The U.S. workforce is more than 100 million full-time employees and 21% of those employees are what a recent Gallup study calls “engaged at work”. That means that the remaining 79% of employees are actively disengaged or worse, not engaged at all.

Engaged – 21% of employees

Employees that are engaged in the workplace enjoy their jobs as well as the company they work for. These employees work hard to make their organization better and better every day. Below are some qualities of engaged employees:

• Want to feel like part of the team
• Desire real-time feedback
• Prefer perks and rewards to money or paid time-off.

Disengaged

Actively disengaged employees are the kind of people who truly do not enjoy their jobs. They are often very unhappy in the workplace and dislike their responsibilities, managers, or company they work for. Disengaged employees often ruin the atmosphere engaged employees work hard to build.  Below are qualities these kinds of employees typically possess:

• Lack opportunities to interact with co-workers
• Are subject to bad management
• Only receive annual performance reviews

Not Engaged

Over one-half of employees in the U.S. are not engaged in the workplace. This means they are neutral; they show up to work and do their job and that’s about it. These kind of employees are not toxic to their workplace environment but they do not add anything of value either.

Every company has a version of the employees described above. These employees largely determine the success of the company from meeting goals, providing customer support, or increasing revenue. Every year in the U.S., $450 to $550 billion is lost in productivity costs.

These numbers may be shocking, but the good news is that they can be reduced with a few adjustments. We wrote about some tips here and here if you’re interested in learning more.

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