TGIM: The Opportunity in Employee Engagement

I recently game across a statistic in poll that I found utterly shocking: 85 percent of employees in the workforce feel disengaged in their jobs. 85 percent! That's 17 out of every 20 employees! It's easy to see a statistic like this, shrug our shoulders, and move on, but take a moment and let that sink in. If the trend is consistent in your own organization, that means that you only have a very small number of people in your company who actually want to be there. Can you imagine the effect this fact has on productivity, let alone the general health of your organization?

 

In my consulting practice, I've made increasing employee engagement a central piece of what I do. Too many employees go to work day in and day out, counting down the hours until the end of the day—and the days until the end of the week. We have an expression in our culture, “TGIF,” which stands for “Thank God It's Friday!” Of course, there's nothing wrong with looking forward to the weekend. Balance is an important thing to have in life, and we all need to take a break now and then to get refreshed. The problem, though, is that when people say they're looking forward to the weekend, what that really means is that they're longing for the week to be over. It isn't that they want to be with their families; it's that they want to be away from their jobs!

 

I teach organizations to cultivate a different mentality: “TGIM.” You can guess what this stands for: “Thank God It's Monday!” Rather than employees dreading the workweek, we can teach them to actually look forward to it. The weekend doesn't have to be an escape from the office; it can be a preparation for the office. It is possible for people to actually get excited about what they do so much that they are looking forward to getting back into the office so they can do it. So, let's get started. There's no time like the present!