People do not leave jobs; they leave a toxic workplace.
Only 16% of employees are fully engaged at work. That means that 8/10 employees merely pitch up for a pay cheque. These results come from a study on employee engagement by the ADP Research Institute in 2019. The recent study done with 26,000 participants in 26 countries found that resilience, and engagement are related. Engagement has a positive impact on resilience.
Post pandemic the landscape is quite bleak:
- 85% of workers are just coming to work. 5% of this group is resilient.
- 15% of workers are fully engaged, however 5% of this group are vulnerable.
Disengagement increased during the pandemic. A disengaged employee leaves work with unfulfilled human potential, untapped talent and drive. There are two things responsible for building employee engagement – trust the leadership, and being on a team. Trust however is the biggest factor; it is the foundation of employee engagement.
In a recent seminar lead by Garry Ridge, CEO of WD40, Garry listed 10 leadership behaviours that would foster a toxic environment. I will touch on 5 to keep this to one page.
- Master of Control – the need to control everything and everyone around you. This is a definite way to restrict the growth of your team, and your organization.
- Having all the answers – that leader that has to have the last say on every topic, or having to add their 2 cents worth in every conversation. As Marshall Goldsmith puts it – adding too much value detracts from the value you may get from your team.
- Micro-management – it is realistic to expect that others will do it differently and possibly better than you could ever have imagined. The practice of micro-management is simply not scalable.
- Must always be right – over competitive, and seeing everything as a competition. Sometimes the best words are, “I don’t know, what do you think?”
- Hate feedback – getting feedback and asking for reconsideration, or generating an avalanche of defensive posturing is setting the example for your employees.
A leader’s behaviour is amplified through the organization, in people who persuade the trends and others who simply disengage, or leave.
The counterpoint to generating a toxic environment with bad behaviour, is a place where people love to come to work. In conversation with a client this morning, he summed it up very well: In a positive work place with good leadership, people will have less stress, enjoy coming to work, deliver more joy to customers and increase company performance.
