Trending: Employee Engagement (If not now, soon)

By New Directions Insights - an exclusive New Directions publication

Every so often we try to take a step back here at New Directions and analyze the landscape of organizational development. Where are we at and where are we all going? What will we be talking about in 3-5 years? What do our clients need to know today to prepare for tomorrow? These are some of the questions we ask, and in turn, look for answers. Because we converse and cross-pollinate with many different types of clients, organizations and industries, it's in our best interest to have a good pulse on what's trending or what will be trending.

We've mentioned it before, but recently we've been coming back to these words and idea: Employee Engagement. In a nutshell this is what we see:

7 out of 10 employees
report that they are mildly to severely disengaged with their employer.
Employees with lower engagement are 4 times more likely to leave their jobs than those who are highly engaged.
Disengaged managers are 3 times more likely to have disengaged employees.
The 80-90 million Millennials entering the workforce have a different definition of engagement, satisfaction and empowerment than previous generations, with the vast majority of Millennials (90%) not planning to stay with any given employer for more than five years.
During the recession 6,000 Baby Boomers were retiring a day; that number will only increase as the market becomes healthier leaving many organizations with knowledge gaps and void of veteran strategic thinkers.
75% of organizations report not having an Employee Engagement Strategy but companies with engaged employees outperform those with disengaged employees by 202%.

We believe the key conversation (and conversely training, workshop, service and consulting we provide) in the next three to five years will be around how do we redefine our workplace and create an Employee Engagement Strategy that yields practical and strategic results. According to Bersin and Associates, the current annual amount spent on employee engagement is $720 million. They expect that to increase drastically to about $1.5 billion in the coming years.

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