Does your company have a problem with lack of employee engagement? Have you wondered if they care about their work or if they simply show up to work because they need a paycheck to survive? Chances are, if you are asking yourself these questions, you are facing a serious problem, lack of employee engagement.

According to multiple studies, including one released in PeopleMetrics in 2009, employee disengagement can cost your company up to 12%. This means that the average company could be losing approximately $2,246 per year for every employee that is disengaged from their job.

What is Employee Disengagement?

So now that you know how much employee disengagement can possibly cost you, you need to know what it is and how to recognize it in the workplace. A strong organization thrives on a sense of mutual trust, fairness, and mutual respect between the employer and their staff.

When employees are engaged, performance and productivity are put before anything else. Your employees show up to work so that they can perform their duties properly and draw a fair paycheck for the work that they do.

When trust is broken or morale is down, employees begin to slack on their duties and they do not perform as well on a daily basis. They are getting paid to do only part of their job. This is where customers and the company begin to suffer. This problem spreads quickly through a company because as one employee begins to slack off, other employees must take on the unfinished responsibilities. They are not getting paid to do the additional work, so they begin to slack as well.

How to Handle Employee Disengagement

Your first instinct may be to fire all of the employees that are disengaged and replace them with new people. However, this is unnecessary. There are several measures you should take before you begin firing people who used to be hard working employees.

During this process, you must remain calm. Resorting to anger toward these employees causes more resentment and can make the problem worse. It is important that you speak to each employee separately to determine what the problem is. Inform them that you are concerned about the change in behavior.

Listen to the concern of each of your employees. Confirm what they have to say, and if necessary, put it in writing. In order to get the answers that you need, you may need to apply pressure to your staff as a whole.

If the problem is something that can be resolved, make sure to ask your employee a very important question – If the problem is solved today, will their work performance change? Make sure to document the problem, the solution and the commitment to change in writing and follow up to ensure that the problems is solved and performance returns to normal.

The Problem May Be Worse Than You Think

Do you know the potential of your company? Chances are you probably under estimate the potential because of your employees. According to Forbes, 70 percent of employees are disengaged from day one of employment. You only realize that there is a problem when the performance depreciates further, to the point where other employees are complaining or work has declined to the point that the company is taking a loss.

The majority of people work simply because they need a paycheck, not because they are motivated by the love of their profession. If this is the problem, boosting moral can be as simple as providing seminars and business events that cover the reasons why they entered into their chosen profession to begin with. You can easily bring back the enthusiasm of the workplace.