Types of Employees based on Level of Engagement

An organisation is a collection of individuals who come together and work towards the realisation of a common objective. Larger the number of people working together, larger is the size of the organisation and vice-versa. However, for an organisation to flourish it is important for the employees to operate at their full potential, which unfortunately is not the case in most of the organisations.

Not all employees in the organisation work utilising their full potential. There may be many reasons responsible for the same. They may not associate with the goal of the company, they may have problem with their team, the boss or the subordinate or it may be a general problem of attitude. This fact necessitated the classification of the people into three categories - engaged, not engaged and actively disengaged.

Although there are other classifications also, but this one is based upon the level of commitment or engagement of employees. A brief description about the three is given below:

• Actively Disengaged: This is the first category of people who are unhappy and they spread unhappiness in the organisation. They are the disease centres in the company and spread the negative word, provoking and convincing people to leave their jobs. However they are the ones who stay the longest and removing the perceived people competition is their thought of getting to the top or next level in the job.

• Engaged: The second category of people are those who are can be identified with words like passion, alignment and innovation; which means that they are passionate, connected to the company and are innovative. They contribute new ideas and turn ideas into reality. These employees are positive in their outlook and they spread positivity. They are proactive; can anticipate the future market conditions are prepare well in advance.

• Not Engaged: The third type of employees is the large majority present in organisations almost 50% in number. These do what is told only and they like only one instruction at a time. They put in time but not energy and passion. They may be either positive or negative in their outlook and opinion about the organisation. They are not proactive and fail to anticipate what might be required next or what the next step is? They wait for instruction from their superiors.

In a research conducted by Gallup, it was found out that 16% of the people working in organisations are actively disengaged, 28% are engaged and almost 56% are not engaged. Although these statistics cannot be generalised, but they hold true for majority of the cases and there may be deviation of 5% here and there for each category and not more.

The research therefore points out that people who are engaged are more efficient and deliver results optimally. They have a better understanding of the business, more client focussed and committed to make it big with the organisation they work for.

Within an organisation the percentage of people in these three brackets can help determine the health of the company. For example, greater percentage of actively disengaged employees connotes into even greater losses in productivity, erosion of employee morale and reduction in the bottom line.

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