CEO Alert! What is your company’s Silent and Invisible Disengagement Expense?
As a CEO you feel the weight of being able to see what others can’t see or won’t see. This is your gut instinct as a CEO. What is your gut saying about your company’s disengaged employees, what is it costing you and WHY are they Quietly Quitting?
Recent Gallup data states 50% of workers are Quietly Quitting. Are half your employees doing the minimal amount of work for their full pay?
I have interviewed today’s Quiet Quitters in the C Suite, Vice Presidents and working staff. Their stories tell of why they are choosing to sit on the sidelines. Why they are not speaking up when they see a problem. Why they don’t want to come up with new ideas, find solutions or create new opportunities.
Quietly Quitting disengagement is costing global businesses $8.8T (Gallup).
The silent and invisible disengagement expenses are three-fold, Resignations, Quietly Quitting and the Loss of Opportunity due to lack of productivity. The combined U.S. businesses price tag is $1 Trillion. A conservative estimate is for every 100 employees it can cost as much as $1.5M.
What is Your Company’s Disengagement Expense? Use my Worksheet in Step 3 to calculate your losses.
Now is the time to repair your disengaged workforce. Joe Galvin, Chief Research Officer, Vistage says, ‘Leaders need to prioritize employee engagement levels, even in a slower economy.’ Once the new growth cycle kicks in and the demand for talent increases your Quietly Quitting talent could become resignations.
Today’s disengagement data is unprecedented. However, there is hope found in data from the Great Depression to lift your company out of the current dysfunction.
Walt Disney in the 1930s found his team of approximately 1,000 traumatized by their personal losses due to the banking failures of the Great Depression. Disney engaged, inspired, and united his team’s efforts around Disney’s Purpose. Disney’s Purpose is ‘to make people happy’. Walt made his team members happy so they in turn could make society happier too.
Together, their alignment of Purpose created the first full-length animated feature film, "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" grossing $8M in 1937-38 ($164M adjusted for inflation in 2023).
Purpose can help transcend your company’s disengaged employees both personally and corporately. Here are 3 steps to help…
1. Understanding WHY employees are Disengaging.
Your team member’s disengagement are pain points OUTSIDE and INSIDE of work.
Gallup reports in the last 20 years ‘actively disengaged’ or Quietly Quitting employees held steady between 13-18% versus 50% today. Why the jump?
Quietly Quitting numbers have jumped at the same time as Work from Home and Return to Office policies have changed as businesses reset after Covid. This timeframe has also had high inflation and credit hikes which makes the post Covid impact tougher to manage personally.
Covid’s emotional impact on society and businesses will be studied for decades to come.
Today, we do know that Covid did not kill us, we are alive. As a society we all beat the odds of death.
Have you or a loved one ever beat the odds of death?
Any life-threatening medical issue and close call accident forces us to face death in the eye. When you beat the odds of death it changes you. You look differently at life. You have a new lease on life with a different set of priorities and values. You live for meaning and significance in your work, family, and personal life. Today’s disengaged employee is longing to make sense and find Purpose after beating the odds of death.
When I was a fourteen-year-old, I beat the odds of death when my older brother, Kevin died of Duchene Muscular Dystrophy (DMD). Statistically as Kevin’s brother, I should have the disease too. I do not.
When Kevin died and I beat the odds of death, I had questions, ‘why am I alive; why am I here?’ This began my personal search for definition or understanding of my Purpose.
Today’s Covid survivors have the same questions, ‘why am I alive; why am I here?’ Similarly, survivors too have a longing for definition of Purpose.
As society, our search is for answers and definition of Purpose in hopes of a NEW integrated Work, Family and Personal life.
Complicating this search for answers is the enmeshment of work, family, and personal life that happened in 2020 when Covid forced our work into our homes to survive.
Some workers created a work, family and personal life that was better for them, and the company and others did not.
Today, disentangling the enmeshment and determining what is functional and what is dysfunctional takes an individual strategy to create a NEW integrated Work, Family and Personal life.
There is NO one size fits all. Understanding the enmeshment and how it is functional or not functional post Covid takes an individual RESET strategy with empathic managers.
