REPORT // 2017 Trends in global engagement.
According to management consultants Aon Hewitt, levels of employee engagement have improved in Australia for the first time in three years – but we are still behind the global average according to their 2017 Trends in Global Employee Engagement report.
The study covered more than 5 million employees from over 1,000 companies in 60 plus industries. In conducting the study, Aon Hewitt looked at engagement drivers of the overall work experience – which they define as the basics, the work, company practices, leadership, performance and brand – to take stock of the changing face of engagement across the globe.
With the results in, they found some big shifts compared to the previous years.
The definition of an engaged employee.
To put the report into perspective, it is important to consider the definitions the authors applied when looking at the stats.
Aon Hewitt defines engagement as the ‘level of an employee’s psychological investment in their organisation’. Not to be confused with satisfaction or happiness at work, engagement goes deeper to what drives an employee to go above and beyond. After all, we all know that a happy employee is not always a productive one. The person in the back office who is on Facebook all day and over-indulges in office snacks may be happy, but productive? Not so much.
The study measures employees using a ‘Say, Stay and Strive’ model – asking if they:
say positive things about their organisation and act as advocates for it
intend to stay with the organisation for a long time
are motivated to strive to make their best efforts towards making the organisation successful
The number of employees who met the ‘engaged’ criteria.
The report, an annual benchmark, showed 2016 was not the best year for employee engagement on a global scale. Engagement dropped from 65% to 63% and according to Aon Hewitt’s model for engagement, 24% were highly engaged while 39% were in the moderately engaged category. While there was a decline, the overall result was far from the worst on the study’s record which goes back to 2009.
In their commentary, the authors attribute the drop to a number of things – tech advances like virtual reality and driverless vehicles which threaten employee roles, political climate that has led to a bigger focus on ‘borders’ and ‘walls’ – all things that make employees feel more anxious.
“The uncertainty and complexity we saw last year seems to have continued. Populist sentiment, politically divided nations, surprising election results, continued technological disruption across industries make for economic and business jitters. As leaders have tried to adjust to a rapidly evolving global reality, the average employee across the globe is left with a great deal of fear and anxiety that threatens their full engagement at work.”
Ken Oehler, Aon Hewitt’s Global Culture & Engagement Practice Leader
Employee engagement in Australia.
Results in the Asia Pacific region retracted by 3%, on the back of a significant 5% improvement the previous year, so can be seen as an equalising of market conditions.
The ‘Say Stay Strive’ scores for Asia Pacific decreased or remained the same with ‘say’ down 2 points to 67%, ‘stay’ remaining at 60% and ‘strive’ down 2 points to 64%.
Results were more positive for Australia. While our overall employee engagement score was lower than the global average at 61%, it was an increase over the previous result of 58% in 2015 and bucked the global trend by going up, not down.