Gallup Survey Suggests Improvement in Employee Engagement in U.S.

There’s encouraging news from Gallup 's annual survey of the American workforce. The survey reveals a slight uptick in the number of workers classified as being engaged in their jobs. The representative survey of employed adults found that 33 percent of workers were involved in, and enthusiastic about their work - which is up from the 29 percent found in 2008.

Gallup measures employee engagement using 12 variables that research shows link to key business outcomes – including employee retention, productivity, profitability, customer engagement, and safety – and that reflect basic human needs and expectations in the workplace. When these needs are met, employees can become engaged, or psychologically committed, to their workplace.

The survey also found slight improvement at other end of the engagement spectrum. The number of workers found to be actively disengaged – those who are actively undermining the efforts of their engaged coworkers – was found to be 18%, down from the 20% a year ago. Though this change shows some progress, Gallup estimates the cost to the economy of the 18% of workers who are disengaged to be between $316 and $516 billion annually in just lost productivity.

For additional information on Gallup or background on the survey, go to www.gallup.com.