Managing employees isn’t easy; it comes with a lot of stress and requires employing various strategies. As a manager, being strategic involves possessing knowledge on what is and what is not within not only your organization, but also your industry and the business world in general. In other words, you need to be up to date with various workplace trends.
This article provides you with 15 noteworthy workplace statistics that can help you to start planning on ways to improve your business.
1. Implementing A Company Culture Increases Productivity
All organizations should have an intentionally designed and implemented culture put in place by its leaders. If the leaders do not create and live the culture, then the loudest voices will. Employee turnover can be reduced by as much as 34% when a well-structured culture is set in place. Additionally, the productivity of the entire team can increase by up to 25% when culture is established and practiced. The culture should focus on employee first, then customers, profit should never be an ingredient into culture.
Here is a video by Jay Wilkinson, President of Firespring, a 2011 Inc. Magazine Top Small Company Workplace
He talks about company culture, how its built and implemented.
2. Employee interactions increase performance by 20%
Today, freelancing is anything but uncommon.
A 2016 study by Upwork and Edelman Intelligence for the Freelancers Union found that about 35% of America’s workforce work in freelance capacity. General advancements in technology have made remote work not only possible, but also pleasurable, and businesses are today readier than ever to outsource jobs to remote workers.
For many employees, having the autonomy to work at their convenience makes working remotely a particularly enjoyable experience. However, the statistic above proves that working from home isn’t always the best route to go.
Susan Pinker, the writer whose research this statistic was derived, claims that face-to-face interactions between workers have biological benefits such as boosting mood, improving ability to learn and remember and even supercharging productivity – hence, remote jobs aren’t always worth the hype.
Similarly, an international survey of 2,300 professionals proved that workers are more productive by virtue of their abilities to make friends at work. In fact, about 72 per cent of the employees who have a best friend at work attest to being satisfied with their jobs.
The realization of the shortcomings of remote work made one of its one-time big proponents, IBM, in 2017 to direct its remotes employees to work from prescribed locations.
3. Entrepreneurs And Business Owners Typically More Than Their Employees
The work / life balance of a business owner is much more skewed towards work. This may be due the the entrepreneur struggling to keep the business going, but is often due to addiction to work. Here are some recent stats from TAB ...
- 19% work 60+ hours per week
- 30% work 50-59 hours per week
- 33% work 40-49 hours per week
- 14% work 30-39 hours per week
- 5% work less than 30 hours per week
3. 84% of employees at best performing organizations are receiving training and development programs in 2018.
We live in a fast-changing world, and technology is particularly altering the traditional ways by which we go about performing tasks. Thus, it behooves on leaders to ensure that their employees are up to date with changes, and as an employer, there is no better time to upskill your employees than now.
Already, a significant number of companies have begun training and development programs to ensure that their workforce is up for the drastic changes that are soon going to impact on the business world. The fact that 84% of employees at the best performing organizations are to receive training and development programs this year glares the indispensability of training to ensuring employee engagement and productivity.
4. Only 12 percent of employees leave an organization for more money.
Studies revealed that 79% of people who quit their jobs cite ‘lack of appreciation as their reason for leaving. This goes a long way to prove the contention that only 12% of employees leave an organization because of more money, while 78% do not.
Turns out that money is truly not everything. Recognition is considered to be the top thing employees believe their managers can use in inspiring them. Studies also prove that nothing comes close to inspiring people to their best at work – not higher pay or promotion.
5. 84% of employees have experienced physical, psychological or behavioral symptoms of poor mental health.
If anything, this statistic shows how much of a concern employees’ health should be. The fact that the majority of employees have shown symptoms of poor mental health is enough reason for you, as an employer, to keep an eye on and even improve your employees’ mental health. There are various ways to go about this.
Many American employees are considered to be way in over their heads with debts. In 2017, 71% of all U.S. workers said they were in debt, while only 46% claimed they could manage theirs. Employers, therefore, need to be more sympathetic and better at managing their employees, as these financial problems can in turn stimulate psychological problems that decrease productivity.
7. Increasing employee engagement investments by 10% can increase profits by $2,400 per employee per year
Higher engaged employees are not only 38% more likely to have above-average productivity but also more likely to increase a business’s bottom-line, and this study by Workplace Research Foundation, shows by how much profits can increase with a 10% increase in employee engagement investments.
