The national and global results indicate that employee engagement is being destroyed in some places as fast as it is being improved in others. It's a real blind spot in the corporate world -- a rare situation in which, never mind the moral considerations, executives aren't even being selfish very well. The failure to make work more invigorating has industry leaving a lot of money on the table. The cost of lost productivity due to disengagement, conservatively expressed, is $300 billion in the United States, 226.5 billion Euro in Germany, and $6 billion USD in Singapore. The estimates are high for every country Gallup has studied.

Despite the flat aggregate trend, changes at the company level are often substantial and lasting. For the publicly traded organizations that achieved top-quartile status in the Gallup database and that realized superior earnings per share growth, it was typical to see dramatic change in engagement over time. Many of these organizations started with less than one-fourth of their workgroups in the top quartile of the engagement database. By the fifth year of holding managers accountable for the 12 Elements, it was not unusual to find 60% or more in the top quartile. In the space of just a few years, the ratio of engaged to actively disengaged employees had doubled as a result of managers' sincere efforts.

Valuing finances -- and people

Ask great managers what motivates them, and you get the most non-financial of root causes for the string of ultimately profitable events. "Oh, I love them to death," said one supervisor. "Honestly and truthfully, from the bottom of my heart, there's not anyone who works on my staff that I have any hard feelings with. I feel like if I had to go to battle for them, I would, and I'll stand beside them any day for anything."

"People are more important than facts and figures," said Philippe Lescornez, a manager at Masterfoods in Brussels, a division of Mars, Incorporated. "People are very important to my happiness; I could not be happy on my own." (See "Performance Reviews Without the Anxiety" in the "See Also" area on this page.)

"Well, they're like my family," said another manager. "I want them to be as happy working here as I am. I love my job, and I've worked here for 17 years. I've always wanted to be a store manager. And I want them to always come to work and be happy."

In our studies of hundreds of thousands of managers and work teams across the globe, it is very clear that great managers have an instinctive awareness that what they are doing is contributing more than profit. Great managers achieve sustained profitability because they make a connection to something beyond profit. They see the result of their work in the life of each person they manage.

Their impact transcends mere business. For many, it is an almost spiritual issue, no matter their particular faith. Their motivation stems from deeply held beliefs about their responsibility to those around them. Whether they believe it is Providence or pure chance that puts them in the same office or factory with their team, these managers understand viscerally the scientific truth that what they do will have a large effect -- maybe a lifelong effect -- on their colleagues. They realize, given the percentage of waking time their teams spend at work, how much influence they have, not just over their people's "work life," but their whole life. (See "Your Job May Be Killing You" in the "See Also" area on this page.)

Most will tell you management is a solemn responsibility, something from which they take tremendous satisfaction, but it also weighs heavily on their consciences because they take it so seriously. With it, they say, rests not only the fiduciary responsibilities of protecting other people's money and striving for a good return, but a special kind of stewardship over people's lives. Employees say that both sides of the coin, the personal and the professional, depend on a manager who can give them the guidance, support, advocacy, and resources that motivate them to reciprocate with their best efforts.

"These are people's lives. I have an obligation," said Pete Wamsteeker, a manager at Cargill in West Branch, Iowa. "I can't make mistakes with that. I really have an obligation to do it right, and I'm going to invest the time to do it right." (See "Investing in Employees' Development" in the "See Also" area on this page.)

Therein lies the irony. The managers who are best at getting the most from people are those who give the most to them. Those who create the greatest financial performance start with the least pecuniary motivations. They work hard to do the right thing for their people, and they end up doing well.

That is the heart of great managing.

Copyright Ó 2008 The Gallup Organization, Princeton, NJ.  All rights reserved.  Reprinted with permission.  Visit The Gallup Management Journal at http://gmj.gallup.com/

Article from The Gallup Management Journal