why is there an Employee Disengagement Global Epidemic?

When I read statistics from Gallup that tell me according to their research only 15% of the workforce worldwide I think wow.

But when you look at that statistic from the other angle, from that of Employee Disengagement, my first thought is that is an epidemic.

It feels like we should be declaring a state of emergency on the state of leadership worldwide.

Which $7Trillion costs in lost productivity, which is roughly the combined GDP of Germany and the UK.

These global disengagement figures remain pretty consistent, and this is in spite of companies spending billions on Employee Engagement Programs each year.

Why is that?

Well, in my opinion, this is because companies are focused on the wrong things, and as I often say, when you focus on the wrong thing no matter how good a job you’re doing you are going to fail.

So what’s the wrong thing that they are focused on?

The hard truth is this. Employee Disengagement is not the problem, it is just the symptom of the real problem.

The real problem is poor leadership!

The challenge here though is that it’s much easier leadership to blame employees for poor engagement than it is for leadership to admit that they might be the root cause.

While ever companies make Employees the focus of Employee Engagement they will always be treating the symptom. Yes they might make some improvements, but this will not be sustainable because the root cause still exists.

The saddest part about all of this is that there are some simple things that leaders can do which will help to fix the situation.

Like these 6 simple things that leaders can do that will have an immediate effect on Employee Engagement.

Leadership is not complex, we tend to make it complex, or think that it is so complex that there are no simple solutions.

For over 25 years I have worked in performance turnaround roles, often replacing managers who said that nothing could be done to address the performance issues. But time, and time again, just by applying FAST Principles we were able to make significant changes to both engagement and results.

If you would like to find out more about FAST Principles and how they could help you drive Employee Engagement and Results, then get in touch for an introductory chat.

Gordon Tredgold

Gordon Tredgold is a leadership transformation expert ranked #25 in Global Gurus Top 30 leadership gurus for 2019. Over his 25-year career Gordon has led teams of 1000+ staff in Fortune 100 companies, delivered operational cost savings of $350m and transformed delivery (from <35% to 95 %) and service levels (from 57% to 99.7%). A critically-acclaimed author, Gordon's latest book, FAST: 4 Principles Every Business Needs to Drive Success and Achieve Results, was a finalist for Management Book of the year 2017. He is a regular contributor for Inc. Magazine, Entrepreneur, Forbes, Fortune and Business Insider and an international keynote speaker, recognised by Inc. Magazine as a top 100 leadership expert and speaker. Gordon works with organisations to transform culture, drive results-based leadership and rapidly accelerate organisational growth and performance.