As a business owner, you obviously want your employees to be productive.
You may think that the best way to achieve this is by having them be engaged in their work. However, being engaged at work and being productive are not the same thing.
In fact, there are many reasons why trying to get your employees to be engaged can actually backfire and make them less productive.
In this article, we will discuss the difference between engagement and productivity, and outline why trying to get your employees engaged doesn’t always translate directly to productivity.
Why are engagement rates dropping?
Firstly, let’s look at why engagement is so low in the first place.
The physical and emotional well-being of employees is an often overlooked aspect in today’s work environment.
One third of employees in the US are considered “engaged on the job” according to research from Gallup; However this number drops dramatically worldwide - only 13% globally feel invested at their company or organisation.
There are a myriad of reasons why employee engagement rates aren’t as high as they could be.
- Many employees feel overworked and stressed. They don’t have enough time to take a break, let alone engage in activities that would make them feel more connected to their work.
- In some cases, employees just don’t feel appreciated. They may be putting in a lot of hours, but they’re not getting the recognition from leaders.
- Others feel that their job doesn’t have meaning or purpose. They may be working hard, but they don’t feel like what they’re doing is making a difference.
- One the best ways to measure employee engagement is to run a comprehensive survey.
In fact, just showing that you care enough to ask will often have a direct positive effect on engagement. But will increasing engagement improve productivity? Let’s find out
The difference between being engaged and being productive
Being engaged at work and being productive are not the same thing.
Engagement comes from relationships with colleagues, recognition for a job well done, employee autonomy and personal connections to the company’s mission. The engagement that businesses strive for is employee satisfaction on a deep level - these people feel invested in what they’re doing.
Being productive means that employees are completing their tasks in a timely and efficient manner. The two are not mutually exclusive, but they are not the same either.
It’s important to note that employee productivity is not just about how much work an employee can complete in a day. Productivity is also influenced by employee motivation, creativity and engagement.
The Harvard Business Review recently carried out (some research)[https://hbr.org/2017/02/being-engaged-at-work-is-not-the-same-as-being-productive?utm_source=linkedin&utm_campaign=hbr&utm_medium=social] into the correlation between engagement and productivity and the results were surprising.
The HBR Research project
Researchers looked to test the assumptions that highly engaged employees are more productive.
The lack of good productivity metrics for most knowledge worker functions posed some problems, so they used Microsoft Workspace Analytics software and measured individual output based on work done in different apps across a user’s device - such as emailing or meetings in the user’s calendar.
They settled on using one metric to measure engagement: average weekly working hours.
While this number wouldn’t explicitly uncover what people think about their jobs, it’s an interesting way of exploring whether there is any relationship between how much time employees spend at work each week and where they rank in terms of engagement.
Here are the results for the two companies that took part in the research.
Company 1:
Longer working hours were overall positively correlated with higher engagement scores, according to their findings.
This means that highly engaged employees simply choose to work longer hours because they’re interested in what’s happening at the company - a good thing for everyone involved!
The results also suggest that investing more time and resources into improving employee engagement would have an excellent return on investment for companies who do so.
However, when they looked at employees working extremely long hours (the 90th percentile), engagement scores dropped off rapidly.
This is likely an indication that these workers are displaying signs of being overworked - or burn-out.
Clearly, the engagement bump that longer working hours provides has a limit.
Company 2:
The data told a different story at this company, with scores not seeming to measure accurately the hours that an employee worked.
The researchers ended up splitting the 3,000-person employee population into two groups based on average weekly working hour ratios:
- Group 1: Those who typically log more than 40 hours per week
- Group 2: Those who typically logged less than 40 hours a week (the median).
The researchers then further subdivided each anonymised employee based on their engagement scores, which gave them four quadrants:
Quadrant 1: Long hours, High engagement This was made up of employees who work long hours and have high engagement scores. These people are said to be the “ideal” employee.
Quadrant 2:Long hours, low engagement The group of people in this category are those who work long hours and have low engagement scores. These are likely to be those employees who may feel overworked, but would cause problems if they quit the organisation.
Quadrant 3: Normal hours, high engagement These were employees who are not putting in long hours, but still scoring highly on engagement. This could be because they meet or exceed the lower expectations and thus don’t need to put in extra effort for high satisfaction levels.
Quadrant 4: Normal hours, low engagement This group includes individuals who do not work long hours and have a low engagement score. Their lack of interest in the company could indicate a risk of leaving the company, but their apparent disinterest, coupled with a lower number of hours at work suggests losing some may not be such bad outcome after all.
The results were surprising…
There were a large number who appeared to be highly engaged but did less work. 25% of employees at this firm were in the “normal hours, high engagement” bucket, meaning they happily did less work than colleagues.
A further 22% working ‘long hours with low engagement’. These employees who worked longer hours were at high risk of leaving due to low engagement.
Looking at those who were highly engaged, about 25% of them worked normal hours and 28% of them worked long hours. Conversely, the remaining 47% who’s engagement rates were low, 25% of of them worked a short week, and the remainder (22%) worked long hours.
For this company (and likely for most others), it’s clear that there is a sweet spot:
- Quadrant 1 - Superstars: Long hours, high engagement. These employees clearly enjoy the work, and can handle high workloads. In some senses these are the ideal employees (but do risk moving to quadrant 2 over time).
- Quadrant 2 - Burnouts: Long hours, low engagement. These employees are at risk of burn out. Perhaps they would benefit time management or delegation training.
- Quadrant 3 - Plodders: Normal hours, high engagement. This group may have lower targets to hit, or a lighter workload, leading to a deceptively high engagement score.
- Quadrant 4 - Slackers: Normal hours, low engagement. Employees in this quadrant don’t work long hours, and appear highly disengaged, meaning they’re potentially dragging down others with them.
Although this only a sample survey of two organisations, it does introduce the idea of that we can plot engagement against productivity and create 4 quadrants - kind of like the BCG Matrix of happy employees.
So what all does this mean for you?
Perhaps you should not rely on engagement scores alone to understand the health of your organisation.
Although there is agreement amongst experts about the definition of an ‘engaged worker’, in real life, companies vary greatly in how they define and measure this term. This can lead them towards different conclusions when evaluating employee commitment (engagement) against hours worked (productivity).
According to this research, the “engagement” score reported might not be the only indicator necessary to determine if the company has a great workplace culture or not.
For example, someone who feels comfortable with their workload, and can complete it quickly may be happy and engaged. But is the company missing out here? Could that same person take on more work, and still be as happy?
What about those that work long hours but are actively disengaged? How do we stage interventions to prevent burnout?
And for those working long hours, but seemingly happy about it - whilst it’s clearly massively advantageous for the company, is it healthy in the longer term?
One thing is clear - we need to do something about those that work the minimum number of hours, and are disengaged. They have the potential to poison the culture from the bottom up.