by Thornton Prayer and Steven Shagrin, Certified ChangeWorks!® Practitioners

Companies always struggle with the challenge of keeping employees engaged and focused on their jobs. The economic upheaval of recent years has magnified the risk of disengaged employees. What was previously a big problem is now reaching a make-or-break point for your company’s survival. Can you and your company afford to let this situation spin out of control?

There are four ways how employee disengagement damages your company. Let’s examine how it affects your company and the consequences.

1. Disengaged employees are less productive.
When your staff is disengaged, they simply are not as productive as you need them to be. Sure, they show up and do their jobs well enough to keep their jobs. However, they are not focused, able or willing to maximize their productivity. Your company’s productivity may be suffering just when you need it the most. Is this situation acceptable to you?

2. Disengaged employees have already quit….but are still on your payroll.
Disengaged employees have checked out. Many are asleep at the wheel. They’ve likely quit either consciously or unconsciously. Some are actively looking for other jobs and others are actively thinking about looking for another job. The only thing that’s holding many of them back from leaving and looking is economic uncertainty. Your problem is that they have already quit but are still collecting a paycheck. You have low productivity and are paying for it. How long are you willing to continue this scenario?

3. Disengaged employees are less focused on the bottom line.
You need to cut costs and maximize employee productivity for bottom line needs. A disengaged staff has much less incentive for the same focus. Their focus is instead on their own career needs and economic survival. Any attention they do pay to your company’s financials is slanted to whether their own jobs are in jeopardy. Are you confident that your workers are thinking seriously about your company’s bottom line?

4. Disengaged employees do not focus on your company’s success.
Because disengaged workers are focused on their personal career and economic needs, they are much less likely to focus on the company’s short-term and long-term success. Whereas you are constantly juggling revenue, cost, productivity, and profitability goals, these areas are not that important to disengaged employees. Isn’t it important to you to have a workforce which focuses on your company’s success as much as you do?

Employee disengagement is a big challenge in any economic climate, but is an even bigger problem when the economy itself is a challenge. They are less productive and focused on your company’s bottom-line while still collecting a paycheck. You want and need them to re-focus and perform at a high level. Your own challenge is figuring out how to re-orient your employees to do what you hired them to do.

To assess how likely your employees are actually doing the jobs you hired them to do, click on the following link: http://bit.ly/5yT3QN

Authors

Steven “Shags” Shagrin is dedicated to life-long learning … and teaching others. Shags brings a unique background to his coaching and training business. With degrees in accounting and law, Shags worked for two decades with Wall Street brokerage firms, then as a “fee-only” independent financial planner, before finding his truest calling as a coach and educator. His professional credentials include Certified Money Coach, Certified Financial Planner® professional, Chartered Retirement Planning Counselor®, Certified Retirement Counselor®, and Enhanced Lifestyle Planner. He is President of Planning For Life in Walnut Creek, providing Money Coaching and Financial Wellness services, and is Vice President of The Money Coaching Institute in Petaluma, providing Money Coaching training workshops and classes, as well as Personal Finance Education classes. Please visit his websites at www.PlanningForLife.info and www.MoneyCoachingInsitute.com.

Thornton Prayer is a business coach, motivational speaker, and seminar leader who works with organizations and individuals seeking optimal performance, clarity of purpose, continuous growth, and decisive accomplishment. His work experience with both small businesses and major corporations such as Oracle and General Electric gives him a broad perspective on business requirements and effective interpersonal relationships. His background is enhanced by a comprehensive foundation of technical and business education including a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Duke University and an MBA from the University of California, Berkeley.

Thornton received his coaching instruction with the Coaches Training Institute. He is a Certified ChangeWorks Practitioner in the ChangeWorks!® System and educated in the Group Facilitation Skills course from the Community At Work consulting firm. His career history and in-depth training in several personal development programs enables him to provide a holistic perspective in addressing the vital challenges facing organizations and individual business people today.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 29th, 2009 at 6:52 pm and is filed under Coaching. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.