As we all know, the workplace has been in turmoil over the past months. Employee-driven movements have been quick to shake up labour relations and unsettle employers.. Whether in terms of mass departures or changes in the way people work, Big Quit and Quiet Quitting have established themselves as powerful phenomena on a planetary scale. Their impact is considerable since they have reversed the balance of power in place in the workplace by striking a sensitive chord: employee engagement.
This article proposes a way to measure the engagement of employees in order to be able to make changes in the organization of work in line with the new values claimed. But beforehand, let's reconsider this notion of engagement and its current challenges for companies.
What is work engagement?
Engagement corresponds to a feeling of attachment that binds a person to his company and pushes him to give the best of himself to achieve his objectives. This definition raises two important points. On the one hand, an energy that animates the person and propels him in the exercise of his missions. On the other hand, involvement, so sought after by employers since it promotes the establishment of a relationship of trust with the employee, who, feeling concerned by his actions, carries out his missions with a feeling of responsibility.
Challenges for companies
The wave of mass departures generated by the Big Quit, and the emotional detachment characterized by Quiet Quitting are the main causes of this disengagement of employees, which employers have been watching almost helplessly for several months. The challenges for companies are therefore focused on this engagement. The objective that employers must aim for is to find a new balance by redefining everyone's place around the notion of engagement.
How to measure employee engagement?
Some psychometric tools have been designed to assess an individual's aspirations and values. This is the case for Professional Profile 2 , which targets seven strong dimensions that have an impact on an individual's motivation at work.
Among these dimensions, employee engagement is measured via the “involvement at work” versus “search for personal balance” continuum. This dimension refers to the strong importance that employees place on work and the emotional bond that binds to their company. This dimension is currently being particularly challenged with the rise of the Big Quit and Quiet Quitting. There is indeed a propensity of employees to cut this link they have established with their company to better get closer to their personal life in order to find another way to flourish.
For information, before the arrival of these phenomena, the French average for this dimension was 5.53 on a scale of 10, all employment sectors combined. A strong hypothesis among valuation professionals is that the cursor has probably moved towards a search for balance.
Being still at the heart of these phenomena which continue to destabilize the world of work, it is still too early to provide new statistics. That said, companies can go ahead to take the pulse of their employees on their level of engagement. Concretely, employees are invited to complete the assessment on a voluntary basis. The results are then aggregated to provide an overall view of the engagement of everyone in the company. Depending on the results, companies may need to review their mode of operation, if they observe a strong trend among employees towards a search for balance.
Conclusion
Professional disengagement is one of the main causes of the phenomena that are currently shaking the world of work. By having a clearer vision of the extent of this change for the company, the latter will be better able to put in place measures that take this new value into account, and that respond to this search for balance, to better reconcile work with private life.
We can assume that by giving employees new freedom, by allowing them to take time for themselves, to disconnect and to take on other life roles, they will in return be better able to engage in the company.
