💡 The Great Resignation has made way for the Engagement Illusion.

📉Leaders vastly overestimate the level of employee engagement and wildly underestimate the degree to which employees are disengaged.

☝️This disconnect extends beyond engagement. In fact, leaders overestimate employee morale across the board, assuming employees love their work at twice the rates of reality.

💥 Leaders overestimate (Almost 2X) how much employees enjoy their work.

👉 Only highly engaged employees are more likely to remain at their organizations, those who are somewhat engaged were just as likely to leave as disengaged employees.

Investing in employee development drives engagement, according to a new interesting research published by ManpowerGroup Talent Solutions using data 📊 from a survey of 401 leaders and1,002 employees across the US and Canada.

✅The strong disconnect between leader perceptions and employee reality

Researchers found that 83% of leaders responded that their workforce is fully engaged, while only 6% of leaders believed their employees were disengaged.

In reality, only 48% of employees would categorize themselves as fully engaged, while 29% are actively disengaged.

✅What is Engagement illusion?

Researchers defined the engagement illusion as the mismatch between leaders' perceptions and employee experiences hiding the employee engagement crisis in organizations.

⚠️There is large gulf between what leaders think and the actual reality the majority of leaders grossly overestimate the number of engaged employees and underestimate the number of disengaged employees.

✅Leaders overestimate Employee Morale

Researchers also noticed that leaders overestimate (Almost 2X) how much employees enjoy their work.

They found that leaders misjudge their employees’ motivation level, job and employer satisfaction, and the degree to which workers feel they belong.

The gap between leaders and their employees are huge:

❌ 38% of difference about how employees would love they work

❌ 30% of difference about employees look forward starting work

Sadly, many employees say they would take another job given what they know now.

✅Employees are also less Loyal than the reality

Researchers noticed that while three-quarters of employee participants noted that they’d like to stay at their organization for the foreseeable future, half of employees are open to taking steps toward taking a job elsewhere, be it actively looking or being open if a role was offered.

Employees want to be loyal; their needs just are not being met, leading them to reluctantly look for other opportunities.

✅Employee Development drives Engagement

Researchers noticed that employees who are fully engaged, feel their organization:

✔️ Invests in Learning & Development

✔️ Offers Learning & Development opportunities they’re excited about

✔️ Offers career development support

✔️Has a formal career development pathway

✔️ Makes them feel challenged in work

☝️ 𝙈𝙮 𝙥𝙚𝙧𝙨𝙤𝙣𝙖𝙡 𝙫𝙞𝙚𝙬:

The wonderful research demonstrates that the strong disconnect between leadership perceptions and employee reality is deeply concerning. These findings should be a wake-up call to all leaders. Also there is a light at the tunnel for leaders, once they overcome their engagement illusion. There is strong evidence that points to a recipe for leadership to rebuild engagement with their employees and drive long-term loyalty.

Thank you 🙏 ManpowerGroup ManpowerGroup Talent Solutions researchers team for these insightful findings:

Michelle Nettles Karel van der Mandele Beth Linderbaum, Ph.D., PCC Katherine Giuca

Dave Ulrich

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