A confession of a Quiet Quitter, “In 2020 I was working hybrid and loved my job. I had worked hard to create working protocols to help the company deal with Covid and quarantine. Later in 2020, I got a new boss, a Vice President who came from another department and did not know my department’s workflow. The VP started changing our working protocols and procedures without telling the team. In one virtual staff meeting I brought this concern to the team’s attention. The VP took offense at me and quickly accused me of insubordination. The VP boldly embarrassed me in front of the entire department. I was working from my home office next to my son’s bedroom who was in virtual school. I am a single father of an Autistic son who that day was having behavioral challenges due to quarantine. The combined work and home life challenges were too much. I felt my boss’s needless confrontation was an invasion of my home. Since my VP was no longer empowering me to do my job, I began to Quietly Quit.”
“I used 25% of my workday working on my side hustle. I stopped going above and beyond. I stopped offering to help fix problems. I stopped visiting with coworkers. If my work got done on time no one needed to know that I was emotionally checked out. To me, management was no longer supporting me, so I gave myself a 25% raise by Quietly Quitting plus the added income from my side hustle. In 2021 another manager became my boss and took the remaining authority that I did have away, and I increased my time to my side hustle to 67%. I felt I was being Quietly Fired so I Quietly Quit.”
“I estimate my employer spent $70,000 in the 20 months directly due to me Quietly Quitting. When we parted ways my side hustle became my new gig.”
The old saying, ‘People Don’t Quit Companies They Quit Managers’, is more relevant today than ever before. Are your managers properly equipped and trained to lead their direct reports through these challenges? We need to train managers to empathically lead to do so.
2. Strategy on Purpose
Aligning behind a Purpose will help fix your team members enmeshment and create engagement which in turn will resolve your company’s disengagement expense and create new revenue opportunities.
My strategy is simple, empower your team members to define their individual life’s Purpose to give them a True North guide to a NEW integrated Work, Family and Personal life balance. This helps fix their Pain Point. While doing so, help them to align their individual life’s Purpose to help build your company’s Mission.
The goal is to transform disengagement into a high-performance team on Purpose. Which will build engagement and help fix your needless expense of Quietly Quitting and Resignations.
I was talking to a CEO and lawyer who owned a small firm. He was daunted by the idea of how to begin to manage his team’s enmeshed disengagement. He wanted a plan to double down on his company’s Mission to help win the war of disengagement.
My advice to him is the same to you. Reverse your management approach. Don’t tell your employees how to disentangle their enmeshed life, but lead them to fixing and coming up with their own Personal Purpose Plan. Then bring their plan to you to approve.
Here’s how to begin…
-CEOs, clearly state your Company’s Purpose/Mission and Values
-CEOs, clearly state your Company’s Goal(s)
-CEOs, clearly state your Company’s work parameters to get the work done. Fluidity, flexibility, and freedom are essential for today’s NEW integrated Work, Family and Personal life. Define your company’s parameters.
-CEOs, empower and train your team members to defining their own life’s Purpose, just like your company’s Purpose/Mission statement. Let them come up with their NEW plan to bring their Purpose to serve the Company’s Purpose/Mission and Goals. Let them come up with accountability plans to honor your Fluidity, Flexibility and Freedom parameters and Values.
-CEOs schedule pitch meetings with your team members for them to present their Personal Purpose Plan to you. If it fits, it fits and if it doesn’t that is ok too. You can negotiate working agreements from there.
For a deeper dive, DM @JamesMRink for Purpose of You MASTERCLASS, Keynote Talks and Training. Purpose of You is a coaching program that is designed to create a culture of Purpose for businesses and individuals.
3. What is Your Company’s Disengagement Expense? Use my Worksheet to calculate your losses.
Resignation Sub Total
How many resignations did you have last year? ____________
$11,300 is Predictive Index’s average expense to rehire X $11,300
Resignation Sub Total $___________
Quietly Quitting Sub Total
What is your annual payroll amount? $____________
50% are Quietly Quitting, divide in half ➗___2_______
25% loss of employee’s salary time due to Quietly Quitting X__.25______
Quietly Quitting Sub Total $____________
Lack of Productivity
What is your gut feeling that disengagement is costing your company in missed new business development and/or missed sales opportunities?
Lack of Productivity Sub Total $____________
Add 3 Sub Totals for Your Company’s Disengagement Expense Total $___________
To help decrease your company’s disengagement expense align your team around their individual Purpose and your company’s mission. Fixing your employee’s pain point will help fix your pain point for a fraction of the money you are already losing.
More at PurposeOfYou.com