Bucketlist is now on ADP® Marketplace

Employee Engagement’s Biggest Decline in 10 Years

After reaching a new 10-year high, employee engagement saw its biggest decline since Gallup started tracking it in 2010. The largest decline in employee engagement was among those in managerial or leadership positions, according to Gallup’s survey. When a team leader is unengaged, it has drastic effects on the team.

The ADP® Research Institute’s 2020 Employee Engagement report found that when a team leader is fully engaged, 65% of team members are as well. But when the team leader is not engaged, only 0.04% of the team will be. 

ADP’s report goes on to say that, “Efforts to engage the workforce should focus first not on the workforce, but on the team leaders of the workforce. Their level of engagement is paramount because it greatly influences engagement downstream.”

This makes sense. Most people have experienced working under a leader who is engaged, and as a result you want to work hard too. Or if your manager is unengaged, then you feel that lack of motivation too.

ADP also found a direct correlation between engagement and achieving targets. 

The below graph digs deeper into the individual differences by engagement quartile.

In addition to achieving targets, individuals who are engaged sell more and stay at the company for longer.

One way to increase employee engagement is to offer alternative paths to prestige, which includes satisfying employees’ desires for title and compensation. Another option is to utilize employee recognition tools.

Recognition is something our brains are hardwired to need, to the point that when we receive recognition it releases dopamine. Dopamine creates positive emotions like satisfaction and enjoyment.

Gallup states that, “Receiving praise and recognition releases dopamine in the brain, which creates the feelings of pride and pleasure. Better yet, that dopamine hit cements the knowledge that more of that behaviour will create more praise, resulting in another dopamine drench, and so on.” For more information, check out our blog The Psychology of Employee Recognition.

As a result, employee recognition results in higher levels of motivation, engagement and productivity. In fact:

• Employees who receive strong recognition are 33% more likely to be proactively innovating.
• Companies with recognition programs that are effective at improving employee engagement have 31% lower voluntary turnover.
• Organizations with highly engaged employees achieve 2x the annual net income of organizations whose employees lag behind on engagement.

Source: Chief Executive, The Psychology of Employee Recognition

One of the best-rated reward and recognition programs on G2 is Bucketlist.

“Seeing managers recognize not only their staff, but staff in other departments is super refreshing. You don’t always get to hear recognition from a manager so directly, but having it in real time, ‘Thank you for what you did, great job, and keep up the good work’ has been amazing for morale all around the company.” said Julianne Silletti, First Bank Human Resources Assistant.

To make your life easier, Bucketlist now integrates with ADP Workforce Now®, making it even easier for ADP clients to add and remove staff, which reduces work for the HR department. The integration is available through ADP Marketplace, ADP’s digital HR storefront.

Once the integration is set up (which is done by the Bucketlist onboarding team), whenever a new team member is added to or removed from ADP, they’ll automatically be added or removed in Bucketlist too.

Find out more about Bucketlist’s features, or book a time to chat to the team about how employee recognition and rewards could help you.