The 28 Employee Engagement Statistics Your Company Needs to Know

Todd Kunsman

Marketing Team Lead

8 minute read

Employee Engagement Stats.

How many of your employees are already on social?

The Most Interesting Employee Engagement Statistics

Looking for valuable and interesting employee engagement statistics? Then you came to the right place! Below I’ll discuss more about employee engagement and some interesting numbers that might be surprising, shocking, or just plain fascinating.
 
Employee engagement is about improving your company workplace and culture so that employees feel more connected and dedicated to the goals and values.

This is built up through trust, company integrity, and communication between your organization and the employees. And it’s a big initiative companies tend to focus on (and should want to work on) as it greatly impacts all areas of the business.

What areas of the business? Well, think of the impact on employee productivity, employee loyalty, increase profitability, better adoption on company initiatives, etc.

 
Employee Engagement Trend
 

Employee engagement might seem like a buzzword too, but the term’s popularity has only continued to grow over the years. Take a look at this Google Trends chart from 2004-Present.

Below, we’ve gathered some interesting and some eyebrow-raising employee engagement statistics. These will cover engagement, retention, loyalty, and workplace satisfaction.

 

Engagement & Retention

As we get into the employee engagement statistics, I realized there is A LOT of data points out there. So as I have done in some of my previous statistics posts, I’m picking out the ones that really stood out.

This first section covers stats around engagement and retention. Hopefully, these will add some context to your organization or help generate a push to focus more time on creating a great environment for effective employee engagement.

  • About 70% of Americans are disengaged at work (Gallup)
  • 20.8% of employees consider themselves very engaged, 16.3% are fully engaged and 31.3% are engaged but feel their company could do more to improve employee experience (Achievers)
  • Businesses with a strong learning culture enjoy employee engagement and retention rates around 30-50% higher than those that don’t (Robert Half)
  • Reasons employees value their work and are loyal to their employer include the work they perform (55%), salary (50%) and immediate supervisor (39%) (Addison Group)
  • Employee engagement levels bounced back to an all-time high rate of 65% in 2017, up 2% from 2016 (Aon)
  • Employees are 55% more likely to leave their jobs in the coming year, 32% more likely to feel dissatisfied in their jobs and 18% less likely to feel cared about by their employer (Colonial Life)
  • 89% of employees said disjointed digital communication tanks employee morale, lowers productivity and impacts customer satisfaction and the bottom line (RingCentral)
  • 31.6% of employees said they have average engagement in their current job (Achievers)
  • 48% of workers left their job because it wasn’t what they thought it would be (HRDive)
  • Half of employees would sacrifice their salary, as much as 29% of it, to work a job they enjoy (HRDive)
  • 68% of employees would consider leaving their job if they didn’t feel supported by more senior employees (Staples)
  • Employees said managerial support was the most important aspect of company culture and 71% would quit if another employer offered them flexible scheduling in a new job (ExecuSearch)
  • 77% of employees agree a strong culture allows them to do their best work, 76% see the impact in productivity and efficiency, and another 74% draw a correlation between culture and their ability to serve their customer base (Eagle Hill Consulting)
  • 83% of HR professionals struggled with recruiting suitable candidates in the past 12 months (HRDive)
  • 50% of HR managers have current openings for which they can’t find qualified candidates (CareerBuilder)
 

Related: We’ve asked 21 digital media, social, and transformational leaders to share their toughest lessons learned, keys to success, and emerging opportunities in employee engagement. Get your copy of the guide.

 

Loyalty & Workplace Satisfaction

The other aspect that coincides with the above employee engagement statistics, are employee loyalty and workplace satisfaction. Both of these are also major influences on how engaged employees are and keeping retention rates high.

Here are some stats that apply to loyalty and workplace satisfaction that impacts employee engagement.

  • 64% of millennials say benefits are extremely or very important to employer loyalty (Qualtrics)
  • 10.8% of workers call their manager/employer awesome and are recognized weekly and 29.4% call them pretty good and are recognized at least once a month (Achievers)
  • 40% of workers give their companies a negative rating on how well they help their employees advance their careers (CNBC)
  • 47% of employees feel underpaid, 44% are dissatisfied with benefits and 43% feel unsatisfied with their career path (Addison Group)
  • 67% of workers consider leaving their job if work arrangements became more rigid (Staples)
  • 58% of employees are happy with the support they receive from management, 14% are unhappy and 26% are neutral (HRDive)
  • When the on-boarding experience is not positive, new hires are twice as likely to quit their job compared to those who have a good on-boarding experience (HRDive)
  • 5% of employees don’t think their contributions make any kind of difference, while 44% do not understand their impact or are unaware of business goals (Ceridian)
  • More than half of employees have experienced job burnout (HRDive)
  • 33% of Americans say employer-provided training doesn’t meet their expectations (Docebo)
  • 80% of employees said the on-boarding process was an important moment at work – yet 1 in 3 would prefer to go on an awkward first date rather than attend on-boarding or orientation for a new job (HRDive)
  • Workers with access to collaborative work management software were 85% more likely to identify as happy in the workplace (Wrike)
  • Top three factors employees said they value are trust, passion and mentorship (HRDive)
 

Related: Even though there are plenty of employee engagement activities out there from all the research, there are also a lot of myths surrounding how to engage employees. Here are the employee engagement activities that everyone thinks are true.

 

Final Thoughts

Hopefully you found the above employee engagement statistics interesting and informative. But remember, this is only a fraction of data that is out there! This is just a collection of the ones our team found to be important.

And although you may feel employee engagement is just a trendy term, it’s actually incredibly important for your organization.

Take some time to digest the above data and see where your own employee engagement stands at your company.

 

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