The Importance of Employee Engagement: 5 Benefits You Need to Know

Again and again, industry professionals point to employee engagement as vital to successful management, successful teams, and successful organizations.

However, despite organizations’ efforts, a majority of employees are still not engaged or are actively disengaged at work. Only 23% of employees worldwide and 33% in the United States fall into the “engaged” category.

Whether you work in a healthcare, education, nonprofit, corporate, or retail setting, you’ll benefit from employees who are invested in your organization’s mission.

Employee engagement is worth understanding and investing in. In this article, we’ll explore the benefits of employee engagement for employees, customers, and organizations.

What Does Employee Engagement Mean?

Employee engagement is a way to measure how much employees like their company, their jobs, and their coworkers. It also shows how much they care about their coworkers.

The key drivers of employee engagement are purpose, development, a caring manager, ongoing conversations, and a focus on strengths.

Managers and HR professionals can affect company culture in a special way. As you work to build stronger, more connected workplaces, you’ll be building more creative, productive companies, too.

Benefits of Employee Engagement

While engaged employees have better mental health and higher productivity, disengaged employees experience higher stress, and their companies have more dissatisfied customers and lower profitability.

Benefits of Employee Engagement for Employees

The foundational benefit of employee engagement is to the employees themselves. When employees are motivated by a sense of purpose in their work, they experience improved health and safety.

The workplace transitions from a daily grind to a welcoming environment that encourages growth and creativity.

Better Mental Health & Less Stress

A key benefit of engaged employees is that their health may be generally better.

In a Headspace survey on mental health in the workplace, work has the potential to be a supportive, positive place:

• 53% Helped them find a community
• 48% Feel more confident
• 44% Built connections and feel less lonely
• 43% Helped lower financial stress and increase stability

Shifting away from a workplace mentality of high stress and high output, putting more focus on employee wellbeing, and creating a safe working environment could do your staff a world of good—and your organization will be rewarded, too.

The alternative is high stress, and it’s not a pretty picture. Here are some of the top ways work-related stress bleeds into employees’ personal lives:

• Negatively impact on physical health (77%)
• Reason for a breakup (71%)
• Made it harder to care for family (39%)
• Caused serious mental health issues (37%)

Fewer Accidents

Highly engaged employees experience 63% fewer safety incidents, which is especially important in manufacturing, healthcare, and labor-intensive workplaces.

However, lower stress and higher engagement can result in safer, healthier workplaces for employees in all industries.

Benefits of Employee Engagement for Customers

Well-trained, highly engaged employees improve the quality of the products or services that you offer. Here are a few benefits of employee engagement for customers.

Higher Customer Loyalty

As confirmed in Glassdoor’s foundational research, when employees are happy, customers are happy and loyal. That shouldn’t be a big surprise—the energy your employees bring to their customer interactions will reflect the energy in your workplace.

Customer Safety & Health

In many settings, customer and employee safety go hand-in-hand. Take healthcare for example: Engaged employees are linked to improved outcomes and patient satisfaction.

When healthcare providers are engaged and heard in the workplace, they feel resourced to provide the best care for their patients. The compassionate and empathetic care they provide also results in higher satisfaction ratings and safety among patients.

Greater Quality Control

In manufacturing and production environments, quality is indispensable to customer satisfaction. Workplaces with highly engaged employees have 30% fewer defects in their final products.

The Importance of Employee Engagement in an Organization

When employees and customers benefit, companies and organizations as a whole bear fruit as well.

Lower Absenteeism

Employees that are invested in their roles within the organization are more likely to show up consistently to work. By giving employees generous time off benefits and being clear about how employees can use those benefits, organizations can lower absenteeism rates.

Seeking feedback from your employees about what they value helps guide company policies and create an environment where people are happy to be at work while they’re there, and able to take time off when it’s needed most.

Lower Turnover

Organizations that effectively engage their employees experience lower turnover. While turnover is a natural part of any organization, higher than expected turnover rates can indicate that there’s an issue to be concerned about.

Over time, high rates of turnover can lead to losses in institutional knowledge, a lack of stability, and negative impacts on morale.

The best way to keep valuable workers in your organization is to ensure they’re heard and supported through employee engagement.

Higher Productivity

Organizations with engaged employees have higher productivity, and helping employees with productivity practices can be an excellent step in your engagement process.

Managers can give workers tools to optimize their performance. These tools include encouraging employees to take effective breaks, develop a routine, set clear boundaries with teammates, or set achievable goals.

Higher Profitability

Engaged employees create more profitable organizations. Compared to disengaged workplaces, organizations with highly engaged employees saw 23% higher profitability.

When employees are committed to the company mission and feel heard by managers, they make more sales and increase revenue for the organization.

Less Theft & Shrinkage

Shrinkage refers to anything that takes workers away from performing business-related work and is especially critical within retail and customer service workplaces. Workplaces with engaged employees see 26% less shrinkage, meaning that employees are more focused on their job tasks.