Employee Engagement - Definitions of Engaged, Neutral, Disengaged
- Joshua Freedman
The Team Vital Signs (TVS) and Organizational Vital Signs (OVS) tools include a measure of ENGAGEMENT. Following the concept popularized by Gallup, we measure an overall engagement index (collective score) and report the percentage of people in three categories:
Engaged = Fully involved, connected, and committed.
Neutral = Meeting requirements, following, passive.
Disengaged = Isolated, disconnected, moving away.
⚠️ Disengaged employees are not ‘bad.' There might be a mismatch, or they might not have the structure and support required to engagement, or they might be engaged in something else (eg they could be highly productive as solo players, but disengaged from the team).
Gallup defines employee engagement as “the involvement and enthusiasm of employees in their work and workplace.” The VS definition refers to the Vital Signs Drivers; from TVS: “In a healthy team climate, people have a high level of Engagement, this means they feel a sense of safety, their work is meaningful, they are adaptable, collaborative and focused on important tasks.”
Individual and Overall Views
TVS and OVS report two scores, one about the individuals in the group, and one that’s an overall summary of the group. For example, here’s a TVS screenshot:
The first graph on upper-right shows the percentage of team members in each group (in this case, 20% of the team members are disengaged). The second graph below shows the overall, collective, score for the team (in this case 65/100).
Why does engagement matter?
According to Gallup Workplace, there are a wide range of business benefits to higher engagement – including lower absenteeism, errors, turnover, theft, defects, accidents… plus higher loyalty, more productivity, and higher profit.
