A recent survey of over 5 million employee responses showed that less than 25 percent of employees consider themselves to be highly engaged in their company.
The report, “2017 Trends in Global Employee Engagement,” by Aon Hewitt, covered over 60 industries and showed overall engagement (highly engaged + moderately engaged) scores in the 60 percent range.
Both Singapore and Malaysia fell to below 60 percent for employee engagement. Singapore had a four- point decrease year on year.
Other APAC countries are slightly higher, but are all under 70 percent. India leads the pack at 69 percent, China is at 67 percent, Thailand and the Philippines are tied at 65 percent, with Indonesia rounding out the mix at 61 percent.
In particular, millennials feel the most disengagement, particularly when surveyed about their companies’ methods to attract talent, promote employees and retain staff. Millennials also rated low on feeling their companies were giving them the appropriate resources to do their jobs.
According to Stephen Hickey, a Partner at Aon Hewitt APAC, “As organisations strive to fuel growth, they must understand how their workforce productivity and pay programmes—both fixed and variable, compare to market. They must educate their people on how they implement pay for performance and recognise top contributors using a blend of financial and non-financial rewards such as development opportunities.”
Aon Hewitt found that there are regional variations in engagement, driven by cultural differences, regional political climate, and local economics. However, some things are universal: colleague recognition and fairness in reward programs is increasingly important in engaging a workforce.
Highest-performing employees are also the most engaged, and there are definitely financial benefits to having engaged employees. Companies with engaged employees outperform other companies by 202 percent and have lower absenteeism. In fact, companies that increase investments in employee engagement by 10 percent reap a reward of higher productivity by $2,400 per employee per year.