In 2014, according to Barsins and Associates, businesses in the US were spending about $720 million per annum to ensure that their employees were engaged. This amount was excepted to increase to about $1.5 billion. If anything, this shows how serious businesses are about leveraging the positive ROI attainable through investing in engagement.
8. 49% of millennials think using social tools for workplace collaboration is awesome.
There’s no gainsaying that millennials have a thing for social platforms. In 2014, it was found that most millennials were greatly in love with social media and 71 percent of them used social media sites at least once per day, as against only 60% who watched TV. The statistic above, thus, helps to show how much millennials are willing to take their usage of social tools even a step further by using them as a means of collaboration in their respective workplaces.
The benefits of workforce collaboration is a no-brainer. Looking towards using social tools for this, therefore, makes a lot of sense, especially because millennials make up the majority generation in America’s labor force.
9. People who use their strengths every day are six times more likely to be engaged on the job.
This statistic is derived from a Gallup study. In summary, the study found that employees who use their strengths are better engaged, less likely to job hop and more likely to boost the bottom line of a business, since they’re most likely productive.
It also stated that there is no better way for people to develop in ability than to identify their talents and use them to create strengths. It went on to suggest that many talents are innate but not easily discoverable, so it behooves on managers to discover the talents possessed by employees so as to make them more effective.
What’s more, it was found that, not only do employees work better upon discovering and using their strengths, but engagement also increases when managers focus on these strengths. In fact, for the 37% of people who revealed that their managers were more focused on their strengths than weaknesses, only 1% was actively disengaged.
10. Work overload decreases productivity by 68% in employees who feel they don’t have enough hours in the day to complete their tasks.
The obsession about work-life balance is real and here to say, as suggested by the statistic above.
Again, bombarding employees with more work than what they can possibly handle only helps to frustrate them and to decrease productivity by a staggering 68%.
11. 53 percent of technology stakeholders believe the use of gamification will be widespread by 2020.
Simply, gamification is the deployment of certain gaming elements to crucial areas of business activity so as to increase productivity and engagement. Like many other technology-induced business solutions, gamification is unsurprisingly taking the world by storm, so much that 53 of technology stakeholders vouch for its widespread usage in the coming years.
In recent times, various others statistical facts have shown the increasing popularity of gamification. For example, a study once projected that 50% of corporate innovation would be gamified by 2015. In 2013 also, there was a prediction that 70% of top 2000 companies would be using gamification by the beginning of 2015.
That gamification is effective in achieving core business goals is a long established fact. It also seems to makes so much sense, considering the fact that millennials are becoming more and more involved in the US’ workforce.
12. 67% of job seekers say they look at whether or not a company is diverse when job hunting.
This statistic, as revealed by Glassdoor, shows how much importance job seekers place on diversity. The quest for diversity in workplaces is, in fact, presently more pronounced than ever. To attract top talents, therefore, you should ensure you don’t starve your business of the required touch of diversity.
13. 14% of companies have workers who understand the company strategy, goals and direction.
Goal alignment is a crucial topic that is obviously being disregarded at the moment. The case is either that most companies don’t know how to align individual employees with business goals and strategies or are simply too focused on other issues to give a hoot about it.
The foregoing are probably the reasons why only a meagre 14% of companies have workers that are aligned to business goals. In the long run, this will be unfavorable to the 86% who have failed to make workers “goal-aligned”. This is because it takes awareness and understanding of a company’s goals, strategy and direction to make people remain passionate and dedicated. In other words, your employees’ commitment may waver if they have no idea where they or the company is headed.
14. Teams that work together well (teams in the top 25%) incur lower healthcare costs.
The United States is obviously plagued by high costs of healthcare. It is stated that we spend $650 billion more on healthcare than expected. In 2016, it was also found that the rising health insurance premiums were having a serious impact on Americans, so much that roughly half of American families had to cut back on medical care.
Since businesses also have to contend with healthcare costs, the above statistic, derived from a Gallup study, offers some relief. Knowing that there is a correlation between teamwork and healthcare costs should nudge the smartest of employers to ensure great teamwork in their respective organizations.
15. High performing employees have three things in common: talent, high engagement, and 10+ years of service within the company.
This statistic doesn’t really come off as a shocker because it’s quite obvious that talent and high engagement stimulate high performance. It’s however surprising that an employee’s longevity in a company has an impact on her performance. This study by Gallup reveals how so.
Being disengaged causes a lot of problems which include decreased productivity and dedication to duties. Be sure to do all it takes to make sure your employees are always engaged.
