1. Sustained drop in productivity: Disengaged employees often show a decline in productivity, missed deadlines, reduced quality, or increased error rates over time.
2. Withdrawal from activities: A disengaged employee may withdraw from social interactions, show less enthusiasm for new projects or avoid participating in organizational activities.
3. Increase in absenteeism: Disengaged employees tend to have higher absenteeism rates, often taking frequent sick leaves or finding excuses to stay away from work.
4. Increase workplace discord and decline in communication: Signs include frequent conflicts with colleagues or supervisors, reduced communication in meetings, and a reluctance to provide feedback or share challenges.
While most organizations focus on improving employee engagement levels, they often ignore disengaged employees. This can significantly impact the workforce’s productivity, efficiency, and bottom line. Hence, organizations must watch out for these five signs of disengaged employees to take appropriate action.
Recent research by Gallup shows that around 17.2% of the workforce within most organizations is actively disengaged.
According to this research, the cost per disengaged employee for the organization is almost 34% of the employee’s salary.
One of the critical aspects of handling disengaged employees is to understand the reasons leading to their disengagement.
It helps the organization tackle the root causes of disengagement.
It also helps them proactively identify all employees whose impact similar factors might have.
There might be multiple reasons for disengagement:
1. Dissatisfaction with the compensation
2. Dissatisfaction with supervisors
3. Dissatisfaction with rewards and recognition policies
4. Dissatisfaction with other HR policies
5. Dissatisfaction with career growth opportunities
6. Dissatisfaction with learning and development opportunities
7. Negative work-culture
Contrary to popular belief, disengaged employees might not necessarily be the least productive members of the workforce.
In fact, in most cases, a large percentage of disengaged employees were once highly engaged employees.
By addressing the root causes of disengagement, organizations can minimize its impact on business growth, goodwill, and productivity.
Hence, they must look for the most common signs of disengaged employees. Here are a few of those:
One key indicator of disengagement in the workforce is a sudden decline in employee productivity.
Missed deadlines, falling productivity, drop in quality or increased error rate are all common symptoms.
However, organizations should monitor these factors to understand whether they are temporary.
Another essential sign that organizations need to look out for is the social withdrawal symptoms in their employees.
If an otherwise social employee becomes quiet and withdrawn at work, then there is something amiss.
Less participation in organizational activities or their lack of enthusiasm for new projects are also signs of withdrawal.
Employees might try to convey their distress to their employers by adopting such an attitude.
Disengaged employees prefer to stay away from work, resulting in a higher absenteeism rate.
Such employees generally devise many excuses to justify their absence from work.
A sudden spurt in sick leaves by a seemingly healthy employee or a rising number of family emergencies could be other signs.
Organizations should verify the reasons behind such changes in employee attendance, especially when they have good records.
If organizations see frequent discord involving specific employees at the workplace, they should investigate further.
Happy and engaged employees rarely lash out at or visibly express their anger toward their peers or even managers.
So, if certain employees exhibit such behavior regularly, organizations must try to understand what drives it.
It is pretty easy to confuse reduced communication with withdrawal exhibited by disengaged employees.
However, employees may often continue to participate in organizational activities but gradually reduce their communication.
Such employees may not speak much in team meetings or with their supervisors. They might not respond properly when asked for feedback or input.
They might even choose to stay mum about the challenges and difficulties they face at work.
When viewed together, all these aspects can forewarn the organization about the potential disengagement of the concerned employees.
Organizations should look out for these usual signs of disengaged employees and take timely action to improve employee engagement levels in the organization.
Sagar Chaudhuri is the Co-Founder and CEO of HiFives. He is an HR Tech Evangelist with over 25 years of corporate and entrepreneurship experience. In the past, Sagar has worked in leadership roles with companies such as Genpact, Infosys, and ICICI Bank. He has an engineering degree from IIT Kharagpur and an MBA from IIM Lucknow. Connect on LinkedIn
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