A new generation of the workforce has emerged and they’re saying ‘no’ to the corporate ladder. As more young people start prioritizing purpose over pay in their career, organizations need to focus on cultivating employee engagement more than ever – or risk losing their workforce.

What Does an Engaged Employee Look Like?

Employee engagement refers to the emotional commitment and connection that employees have to their work, their organization, and its goals. In essence: people want to come to work, understand their jobs, and know how their work contributes to the success of the organization.

Engagement is a spectrum, and any employee on your team can usually fit into one of three buckets:

Engaged employees**:** highly involved and enthusiastic about their work. They take ownership and drive performance – like an employee who works an extra hour today to fix a problem directly affecting a client instead of delaying it to tomorrow because they care that one of your values is “quick customer service.”

Unengaged employees: no attachment to the outcome of their work. These employees still do their jobs, but they check boxes rather than approaching their tasks with energy and passion. They’re here to make ends meet.

Purposely disengaged employees: negative about their job, coworker and company. They’re disgruntled, like to cause chaos, and are probably for other opportunities.

Why Should You Care If Your Employees Are Engaged?

Employee engagement isn't a buzzword – research shows it's a key driver of organizational success. Here's why:

But here’s the kicker: only 23% of employees worldwide and 33% in the U.S. are considered "engaged". That's a lot of untapped potential.

Wait. Is Employee Engagement My Job?

The reason most organizations struggle with employee engagement is because they shrug it off as one of those ‘HR things.’ Since no one takes ownership over it during the day-to-day, it slips through the cracks and becomes a game of “but that wasn’t my job” when teams eventually realize their engagement is low and their culture is bad.

In reality, managers are the best people to ‘own’ employee engagement. They ensure employees know what work they need to do, why it's connected to the success of their organization, and they’re usually the ones supporting and advocating for the team.

How engaged an employee is at their job often comes down to how engaged they are with their direct manager and how engaged their manager is with their own job. Essentially — a burned out, disengaged manager is bad the whole team’s engagement. In fact, Gallup found that 70% of the variance in team engagement is determined solely by the manger. Talk about influence!

What Drives Employee Engagement?

Contrary to popular belief, employee engagement isn't about money or sporadic attempts to make employees happy right before a big milestone, like an annual performance review, or when you need something from them. It's much deeper than that. People want: