State of
the Global
Wor kplace
Employee Engagement Insights for BUSINESS LEADERS WorldWIDE

To win customers — and a bigger share of the marketplace — companies must first
win the hearts and minds of their employees. If you are a business leader serious about
implementing proven engagement strategies for growth at your organization, contact
Stephanie Holgado at +1-202-715-3101 or Stephanie_Holgado@gallup.com.

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AboutThis
ReportThe State of the Global Workplace: Employee
Engagement Insights for Business LeadersWorldwide report highlights findings from Gallup’s
ongoing study of workplaces in more than 140
countries from 2011 through 2012. This is acontinuation of Gallup’s previous report on employee
engagement worldwide, which covered data from2009 through 2010. This latest report provides
insights into what leaders can do to improve employee
engagement and performance in their companies. It
includes regional analyses of employee engagement
data, country-level insights from Gallup consultants
around the globe, a look at the impact of engagement
on organizational and individual performance, andinformation about how companies can accelerate
employee engagement.

from the CEO

Leaders,
The world economy isn’t growing fast enough, and this is starting to cause some serious problems.
One issue in particular that comes to mind is revolution. Any number of countries suffering from low
economic growth and high unemployment could explode in the next few years.
So how can a business leader help save the world — or at least his or her country? The answer starts
right in his or her own workplace. Business leaders can save their countries by building stronger
companies. That means helping their businesses get new customers — or building out the current
ones they have.
And there will be plenty of new potential customers in the coming decades. Right now, the world’s
GDP is US$60 trillion, and that figure will grow to US$200 trillion in the next 30 years. Simply
put, the global economy will have US$140 trillion worth of new customers. Competing for thosecustomers will be the “World Cup” for world economic dominance. The winners will enjoy thriving
economies and workplaces. The losers will face unrest and revolution.
Countries that double the number of engaged employees in every company will be best positioned to
win the lion’s share of the US$140 trillion in new customers.
Doing so starts with you in your company. And it spreads around the country from there. When andif your company, and then country, doubles its workforce engagement, only great things will follow:
an economic boom, an explosion of innovative ideas, and a surge in entrepreneurship. No country canramp up ideas and entrepreneurship high enough right now. There are literally trillions in customer
revenue waiting to be won.
Hiring and developing great managers and building up and leveraging the strengths of every
employee are the two keys to doubling employee engagement. How employees feel about theirjobs starts and ends with their direct supervisor. If employees feel, among other things, that their2﻿supervisor takes a real interest in their development, or offers frequent praise and recognition, they
are very likely to be engaged. Hiring the right managers is absolutely essential to building an engaged
workforce. If companies throughout your country hire the right people to lead and actively encourage
the engagement of their workforces, economic dominance will be sure to follow.
And great managers already know what decades of Gallup research has revealed: Trying to get
employees to fix their weaknesses doesn’t work. Weaknesses can’t be developed much at all — but
employees’ strengths can be developed infinitely. The problem is, too many companies focus on fixing
weaknesses, and this only breeds non-engagement or, worse, active disengagement. No company or
country will win the economic World Cup with this approach.
Great managers build development plans around every employee’s strengths. When employees workfrom strengths, nothing motivates them to achieve more — not money, not love, not vacations, notgood benefits, not company volleyball games, not motivational speakers. And employees working
from their strengths do win new customers.
Only great business leaders can hardwire strengths-based thinking throughout the organization toensure that their business hires the right people to be managers. Do your job right, and you’ll save
not only your company, but also help your country to thrive — and win the competition for US$140
trillion in new customers.

Jim Clifton
Chairman and CEO
Jim Clifton
Chairman and CEO﻿3Table of Contents

6 Executive Summary
Worldwide, actively disengaged workers continue to outnumber engaged workers at a rate of nearly 2-to-1.
Employee engagement will be an increasingly important concern for countries and organizations seeking to boost
labor productivity as the global economy continues its rapid pace of change.

11 Worldwide, Only 13% of Employees Are Engaged at WorkThe vast majority of employed people around the globe are “not engaged” or “actively disengaged” at work,
meaning they are emotionally disconnected from their workplaces and less likely to be productive.

14 How Gallup Measures employee Engagement
Gallup’s Q12 metric shows that employee engagement is measurable, manageable, and improvable.

20 How Employee Engagement Drives Growth
Gallup’s recent meta-analysis confirms employee engagement’s well-established links to nine essential
performance outcomes, and additional research connects employee engagement to higher earnings per share.

23 What the World Wants Is a Good Job
Job creation is the biggest challenge currently facing global leaders. Highly engaged workplaces have a criticaladvantage in harnessing the talents and energy of their employees to promote growth. Around the world,
engaged workers are most likely to say their employers are hiring new people.

26 Payroll to Population: A New Measure of Economic Energy
Gallup began measuring employment trends around the world in 2010 and developed a unique metric to trackfull-time employment among global populations that is unaffected by changes in labor force participation.

29 Emerging Markets need engaged employees to growRapid growth and development in emerging-market countries has dramatically changed the world’s economic
landscape over the past decade. However, that growth is slowing in many such countries, and their need to tap
into the energy and talents within their populations is growing.

34 Spotlight: China
Just 6% of Chinese employees are engaged in their jobs — one of the lowest figures seen worldwide. As China
makes the transition to a more consumer-based economy in the coming years, the country’s businesses will
increasingly rely on engaged employees to attract and retain customers.

4﻿38 Three Ways to Accelerate Employee Engagement
Gallup helps organizations boost engagement levels with strategies to hire the right employees, develop theirstrengths, and enhance their well-being.

1. Select the Right People
2. Develop Employees’ Strengths
3. Enhance Employees’ Well-Being

49 Linking Employee Engagement to Customer Growth
Employee engagement is not an end in itself. The moment an employee connects with a customer is a source of
untapped power that has profound implications for a company’s profitability.

54 Employee Engagement Varies Greatly by Region and Country
Gallup’s worldwide employee engagement study shows there is a considerable variation in engagement levels
across different regions and countries of the world.
Sub-Saharan Africa•• South Africa

United States and Canada•• Canada

Middle East and North Africa•• United Arab Emirates

Latin America•• Regional Highlight

East Asia•• South Korea

Western Europe•• Germany•• United Kingdom

South Asia•• IndiaSoutheast Asia•• Indonesia
Australia and New Zealand•• Australia•• New ZealandCommonwealth of Independent States and Nearby Countries•• Russia
Central and Eastern Europe•• Poland

107 What the Best Do Differently
Despite ongoing economic challenges and low levels of employee engagement among populations worldwide,
many organizations are finding success by making engagement the focus of their growth strategies.

﻿

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Executive Summary
Currently, 13% of employees across 142 countries worldwide are engaged in their jobs — that is, they are
emotionally invested in and focused on creating value for their organizations every day. As in Gallup’s 20092010 global study of employee engagement, actively disengaged workers — i.e., those who are negative andpotentially hostile to their organizations — continue to outnumber engaged employees at a rate of nearly 2-1.
Employee engagement will become an increasingly important concern for countries and organizations seeking
to boost labor productivity as the global economy continues its rapid pace of change. Even as unemployment
rates remain high in many developed-world countries five years after the onset of the global economic crisis,
growth rates in China and other large developing countries have been falling. Around the world, demographic
trends are having substantial economic consequences. In several regions — including southern Europe, SouthAsia, and the Middle East — a “youth bulge” continues to produce record unemployment among young people.
Meanwhile, many large economies — including China, Japan, and the U.S. — face talent shortages as theirworkforces age and shrink.
One common factor among organizations worldwide is the need to more effectively understand and use theirpeople’s talents, skills, and energy. In many countries, raising workers’ productivity levels is critical to businessgrowth and badly needed job creation. In countries that face talent shortages, companies that meet theiremployees’ needs are most likely to win in the competition for top talent. In each case, companies around theworld will need to improve their ability to ensure that workers are in the right roles and are emotionally invested intheir jobs.
In other words, the need to build highly engaged workplaces will become more important than ever. Throughdecades of research with hundreds of organizations and more than 25 million employees, Gallup has developed
an unparalleled understanding of what the world’s strongest organizations do differently and how engagement
affects productivity and employee well-being in any workplace.

6﻿State of the Global Workplace

E m p l o y ee E n g a g e m e n t I n s i g h t s f o r B u s i n e s s Le a d e r s W o r l d wi d eSome of Gallup’s most important findings include:
Engagement Makes a Difference to the
Bottom Line•• Engaged workers are the lifeblood of theirorganizations. Work units in the top 25% of Gallup’s
Q12 Client Database have significantly higher
productivity, profitability, and customer ratings, lessturnover and absenteeism, and fewer safety incidents
than those in the bottom 25%.
•• Organizations in Gallup’s Q12 Client Database withan average of 9.3 engaged employees for every actively
disengaged employee in 2010-2011 experienced 147%
higher earnings per share (EPS) compared with theircompetition in 2011-2012. In contrast, those with anaverage of 2.6 engaged employees for every actively
disengaged employee experienced 2% lower EPS
compared with their competition during that sametime period.

figures worldwide. China’s low engagement level may
increasingly pose a barrier to its continued growth as
the country makes the transition to a more consumerbased economy and businesses come to rely more on
front-line employees to attract and retain customers.
•• In Australia and New Zealand, 24% of employees
are engaged, while 60% are not engaged and 16% areactively disengaged. The resulting ratio of engaged toactively disengaged employees — 1.5-to-1 — is oneof the highest among all global regions and similar toresults from the U.S. and Canada (1.6-to-1).
•• Gallup found the highest levels of active disengagementin the world in the Middle East and North Africa(MENA) region, particularly in Tunisia (54%),
Algeria (53%), and Syria (45%). The region’s highunemployment rates may be a factor in these results,
causing many disengaged workers to remain in theirjobs despite their unhappiness at work.

•• Active disengagement is an immense drain on
economies throughout the world. Gallup estimates,for example, that for the U.S., active disengagement
costs US$450 billion to $550 billion per year. In
Germany, that figure ranges from €112 billion to €138
billion per year (US$151 billion to $186 billion). In
the United Kingdom, actively disengaged employees
cost the country between £52 billion and £70 billion(US$83 billion and $112 billion) per year.

•• Despite the country’s strong economic growth, only
8% of Indonesian employees are engaged in theirjobs, while 15% are actively disengaged. By contrast,
employees in the Philippines — another fast-growing
economy in Southeast Asia — had the highest levelof engagement in the region at 29%, with only 8%
actively disengaged.

Engagement Levels Vary Widely From Region
to Region

In the Wake of the Global Recession, Engaged
Employees Are More Likely to Report Job
Growth in Their Organizations•• Overall, among the 142 countries included in thecurrent Gallup study, 13% of employees are engaged
in their jobs, while 63% are not engaged and 24%
are actively disengaged. However, these results vary
substantially among different global regions.
•• East Asia has the lowest proportion of engaged
employees in the world, at 6%, which is less than half ofthe global mean of 13%. The regional finding is driven
predominantly by results from China, where 6% of
employees are engaged in their jobs — one of the lowest•• Organizations worldwide that maximize employees’
motivation and enthusiasm for their work are in turnhelping to stimulate job creation. Globally, 44% ofengaged employees say their employers are hiring
people and expanding the size of their workforces
vs. 34% of those who are not engaged and 25% ofactively disengaged employees who say the same. This
relationship is consistent across all global regions.
•• Perceptions of job creation are lowest globally among
employees living in the Commonwealth of Independent﻿

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E m p l o y ee E n g a g e m e n t I n s i g h t s f o r B u s i n e s s Le a d e r s W o r l d wi d e
States and neighboring countries. Overall, 24%of employees living in this group report that theiremployers are hiring new people, the lowest figure
among all regional groups. Nearly four in 10 engaged
workers say their employers are expanding the size of
their workforces, compared with about two in 10 not
engaged or actively disengaged employees.
•• One-third of employees in the MENA region (33%)
say their employers are hiring new people — a figurethat will need to rise in the coming years to meet theregion’s increasing need for new jobs to accommodate
its burgeoning youth population. Across the MENA
region, about half of engaged employees say theirorganizations are hiring vs. slightly more than onefourth of actively disengaged employees who say thesame.
•• Job creation is nowhere more important than in SouthAsia, where it is estimated that more than a million
people will enter the labor force every month in coming
years. Currently, employees working in South Asia areabout as likely to say their organizations are letting
people go (25%) as they are to say their employers are
hiring (28%). Among engaged employees, however,more than four in 10 (42%) say their companies are
hiring, while 12% say they are letting people go.
•• Many countries in Western Europe, including France,
Ireland, Italy, and Spain, continue to suffer from severe
employment crises. Residents in these countries areamong the least likely in the world to say it is a goodtime to find a job in their communities. However,engaged employees are twice as likely to report theirworkplaces are hiring (34%) as they are to say they areletting people go (16%). Among actively disengaged

employees, these figures are reversed, with 34% saying
their organizations are letting people go, while 18% saythey are hiring.

Poor Hiring and Management Practices HinderCompanies’ Growth and Engagement Levels

8•• In the MENA region, the concept of “wasta” (similar to
the Western concept of “who you know”) can be used
to gain employment and advantage in the workplace,﻿as a result of personal relationships, and potentially
undermine workplace engagement. Not only does thissystem create poor fit for roles among improperly hired
employees, but it also spreads negative perceptions
among otherwise engaged colleagues.
•• In fast-growing Southeast Asian economies likeIndonesia and the Philippines, where demand for laboris high, companies will need a strong talent strategy
to thwart talent poaching. Important to the success ofsuch strategies will be managers’ willingness to eschew
the old “command-and-control” mentality in favor of amore collaborative approach, particularly with younger
workers.
•• In East Asian societies, the cultural value of deference
to authority may make businesses less likely to focus
on management structures that allow employees tofeel capable of taking initiative. Only about one in six
employees in East Asia strongly agree that their opinions
count, the lowest proportion of any global region.
•• The positive momentum in the Latin American
job market has heightened the competition for
talented workers among businesses in the region.
The momentum has also increased the importance ofbuilding loyalty among employees by ensuring that they
have what they need to be fully engaged in their jobs.
•• In Australia and New Zealand, only 19% of employees
in leadership positions are engaged in their jobs.
Low engagement among managers is troubling forbusinesses, as Gallup has found that they play the mostsignificant role in influencing engagement among theirdirect reports.

Worldwide, Engaged Employees Regard
Their Lives More Highly and Experience More
Positive Emotions•• Around the globe, engaged employees are more likely
to be “thriving” — i.e., to rate their overall lives
highly on a zero-to-10 scale — than those who are
not engaged or actively disengaged. Among all global
regions, engaged workers are at least 1.6 times as likely
as actively disengaged workers to be thriving. The ratio

State of the Global Workplace

E m p l o y ee E n g a g e m e n t I n s i g h t s f o r B u s i n e s s Le a d e r s W o r l d wi d e
is highest in South Asia, where engaged employees
are 5.5 times as likely to be thriving as those who are
actively disengaged.
•• In East Asia, engaged workers are about half as likely tohave experienced stress the previous day as their actively
disengaged peers. Prior research offers some evidence
that those in East Asian societies are less likely to draw
on social support in stressful situations. Consequently,
workplace factors — and good managers in particular— may make more of a difference in helping to ensurethat employees feel free to ask for help to manage stressmore effectively.
•• Latin America has the highest percentage (55%) ofthriving employees in any developing region. The
relationship with workplace engagement is also
particularly strong there: Two-thirds of engaged
employees (66%) are thriving, compared with less thanhalf (42%) of actively disengaged workers.
•• About one-third of MENA residents (34%) say theyexperienced anger for much of the day before thesurvey, easily the highest proportion among any global
region. However, this number falls to 19% for engaged
employees in the region, compared with 35% of theiractively disengaged counterparts. Likewise, 75% ofengaged employees versus 48% of actively disengaged
employees experienced enjoyment “yesterday.”•• Similarly, in sub-Saharan Africa, engaged employees
are significantly more likely than actively disengaged
employees to say they experienced enjoyment for muchof the day “yesterday” and about half as likely to haveexperienced anger.
•• The severity of Western Europe’s debt crisis and theaccompanying austerity measures in many countries
may help explain why life evaluations in most of theregion tend to be lower than those in other developed
regions. Half of employees in Western Europe (50%)
are thriving in their overall lives, compared with 59%
in the U.S. and Canada and 66% in Australia and
New Zealand. Among engaged employees in Western
Europe, the thriving percentage rises somewhat to 59%.

Education Is Often Associated With Higher
Engagement Levels — If Employees Can Find
Jobs That Make Use of Their Knowledge andTalents•• In many developing and transitional economies where
the demand for high-skilled labor exceeds the supplyof more highly educated residents, better-educatedemployees are more likely to be engaged at work.
However, this is not necessarily true in developed
economies, many of which are suffering an extended
period of high unemployment. In the U.S. and Canada,
for example, engagement trends downward slightly with
employees’ education level. College-educated workers
in both countries are less likely than those with only
a high school education to strongly agree that they
have the opportunity to do what they do best at work
each day.
•• Likely reflecting the mismatch between educational
curricula and the needs of employers in the region,
one in four MENA employees with a college-level
education (25%) are actively disengaged. This is thehighest proportion among highly educated workers inany global region.
•• Among employees in Southeast Asia, there is aparticularly strong relationship between employees’
educational attainment and their engagement levels:
Those with an elementary education or less are almost
four times as likely as those with a college education
to be actively disengaged at work. Those in jobs lesslikely to require higher levels of formal education are
also least likely to be engaged at work, demonstratinga need for businesses in industrial sectors to improve
communication and recognition systems that help
motivate and empower individual workers.
•• Similarly, engagement rates increase with Latin
American employees’ educational attainment levels. The
engaged-actively disengaged ratio is most favorable injob types that tend to require higher levels of educationand provide a more autonomous working environment
such as professional workers and those in management
or leadership roles.

﻿

9

State of the Global Workplace

E m p l o y ee E n g a g e m e n t I n s i g h t s f o r B u s i n e s s Le a d e r s W o r l d wi d eWhat Companies Can Do To Improve Engagement:
Bring engagement into thecompany’s everyday language.
The companies most successful atengaging their employees bring theconversation of engagement into theworkplace every day. It is important
before organizations begin measuring
engagement to communicate thereasons behind this strategic goal andthe advantages for the company andthe employees themselves. Regularcommunication from the company’s
leaders and informal communication
between employees will begin tobreed a culture of engagement,
leading participation rates of employee
engagement metrics and otherinterventions to be more successful.
Use the right employee engagement
survey. The employee engagement
metrics companies use can affecttheir ability to create changes in
performance. Often, organizations
make the mistake of using employee
surveys to collect data that are
irrelevant or impossible to act on.
When a company asks its employees
for their opinions, they expect action
to follow. Gallup’s Q12 employee
engagement metric was designedwith this expectation in mind —the data the Q12 survey collects are
specific, relevant, and actionable forany team at any organizational level,
and they are proven to affect key
performance metrics. Why? Because
the Q12 measures employees’ emotional
engagement, which ties directly totheir level of discretionary effort —their willingness to go the extra mile
for their company.
10﻿

Focus on engagement at theenterprise and local levels.
Transformation occurs at the local
level, but it only happens when
the tone is set from the top down.
Companies realize the most benefit
from engagement initiatives whenleaders weave employee engagement
into performance expectations
for managers and enable them to
execute on those expectations.
Managers and employees must feelempowered by leadership to makea significant difference in their
immediate environment.
Select the right managers. Whether
hiring from the outside or promoting
from within, organizations thatscientifically select managers for theunique talents it takes to effectively
manage people greatly increase theodds of engaging their employees.
Instead of using management jobs aspromotional prizes for all career paths,
companies should treat these roles
as unique, with distinct functional
demands that require a specific talent
set. They should select managers
with the right talents for supporting,positioning, empowering, andengaging their staff.
Coach managers and hold themaccountable for their employees’
engagement. Gallup’s research has
found that managers are primarily
responsible for their employees’
engagement levels. Organizations
should coach managers to take anactive role in building engagement
plans with their employees, holdmanagers accountable, track

their progress, and ensure they
continuously focus on emotionallyengaging their employees. The
top performers in Gallup’s Q12
Client Database consistently makeemployee engagement part of theirformal review process, and most use
these improvements as a criterion
for promotions.
Define engagement goals in
realistic, everyday terms. While theoverall organization may set lofty
goals for engagement, leaders must
make these objectives meaningful toemployees’ day-to-day experiences
to bring engagement to life. Ensurethat managers discuss employee
engagement elements at weekly
meetings and in one-on-one sessions
with employees to weave engagement
into daily interactions and activities
related to their performance objectives.
Find ways to meet employees where
they are. As this report demonstrates,
employees worldwide have different
needs and expectations that influence
their engagement levels. Local cultural
influences and economic conditions,as well as more specific variables suchas respondents’ job type and educationlevel, all play roles in shaping theirworkplace experience. Managers
should be aware of the factors most
relevant to engagement among theirworkers. They should also understandthat every interaction with an
employee has the potential to influence
his or her engagement and inspire
discretionary effort.

Worldwide, only 13% of
Employees Are Engaged
at Work

The current global economic environment presents unprecedented
challenges and unique opportunities for business leaders. Most of thedeveloped world continues a slow, arduous recovery from the global
recession. Developed- and emerging-market countries, however, arerecovering faster from the crisis, many benefiting from free market reforms
that have attracted foreign investment and unlocked entrepreneurial
potential among their populations. Still, as organizations — from multinational
corporations to small-business startups — seek to benefit from ongoingdevelopment in these rapidly changing markets, they must learn how tomaintain adaptive, high-productivity workplaces and grow their customer
bases in widely varying social, cultural, and economic environments.

11

Overall Engagement Amongthe Employed Population in
142 Countries Worldwide

Only 13% are engaged
63

24

2011-201262

27

2008-2009

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

13
11
100%

actively disengaged  not engaged engaged

Vital to maintaining high-productivity workplaces isorganizations’ ability to engage their employees. Gallup’s
extensive research shows that employee engagement
is strongly connected to business outcomes — such as
productivity, profitability, and customer satisfaction — thatare essential to an organization’s financial success.
To provide an outlook on employee engagement and why
it matters for global organizations, for the first time in2009 and 2010, Gallup gathered engagement results from
employed workers worldwide for its 2010 State of the Global
Workplace report. This current report provides an update of
the previous results using data gathered in 2011 and 2012
from nearly 230,000 full-time and part-time employees
in 142 countries. Gallup finds that the proportion of
employees worldwide who are “engaged” in their jobs hasticked upward from 11% to 13%, while the proportion whoare “actively disengaged” has fallen slightly from 27% to24%. This slight improvement notwithstanding, low levelsof engagement among global workers continue to hinder
gains in economic productivity and life quality in much of
the world.
12

Engaged employees are those who are involved in,enthusiastic about, and committed to their work and who
contribute to their organization in a positive manner.
Engaged employees are the ones who are most likely todrive innovation, growth, and revenue that their companies
desperately need. These engaged workers build new products
and services, generate new ideas, create new customers,
and ultimately help spur the economy — generating moregood jobs.
According to Gallup’s latest findings, 87% of workers are“not engaged” or “actively disengaged” and are emotionallydisconnected from their workplaces and less likely to be
productive. The proportion of actively disengaged employees
has decreased from 27% to 24%. But, actively disengaged
employees continue to outnumber engaged employees bynearly 2-to-1 — implying that at the global level, work ismore often a source of frustration than one of fulfillment.
It also means countless workplaces worldwide are lessproductive and less safe than they could be and are lesslikely to create badly needed new jobs.

W O R L D W I D E , O N LY 1 3 % O F E M P L O Y E E S A R E E N G A G E D A T W O R K

Raise the Bar on Employee Engagement
As in 2009 and 2010, the current results point to substantial
variation in engagement levels among employees in different
global regions and among countries within those regions.
The findings also reveal differences among employees withdifferent job types and at different education levels withincountries. Recognizing these differences can help managers
understand how societal factors could affect workplacecharacteristics and help them identify specific barriers theymust overcome to build more engaged workforces.
The good news for global business leaders is that decadesof Gallup research has established certain basic workplace
conditions that managers worldwide can focus on to
help employees feel emotionally connected to theirworkplaces. The criteria on which Gallup based its employee
engagement (Q12) measure are universally applicable because
they address fundamentally human emotional needs such as
the need for respect, positive relationships, and a sense of
personal development.

People spend a substantial part of their lives making aliving, whether in a high-tech startup in Singapore, afinancial institution in Australia, or a garment factoryin the Dominican Republic. As a result, the quality of
their workplace experience inevitably reflects the qualityof their lives. With the vast majority of employees
worldwide reporting an overall negative experience atwork — and slightly more than one in 10 indicating thatthey are involved in and enthusiastic about their jobs andcommitted to their organization’s success — it is no wonderthat the global recovery remains sluggish, while social
unrest abounds.
Business leaders worldwide must raise the bar on employee
engagement. Increasing workplace engagement is vital toachieving sustainable growth for companies, communities,
and countries — and for putting the global economy backon track to a more prosperous and peaceful future.

actively disengaged
employees continue tooutnumber engaged
employees by nearly

2-to-1.

W O R L D W I D E , O N LY 1 3 % O F E M P L O Y E E S A R E E N G A G E D A T W O R K

13HOW GALLUP MEASURESEMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT

Gallup measures employee engagement based on workers’ responses to
its Q12 survey, which consists of 12 actionable workplace elements withproven links to performance outcomes. To identify these elements, Gallup
spent years conducting thousands of interviews at every level of variousorganizations, in most industries, and in several countries. Since Gallup
finalized the Q12 question wording in the late 1990s, the survey has been
administered to more than 25 million employees in 189 different countries
and 69 languages. The following items are the ones that emerged from
Gallup’s pioneering research as the best predictors of employee andworkgroup performance.

14

Gallup’s Q12®

01

I know what is
expected of me
at work.

02

I have the materials
and equipment I needto do my work right.

03

At work, I have theopportunity to do what
I do best every day.

04
05
06

In the last sevendays, I have received
recognition or praisefor doing good work.
My supervisor, or
someone at work,
seems to care about
me as a person.
There is someone atwork who encourages
my development.

07
08
09
10
11
12

At work, my opinions
seem to count.

The mission or purposeof my company makes
me feel my job
is important.
My associates or
fellow employees arecommitted to doing
quality work.
I have a best friend
at work.

In the last six months,
someone at work hastalked to me about
my progress.
This last year, I have
had opportunities
at work to learn andgrow.

H OW G A LLU P M E AS U R E S E M P LOY E E E N G AG E M E N T

15

Since the late 1990s, Gallup Has
administered the Q12 survey to more than

25 Million
employees in
189
different
countries and69
languages

Four Stages of Employee Engagement
In addition to discovering the 12 items, Gallup also found that the order of the items isimportant. The 12 items represent the four stages of a hierarchy that an employee goes
through on the path to complete engagement. Items 1 and 2 represent employees’ primaryneeds. When employees start a new role, their needs are basic. They ask, “What do I getfrom this role?”
In the second stage, encompassing items 3 through 6, employees think about their own
individual contributions and consider how others view and value their efforts. Manager
support is most important here because managers typically define perceptions of value.
Once employees advance through the first two stages of the hierarchy, their perspective
begins to widen and they evaluate their connection to the team and the organization. In thethird stage, encompassing items 7 through 10, employees ask themselves, “Do I belong?”
Then, during the fourth and most advanced stage, composed of items 11 and 12, employees
want to make improvements, learn, grow, innovate, and apply their new ideas.
The four stages help managers evaluate workgroup performance and concentrate their efforts
on areas most relevant to where their team is on the journey to complete engagement.
16

H OW G A LLU P M E AS U R E S E M P LOY E E E N G AG E M E N T

Gallup Employee Engagement
Categories

1

Engaged employees work with
passion and feel a profoundconnection to their company.

They drive innovation and move theorganization forward.

2

Not Engaged employees are
essentially “checked out.” They’resleepwalking through their workday,

putting time — but not energy or passion —into their work.

3

Actively Disengaged employees
aren’t just unhappy at work; they’rebusy acting out their unhappiness.

Every day, these workers undermine what
their engaged coworkers accomplish.

Three Types of Employees
Based on employees’ responses to the 12 items, Gallup
groups them into one of three categories: engaged, notengaged, and actively disengaged.
Not engaged workers can be difficult to spot: They are
not hostile or disruptive. They show up and kill timewith little or no concern about customers, productivity,
profitability, waste, safety, mission and purpose of theteams, or developing customers. They are thinking about
lunch or their next break. They are essentially “checkedout.” Surprisingly, these people are not only a part of yoursupport staff or sales team, but they are also sitting on yourexecutive committee.
Actively disengaged employees are more or less out todamage their company. They monopolize managers’ time;
have more on-the-job accidents; account for more quality
defects; contribute to “shrinkage,” as theft is called; aresicker; miss more days; and quit at a higher rate thanengaged employees do. Whatever the engaged do — such as
solving problems, innovating, and creating new customers— the actively disengaged try to undo.
On the other hand, engaged employees are the bestcolleagues. They cooperate to build an organization,
institution, or agency, and they are behind everything
good that happens there. These employees are involved
in, enthusiastic about, and committed to their work. They
know the scope of their jobs and look for new and betterways to achieve outcomes. They are 100% psychologicallycommitted to their work. And, they are the only people inan organization who create new customers.
H OW G A LLU P M E AS U R E S E M P LOY E E E N G AG E M E N T

17

By consistently tracking Q12 results from year to year anddeveloping the right data-based interventions to promote
growth, employers will ensure that their workforce is meetingits potential and maximizing its performance outcomes.

Taking Employee Engagement to the Next Level
After a baseline reading of an organization’s employee engagement level following thefirst companywide Q12 administration, Gallup provides customized tools and analysis tohelp leaders take the necessary next steps. After all, measurement without targeted action
is useless. Moreover, if employers do not follow up on engagement results, employees’
disengagement may actually increase. By consistently tracking Q12 results from year to year
and developing the right data-based interventions to promote growth, employers will ensurethat their workforce is meeting its potential and maximizing its performance outcomes.
Additionally, Gallup developed empirical indexes to help companies strategically pinpoint
and improve specific focus areas relevant to their current situation. For example, Gallup
has found that the companies that increase employee engagement the most are thosethat hold all employees accountable for taking action on their Q12 results. By adding the
Accountability Index to the Q12 survey, companies can track each workgroup’s efforts
toward making progress on engagement goals.
The Brand Ambassador Index offers a valuable opportunity to measure the strength of
employees’ connection to their organization’s brand. Gallup’s research shows that employees
who know what their organization stands for and what differentiates it from its competitors
tend to be more engaged, and they more actively support and endorse their company’s
products and services.
By using one or more of these 18 indexes in conjunction with the Q12 metric, leaders
have another tool with which to capture more of their organization’s story. Gallup’s
empirical indexes offer companies actionable insights on a range of important topics,
including change management, communication, customer orientation, innovation, andsupervisor effectiveness.

18

H OW G A LLU P M E AS U R E S E M P LOY E E E N G AG E M E N T

The Power of Engagement
Leaders often say that their organization’s greatest asset is its people — but in reality, this is
only true when those employees are fully engaged in their jobs. Engaged workers stand apartfrom their not engaged and actively disengaged counterparts because of the discretionary
effort they consistently bring to their roles day after day. These employees willingly go theextra mile because of their strong emotional connection to their organization. Reaching thisunique state goes beyond having a merely satisfactory experience at work to one of 100%
psychological commitment. Any employee can achieve this state in an engaging workplace,but leaders can be sure they are creating and maintaining this type of environment only
if they actively measure and manage the true drivers of engagement. Gallup createdand continues to test the Q12 metric to help organizations harness the power of engaged
employees in the most efficient and actionable way possible.

measurement
without targeted
action is useless.

H OW G A LLU P M E AS U R E S E M P LOY E E E N G AG E M E N T

19HOW EMPLOYEEENGAGEMENT DRIVESGROWTH

Although measuring employee engagement is an increasingly common
practice in the business world, Gallup’s Q12 employee engagement metricis distinct in that it is backed by rigorous science linking it to nine integral
performance outcomes. Gallup administers the Q12 to workers in various
companies, nonprofits, and other organizations worldwide in an effort tohelp its clients improve their employee engagement. Meanwhile, Gallup
researchers continually study findings from research on the Q12 to learn
more about employee engagement’s impact on organizational andteam performance.

20

The 2012 meta-analysis once again verified that employee
engagement relates to each of the nine performance outcomesstudied. Additionally, Gallup continues to find that the strong
correlations between engagement and the nine outcomesstudied are highly consistent across different organizations
from diverse industries and regions of the world.

The Q12 Predicts Key Performance Outcomes
Every two to four years Gallup completes meta-analysis
research — a statistical technique that pools multiple
studies — on the Q12. By conducting this research regularly
over time and increasing the number of business units
analyzed, Gallup stays on the cutting edge of how well
employee engagement predicts key performance outcomes.
When sample sizes allow, Gallup establishes links to new
outcomes that companies can measure and manage to driveorganizational performance through employee engagement.
Gallup knows of no other company that backs its employee
engagement survey with such extensive research.
In 2012, Gallup conducted its eighth meta-analysis on the
Q12 using 263 research studies across 192 organizationsin 49 industries and 34 countries. Within each study,
Gallup researchers statistically calculated the business/work-unit-level relationship between employee engagement
and performance outcomes that the organization supplied.
Researchers studied 49,928 business/work units, including
nearly 1.4 million employees. This eighth iteration of themeta-analysis further confirmed the well-establishedconnection between employee engagement and nine
performance outcomes:•• customer ratings•• safety incidents•• productivity•• absenteeism•• profitability•• turnover (for highand low-turnoverorganizations)•• shrinkage (theft)

Given the timing of the eighth iteration of this study, italso confirmed that employee engagement continues to be
an important predictor of organizational performance evenin a challenging economy. Gallup researchers studied thedifferences in performance between engaged and actively
disengaged business/work units and found that thosescoring in the top half on employee engagement nearly
doubled their odds of success compared with those in thebottom half. Those at the 99th percentile had four times the

success rate of those at the first percentile.

Median differences between top-quartile and bottomquartile units were 10% in customer ratings, 22% in
profitability, 21% in productivity, 25% in turnover (highturnover organizations), 65% in turnover (low-turnoverorganizations), 48% in safety incidents, 28% in shrinkage,
37% in absenteeism, 41% in patient safety incidents, and
41% in quality (defects).
In short, the 2012 meta-analysis once again verified
that employee engagement relates to each of the nine
performance outcomes studied. Additionally, Gallup
continues to find that the strong correlations between
engagement and the nine outcomes studied are highly
consistent across different organizations from diverse
industries and regions of the world.

•• patient safety incidents•• quality (defects)

H OW E M P LOY E E E N G AG E M E N T D R I V E S G R OW T H

21

Engagement’s Effect on Key Performance Indicators
Median differences between top- and bottom-quartile teams-37

Absenteeism
TURNOVER-25

High-Turnover Orgs.
-65

Low-Turnover Orgs.

-28

Shrinkage-48

Safety Incidents
Patient Safety Incidents-41

Quality (Defects)

-41

10

Customer
Productivity

21

Profitability

22

-80%

-70%

-60%

-50%

-40%

Increased Engagement Leads to Higher
Earnings per Share

Gallup’s research also shows that companies with engaged
workforces have higher earnings per share (EPS) and seemto have recovered from the recession at a faster rate. In a
recent study, Gallup examined 49 publicly traded companies
with EPS data available from 2008-2012 and Q12 data
available from 2010 and/or 2011 in its database and foundthat organizations with a critical mass of engaged employees
outperformed their competition, compared with those that
did not maximize their employees’ potential.
In fact, researchers discovered that as the economy began torebound after 2009, having an engaged workforce becamea strong differentiator in EPS. Companies with engaged
workforces seemed to have an advantage in regaining andgrowing EPS at a faster rate than their industry equivalents.
Conversely, those organizations with average engagementlevels saw no increased advantage over their competitors in
the economic recovery.
Organizations with an average of 9.3 engaged employees
for every actively disengaged employee in 2010-2011
experienced 147% higher EPS compared with theircompetition in 2011-2012. In contrast, those with anaverage of 2.6 engaged employees for every actively
disengaged employee experienced 2% lower EPS comparedwith their competition during that same time period.

22

H OW E M P LOY E E E N G AG E M E N T D R I V E S G R OW T H

-30%

-20%

-10%

0%

10%

20%

30%

Measuring What Matters

Joseph Juran, a noted management expert, said, “Withouta standard there is no logical basis for making a decision or
taking action.” Most organizations understand this to somedegree; however, many persist in measuring performance by
the wrong standard — using unsubstantiated or ineffective
metrics that ultimately lead nowhere. When leaders workwith Gallup to measure and manage employee engagement
at their companies, they can be confident that the Q12 isbacked by years of empirical research and used by some of
the world’s leading organizations.
Factors such as EPS, profitability, productivity, andcustomer ratings are all key indicators in determining anorganization’s health and its potential for growth. For
leaders who are responsible for these outcomes, the researchplainly shows that the Q12 is more than just anotherhuman resources initiative; it is the best measurement
tool for initiating companywide transformation to create
sustainable growth. By intentionally focusing on measuringand managing employee engagement using Gallup’s Q12
metric, companies gain a competitive advantage that keeps
them moving forward. Research shows concentrating on
employee engagement can help them withstand — andpossibly even thrive in — challenging economic times.

What the World Wants
Is a Good Job
Gallup research finds that good jobs are what the world needs most. Global
surveys consistently demonstrate that people with “good jobs” — definedas those that offer steady work averaging 30 or more hours per week
and a paycheck from an employer — are more likely than those in other
employment categories to rate their present and future lives positively. Thus,
job creation is essential to a community’s capacity to meet its residents’needs, and leaders worldwide must learn how to attract or retain talented
people who can create new businesses or help existing ones expand.
Communities striving to find sources of sustainable growth need a “criticalmass” of high-energy businesses and organizations that bolster job creationand economic opportunity. That energy is more likely to be found in
workplaces where employees are engaged in their jobs. Engaged employees
are almost two times as likely as those who are actively disengaged to reportthat their companies are hiring new people or expanding. By contrast, actively
disengaged employees report that their companies are reducing workforces
at rates almost three times that of the engaged population.
23

Based on what you know or have seen,
would you say that, in general, yourcompany or employer is ... ?
engagednot engaged

actively disengaged
44

Hiring new people
and expanding the sizeof its workforce

34
25
46

Not changing the sizeof its workforce

52
48

Letting people go
and reducing the sizeof its workforce

0%

Engaged Employees Are More Optimistic
About the Economy
Gallup data suggest that engaged employees help foster
entrepreneurship in their communities. Job creation
depends on the confidence of a city’s inhabitants to start up
new ventures. Engaged employees are more likely than theirless engaged peers to have confidence in their communities’
business environment: 71% of engaged employees reportthat their city is a good place to start a business, comparedwith 53% of those who are actively disengaged. Engaged
employees are also more likely to agree that hard work getsyou ahead.

10
14
27

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

Engaged Employees Rate Their Lives Better
When employees feel engaged and productive at work, it
positively affects their lives at work and beyond the workplace
as well. Engaged employees assess their overall lives more
highly than not engaged or actively disengaged employees.
They also report more positive day-to-day emotional statesand interactions with others than their less engaged peers.
Each year in more than 140 countries and territories,
Gallup’s World Poll tracks two types of measures important
for assessing the subjective quality of people’s lives: 1) theiroverall life evaluations, which are used to categorize them as“thriving,” “struggling,” or “suffering,” and 2) their specificemotional states, measured by asking whether or not theyexperienced a series of positive and negative emotions —including enjoyment, stress, and anger — the day before
the survey.

Optimism About the Local Economy
Rises With Engagement Level
engaged not engaged actively disengaged

71

Believe city or area
is a good place for people
starting new business

65
53

87
Believe hard work
can get you ahead

81
69

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

Life evaluations are based on the Cantril Self-Anchoring
Striving Scale, with steps numbered from zero to 10. Thriving respondents rate their present lives at 7 or higher, and predict
their lives in five years will be at 8 or higher. Suffering respondents rate both their present and future lives at 4 or lower. The
remainder — those with midlevel ratings — are classified as struggling.
24

W H AT T H E W O R L D W A N T S I S A G O O D J O BWorldwide in 2012, 31% of employees rated their lives
highly enough to be considered thriving, while the majority,
59%, were struggling and 10% were suffering. But theseresults varied dramatically according to whether or not those
employees were engaged in their jobs. Engaged employees
were more than three times as likely to be thriving in theiroverall lives as those who were actively disengaged. This
relationship is meaningful because employees who are both
engaged in their jobs and thriving in their overall lives areless likely to be thrown off course by organizational changes
or disruptions in their personal lives.

Engaged Employees Are More Than
Three Times as Likely to Be “Thriving”
as Actively Disengaged Employees
engaged not engaged actively disengaged

49

Thriving

33
15

46

Struggling

engaged employees are four times

60
63

as likely as those who are actively
disengaged to say they like what they5

Suffering

7
22

do each day.
0%

Engaged Employees Have More Positive
Daily Interactions
engagednot engaged

actively disengaged

95

Treated with respect
the previous day

89
79

86

Experienced enjoyment
the previous day

81
64

27

Experienced stressthe previous day

Experienced anger
the previous day

0%

35
44

13
18
26

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

Engaged employees also exhibit more positive day-to-day
emotions and experiences than not engaged or actively
disengaged employees. Almost all engaged employees (95%)
report being treated with respect the previous day. Engaged
employees also experience higher rates of enjoyment andlower rates of anger and stress than their not engaged or
actively disengaged counterparts. Perhaps most tellingly,
engaged employees are four times as likely as those who are
actively disengaged to say they like what they do each day.
As the pressure increases for community leaders toprovide good jobs and increase economic opportunities,
engaging employees has never been more relevant. Engaged
workforces create external benefits to the entire community
through increased economic optimism among residents
and improved performance outcomes among businesses.
As Gallup CEO Jim Clifton notes in his 2011 book, The
Coming Jobs War, “Successful local companies are not justengines for job creation but also engines for local social andcommunity improvement.” Through their effect on businessoutcomes, efforts to improve employee engagement have thepotential to create the economic energy necessary to build
stronger communities.
W H AT T H E W O R L D W A N T S I S A G O O D J O B

25

Payroll to Population:
A New Measure of
Economic Energy

Traditional employment metrics are imperfect indicators of a country’s true
economic situation. As it is generally defined, a country’s unemployment rate
— the measure tracked most often worldwide — is not affected by changes in
the workforce participation rate. When jobs are scarce, people may drop outof the workforce or become “self-employed” in menial labor or subsistencelevel work such as small-scale farming. Such changes can actually leadto an improvement in unemployment rates, even though fewer people arecontributing significantly to a country’s economic output.
In 2012, Gallup developed a new employment indicator intended to gauge the prevalenceof “good jobs” in a country’s economy. This metric, called Payroll to Population (P2P),
estimates the percentage of the entire adult population aged 15 and older — not just thosecurrently in the workforce — who are employed full time for an employer for at least 30
hours per week. Unlike the traditional unemployment rate, P2P decreases when fewer
people are working and increases when more people find full-time work.

26

Gallup does not count adults who are self-employed, working
part time, unemployed, or out of the workforce as payrollemployed in the P2P metric. The exclusion of self-employedworkers may seem counterintuitive given the importanceplaced on entrepreneurship for creating jobs. However,while self-employment is typically thought of as providing
economic energy and fueling growth in the developed world,
in developing countries, it tends to consist of subsistence
work that contributes little to a country’s economic wellbeing. On a global basis, self-employment has a negative
relationship with GDP per capita.

2012 P2P Rate vs. 2012 GDP per Capita,
Worldwide
12

10

LOG OF 2012 PER-CAPITA GDP

Gallup finds this new measure of employment to be
more strongly related to GDP per capita than any other
employment metric — including unemployment, whichshows little correlation with GDP. The strength of therelationship between P2P and GDP per capita demonstrates
how P2P provides a more accurate measure of thepercentage of people who are contributing to a country’s
economic energy.

8

6

4

0

10

40

50

60

P2P Rate at
26% in 2012

Employed Full time for an employer

27%

24%

30

PERCENTAGE OF POPULATION WORKING FULL TIME FOR AN EMPLOYER (P2P)

Payroll to population, 2009-2012% of the population aged 15 and older

26%

20

26%

In 2012, the global P2P
figure was at 26%, downslightly from 27% in 2011.
This decline reverses the
upward trend in P2P since
the height of the global
recession in 2009.

On a regional basis,
Northern America,
2009
2010
2011
2012
consisting of the U.S. andCanada, has the highest
2012 based on surveys in 140 countries
P2P rate (42%) of all
regions in 2012, followed by
the group of European countries and areas not in the European Union (40%), which includes Switzerland, Norway, Iceland,and North Cyprus. At the other end of the spectrum, sub-Saharan Africa has the lowest P2P rate (11%) followed by the
Middle East and North Africa region (MENA) at 18%, which was the only other region to have a P2P rate below 20%.

PAY R O L L T O P O P U L AT I O N : A N E W M E A S U R E O F E C O N O M I C E N E R G Y

27

In 2012, the global P2P figure was at 26%, down slightly
from 27% in 2011. This decline reverses the upward trend
in P2P since the height of the global recession in 2009.

The small and medium-sized enterprises(SMEs) that provide the bulk of employment
in most of the developed world are far lesscommon in developing economies. This helps
explain why the percentage working for an
employer is so low in regions like sub-SaharanAfrica and South Asia. MENA’s relatively
low P2P rate is largely attributable to the highproportion of residents (56% in 2012) who do
not participate in the workforce. Many people
in the MENA region, especially women,
voluntarily choose not to work. Youngpeople also tend to be more likely to be outof the workforce than their counterparts inother regions, underscoring the job creation
challenge facing many MENA leaders.

Global Payroll to Population Employment
Rates, by Region% of the population employed full time for an employer
2012
GLOBAL26%

Northern America

42%

Europe — Other

40%

Commonwealth of Independent States

38%

European Union

33%

Latin America and the Caribbean

31%

Balkans

29%

East Asia

28%

South Asia

23%

Southeast Asia
21%
Though a county’s P2P employment rate bears
a strong relationship to its overall economic
Middle East and North Africa
18%
output (GDP), P2P is far less predictive of
Sub-Saharan Africa
11%
workers’ life quality ratings, particularly in
Among adults aged 15 and older; non-Arab expats were excluded from thedeveloping regions. Among sub-Saharansample in Arab Gulf countries
Africans participating in their countries’ labor
force, for example, 15% of those who work
full time for an employer give life ratings high enough to consider them “thriving,” vs. 11% of those who do not work fulltime for an employer. Employees’ engagement levels are much more highly related to life evaluations and other indicators oflife quality; across sub-Saharan Africa, 29% of engaged workers are thriving vs. 8% of actively disengaged workers.

Bottom LineAs many countries are still struggling to recover from the global recession, the decline in P2P in 2012 is an unfortunate
reversal of the growth seen in 2010 and 2011. Developing countries must strive to create formal job opportunities withdesirable working conditions, which will in turn reduce the need for informal subsistence jobs. Developed countries
must maintain or grow P2P rates to guarantee residents decent work opportunities and continued economic prosperity
and social programs. Further, as more residents come to work full time for employers, an understanding of workplace
conditions that promote their productivity and well-being — i.e., that engage them in their jobs — will become
increasingly important to economic development.

28

PAY R O L L T O P O P U L AT I O N : A N E W M E A S U R E O F E C O N O M I C E N E R G Y

EMERGING MARKETS Need
Engaged Employees to
Grow

Rapid growth and development in emerging-market countries has dramaticallychanged the world’s economic landscape over the past decade. The term“emerging market” has long been applied to the so-called BRIC countries
of Brazil, Russia, India, and China. However, economists have more recently
highlighted emerging-market conditions in numerous other countries, including
Mexico, Indonesia, Turkey, and South Africa.
In many cases, fast-paced changes have come with growing pains for these emerging-market
countries. For instance, some social sectors benefit more than others do from economic growthin these countries, resulting in widening income inequality. Gallup’s surveys from several
emerging-market countries highlight another factor that could be just as threatening to thepace of growth: low levels of employee engagement. Aggregated results for employees in 23
emerging markets reveal that about one in 10 employees are engaged at work — nearly half the
proportion found across 23 developed-market countries. (Countries are classified as emerging
markets and developed markets according to their current placement in the MSCI DevelopedMarket and Emerging-Market indices.)
A lack of employee engagement among businesses in emerging-market countries is likely to
become an increasingly significant problem. To sustain their growth levels, these countries
must rely less on commodity production and exports, and focus more on developing theirdomestic consumer markets. Economists have noted that the slowing pace of growth in many
emerging markets is a testament to this need to rebalance their economies.
Growing consumer markets means that businesses must know how to attract and retain
customers to maintain a competitive edge in the marketplace. Inevitably, these organizations
will be those that understand and operate according to a basic principle supported by decades ofGallup research: Engaged employees are the only ones who create engaged, loyal customers.

29

Engagement More Common in Developed-Market Countries Than in
Emerging-Market Countries
actively disengaged

20

61
19

25
10

80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%

not engaged

65

engagedEmerging-market
countries

Developed-market
countries

INDIA: Labor Unrest Reflects Widespread Disengagement
Engaged employees are relatively rare in one of the world’s
most populous emerging markets, India. Gallup’s 2012 data
indicate that among Indians who work for an employer, 9%
are engaged, while 31% are actively disengaged.
However, there is considerable variation in engagementlevels in India by education level and job type. Amongprofessional, managerial, sales, service, and administrative
job types, engagement rates were all above 10%, while
they fell below that threshold among job types that more
often involve physical work such as installation/repair,construction/mining, and manufacturing/production.
The last two of these job types contain extremely highproportions of actively disengaged employees in India: 44%of construction and mining workers are actively disengaged,30

as are 32% of manufacturing and production workers.
Employee engagement tends to be somewhat lower acrosscountries among these industries because the traditional
management mentality tends to put process ahead of people.
However, the differences appear to be particularly sharp in
India, a country that has long struggled with entrenchedsocial divisions.
Recent labor unrest in India reflects the widespread
frustration in these job sectors. Such incidents have led toconcerns about the social instability and lost productivity
created by resentment and unhappiness among workers.
As Gallup data show, disengaged Indian workers are
more likely to have experienced anger and stress the day
before the survey and less likely to say they were treatedwith respect.
EngagedNot engaged

Actively disengaged

Elementary education or less
Secondary education
Tertiary education

7%
12%
22%

58%
69%
70%

35%
19%
8%

Managers/Executives/Officials
Professional workers
Sales workers
Clerical/Office workers
Service workers
Construction/Mining workers
Transportation workers
Farming/Fishing/Forestry workers
Manufacturing/Production workers
Installation/Repair workers

18%
17%
15%
14%
11%
7%
7%
7%
4%
4%

72%
71%
62%
74%
62%
49%
63%
56%
64%
74%

10%
12%
23%
12%
27%
44%
30%
37%
32%
22%

E M E R G I N G M A R K E TS N E E D E N G AG E D E M P LOY E E S TO G R OW

More Than One-Third of India’s
Actively Disengaged Employees
Experienced Anger and Stress thePrevious Day
engagednot engaged

actively disengaged

Larger manufacturing firms to seek to retain the dynamismand entrepreneurial spirit of employees in smaller businesses
during this transition. That means helping employees inthese workplaces feel respected by their managers andengaged in their jobs. In this sense, Gallup’s employee

90
Treated with respect“yesterday”

73
68

engagement research offers good news, showing thatthe same management and workplace factors that define
engagement predict improved performance outcomes acrossindustries and job types. Managers in these manufacturing
companies can do a lot to close the communication gap with
employees and give them a greater sense of psychologicalcommitment to their work.

19
Experienced anger“yesterday”

30
35

Engaging Industrial Employees

18
Experienced stress“yesterday”

38
39

0%

20%

scale enterprises primarily operated by family members andunregulated by any agency or state government. One of thechallenges facing India’s manufacturing sector is to move
more informal-sector employees to larger formal-sectorbusinesses, which tend to be more efficient because theyreap economies of scale and have greater access to credit
from formal financial institutions.

40%

60%

80%

100%

Improving industrial workers’ outlook is critical for India’s
economic future. Economists note that the country’s
manufacturing base must grow for India to experience
more broad-based development and provide enough jobs
for the 250 million young people who will soon enter
the workforce.
Expanding its manufacturing base means making India’s
regulatory environment more hospitable to manufacturers
and tackling structural problems such as discrepancies
between the salaries of permanent workers and the large
number of temporary contract workers in these industries.
Further, though the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
estimates that two-thirds of India’s manufacturing output
is produced in the formal economic sector, most of the
manufacturing jobs are in the informal sector — i.e., small-

Considering the high degree of routine that typicallycharacterizes jobs in manufacturing and construction,
managers in India may need to work hard to establish
individualized feedback and recognition practices among
workers. Managers in India’s industrial sectors may alsoneed to go to greater lengths to guarantee that all employees
have regular opportunities to express their opinions about
working conditions and their ideas for improvement. In
manufacturing and construction workplaces, where safetyissues are often a concern, such communication is essential
not only for helping employees feel respected, but also for
reducing their risk of injury on the job. As noted in Gallup’s
2012 Q12 meta-analysis of 192 organizations in 34 countries,
workgroups in the top quartile of employee engagementscores had 48% fewer safety incidents than workgroups in
the bottom quartile.
Improving communication among managers and workers
may help improve the desirability of manufacturingjobs among Indian youth. Experts note that to sustain
its economic development, India must expand job
opportunities in all economic sectors. Realizing theE M E R G I N G M A R K E TS N E E D E N G AG E D E M P LOY E E S TO G R OW

31

country’s manufacturing potential will be particularly
important in this respect. Leading the way will be thosecompanies that have learned to promote workplace harmony
and boost productivity by harnessing the energy andinitiative of engaged employees.

from 66% in 2006 to 77% in 2010 before leveling off.
Brazilians’ overall life evaluations reflect their economic
optimism; in 2012, 59% gave life ratings high enough toclassify them as “thriving,” among the highest figures in
the region.

BRAZIL: High Engagement at Risk

Future Less Certain for Brazil’s Workforce

Not all emerging-market countries’ workforces post
employee engagement results as low as those in India. In
Brazil, another of the world’s largest emerging economies,
Gallup’s 2011-2012 study finds that engaged employees
outnumber those who are actively disengaged by more than
2-to-1 — 27% vs. 12%, respectively. Though these results
leave room for improvement, this ratio is one of the mostfavorable among 19 Latin American countries for which
individual results are available.

Whether Brazilians’ positive views are sustainable overthe next decade, however, remains to be seen. Brazil’s
economic boom has stalled since 2011, and the country’s
unemployment rate has begun to rise. More Brazilians arelooking for jobs, and the quality of the jobs they can findwill relate to how they view their lives. Gallup’s 2011-2012
employee study reveals that among employed Brazilians,
48% of those who are actively disengaged at work arethriving in their overall lives vs. 77% of those who are
engaged in their jobs. In fact, actively disengaged employees
are somewhat less likely to be thriving than Brazilians who
are unemployed (54%).

For most of the past decade, Brazil’s economy saw
remarkable growth. Tens of millions of Brazilians escapedpoverty during that time as the country’s middle classexpanded. Gallup’s surveys indicate that the proportion ofBrazilians satisfied with their standard of living climbed

Life Evaluations Among Latin
American Populations
Percentage “thriving” in 2012
Costa Rica
BrazilMexicoVenezuela
Colombia
UruguayArgentina
Suriname
Chile
PanamaEcuador
Bolivia
GuatemalaPeru
Paraguay
El Salvador
Dominican Republic
Nicaragua
Honduras
Haiti
0%

32

63
59
58
57

Protestors have pointed to the money being spent on
preparations to host the FIFA World Cup in 2014 andthe 2016 Summer Olympics as examples of misspent
resources. However, the events are centerpieces of theBrazilian government’s effort to promote the country as aninternational tourist destination. The contribution of Brazil’s
travel and tourism industry to the country’s GDP grew by
7.8% in 2012, and the industry currently supports about 7.7
million jobs in the country.

49
48
46
45
45
41
37
37
32
31
26
26
22
22
14
4

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

The economic slowdown has been accompanied byfrustration among Brazilians who feel the government
has failed to increase access to economic opportunities. In
2013, widespread protests erupted over various grievances,including lack of improvements to infrastructure and public
services. Gallup’s tracking polls suggest the protests reflect
broader public sentiment; Brazilians’ satisfaction witheducation and healthcare services in the city or area where
they live has declined significantly in recent years.

60%

70%

80%

The hope is that dynamism in the labor-intensive tourism
industry will lead to significant long-term job growthin Brazil’s service sector. The country’s relatively strong
employee engagement results bode well for the success

E M E R G I N G M A R K E TS N E E D E N G AG E D E M P LOY E E S TO G R OWIn the city or area where you live, are you satisfied or dissatisfied with the ... ?
Among Brazilians aged 15 and older
Educational system or schools    Availability of quality healthcare
60%

50%

40%

30%

20%

2007

2008

2009

of such a strategy, which will rely largely on front-line
employees’ ability to satisfy customers — a key performanceoutcome of engaged workplaces.
Among Brazilian workers in service-oriented jobs, 28% areengaged, while 13% are actively disengaged. The resulting
ratio of 2.2-to-1 is similar to the results among the country’s
workforce overall. However, there is much room for
improvement.
As an example of improvement, one Brazilian service
company has embraced employee engagement as animportant part of its business strategy, expanding
geographically and moving to the leadership position in

2010

2011

2012

its market. Measuring engagement every six months andtraining managers on how to devise and implement actionplans based on the results, the company has seen its ratio of
engaged to actively disengaged employees rise from 2.8-1 in2009 to 11.8-1 in 2013. More importantly, the company’s
employee-focused management strategy has laid thegroundwork for high productivity and service excellence.
As Brazil grapples with growth challenges over the coming
years, it will be important for all businesses operating in
Brazil — from multinational corporations to small-businessstartups — to focus on management practices that help
employees stay engaged in their work and confident in theireconomic future.

Emerging Markets: Bottom Line
Gallup’s 2011-2012 data indicate that employee engagement results vary significantly at the national level among
emerging economies and within countries among different social sectors and job types. However, employee
engagement is fundamentally a local phenomenon driven by managerial talent and other conditions unique toeach workplace.
That said, in many countries undergoing rapid growth and development, most workplaces are failing to realize
the productivity and well-being gains associated with high levels of employee engagement. Actively disengaged
employees significantly outnumber engaged employees in Mexico, South Africa, Hungary, and Turkey, to name afew. An important part of the ongoing development of these countries will be a shift toward workplace conditions
that use employees’ individual strengths to empower them to make positive change in their organizations. This inturn will help employees provide better services to their customers.
E M E R G I N G M A R K E TS N E E D E N G AG E D E M P LOY E E S TO G R OW

33

SPOTLIGHT: CHINA

Economists and policymakers have said for years that China’s investmentand export-driven growth is increasingly unsustainable and that Chinese
consumers need to spend more money to support the country’s expanding
economy. In recent years, the Chinese government has implemented stimulus
programs that offer, for example, rebates for rural Chinese who buy home
appliances and subsidies for upgrading their vehicles.

ASKED OF CHINESE ADULTS,
AGED 18 AND OLDER,
WHO WORK FOR AN EMPLOYER

3453• Percentage "yes, extremely productive"67

IN YOUR CURRENT JOB,DO YOU FEEL YOU ARE
EXTREMELY PRODUCTIVE,
OR NOT?

79

Ultimately, however, the task of engaging Chinese consumers is in the hands of thousandsof businesses working to build strong brand reputations and harnessing the energy andinitiative of highly motivated employees to better fulfill customers’ needs. Those efforts will
largely come from engaged workers who are more likely than those who are not engaged or
actively disengaged to say they are “extremely productive” in their current jobs.

67

EngagedNot engaged

Actively disengaged

Engagement Low Across Education Levels, Job Types
Unfortunately, however, China still has one of the lowest rates of employee engagementin the world. Just 6% of Chinese workers overall are engaged in their jobs, while 68% arebiding their time in the “not engaged” category and 26% are actively disengaged and likely
to be disrupting the efforts of their coworkers.
What’s more, low engagement is pervasive across Chinese workers with different job types
and education levels. The 7% engagement rate among college-educated workers is notmeaningfully different from the 5% rate among those with an elementary education or less.
And even among professional workers and managers, job types often characterized by highlevels of status and autonomy, engagement is relatively rare at 8%. More worryingly, 4% ofsales and service workers — on which Chinese companies will rely to attract new customers
in an increasingly consumer-based economy — are engaged.
EngagedNot engaged

Actively
disengaged

Elementary education or less

5%

64%

30%

Tertiary education

7%

72%

21%

Professional workers and managers/
executives/officials

8%

71%

20%

6%

67%

26%

Sales workers and service workers

4%

69%

27%

Secondary education

Construction/mining workers andmanufacturing/production workers
Clerical/office workers

5%

3%

71%

68%

24%

Low engagementlevels arepervasive acrossChinese workers
with different
job types andeducation levels.

29%

Chinese Employees Don’t Feel They Have a Voice at Work
What will it take to engage more Chinese workers in their jobs? In many cases, employers
need to examine their management practices and criteria for selecting managers. Gallup
CEO Jim Clifton has noted that Chinese workplaces are often characterized by “commandand-control” hierarchical structures, and in many cases, people are not selected as managers
for their ability to engage and develop employees.

S POTLI G HT: C H I NA

35

This practice is particularly troubling as Gallup’s
research shows that managers have a critical impact on
their employees’ engagement levels. China’s results are
particularly low on item 7 (“At work, my opinions seem tocount.”) of Gallup’s 12-item employee engagement (Q12)survey. Only about one in eight Chinese employees strongly
agree with this statement, compared with a median ofmore than one in four employees among all 142 countries
included in the current study.

Would you say that your job is theideal job for you, or not?
Percentage saying “yes, it is ideal”

Despite China’s remarkableeconomic growth, its
residents’ life ratings
have risen only modestly in

86

Philippines
Laos

80

Malaysia

79

Cambodia

78

Indonesia

73

Thailand72

Singapore71

Vietnam

67

Japan

65

Myanmar58

Taiwan57

China/Hong Kong

57

South Korea

55

0%

36

20%

S POTLI G HT: C H I NA

40%

60%

recent years.
At the macroeconomic level, Chinese leaders seek to reformthe country’s economy from one based predominantly
on manufacturing and dominated by large state-owned
enterprises to one that better promotes innovation andentrepreneurship as key sources of indigenous growth.
This diversification will require a greater focus on anothercritical aspect of employee engagement: ensuring thatworkers are in roles that best use their talents. Gallup’s 2012
surveys reveal that 57% of Chinese workers say their job
is ideal for them — among the lowest figures in East andSoutheast Asia.

80%

100%

Workplace conditions are also important for improving
the Chinese people’s quality of life. Despite China’s
remarkable economic growth, its residents’ life ratings
have risen only modestly in recent years. In 2006, 13%of Chinese evaluated their present and future lives
highly enough to be considered thriving; in 2012, thatfigure was at 20%. Among Chinese employees, however,perceptions of life overall are strongly linked to their levelof engagement at work. Engaged workers are four times as
likely as actively disengaged workers to be thriving — 32%
vs. 8%, respectively.
Further, engaged workers in China are more positive about
their day-to-day experiences on a broad range of measures.
For example, they are more likely than actively disengaged
workers to say that they smiled or laughed a lot the previous
day. Engaged workers in China are also more likely to say
they learned or did something interesting that day and lesslikely to have experienced stress or anger.
The powerful relationship between Chinese employees’
workplace experience and their overall outlook on life
has important implications for stability in a country
whose leaders have made social harmony a top priority.
As more Chinese organizations come to adopt modern,employee-focused management styles, those that retain
restrictive, controlling management structures reminiscentof the country’s once-dominant “danwei” work units
are increasingly likely to become breeding grounds forworker dissatisfaction.

Engaged Employees in China ReportMore Positive Daily Experiences
engaged not engaged

actively disengaged

89

Smiled or laugheda lot “yesterday”

81
68

62

Learned or did
something interesting“yesterday”

50
34

29

Experienced stress“yesterday”

39
49

11

Experienced anger“yesterday”

15
20

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

The next 20 years will be a time of rapid change for the Chinese economy as government and business leaders focus on thetransition to more sustainable sources of development and job growth. Along the way, policymakers will be concerned withimproving the way Chinese people view their lives and avoiding social instability. Changing workplace conditions so that
Chinese employees are more likely to feel motivated and empowered will speed the country’s transition to a more consumerfocused economy, as well as boost their quality of life.

S POTLI G HT: C H I NA

37

3

Ways to Accelerate
Employee
Engagement

Investing in employee

After decades of research into human behavior in the workplace, Gallup
discovered unique insights and strategies to help companies worldwide transformthe way they do business. To accelerate engagement and optimize growthwithin organizations, Gallup established important approaches that leaders inany country or region can adopt to maximize the role human behavior plays in
the workplace.

selection, strengths, Finding the right employees and managers is essential to an organization’s
and well-being
can boostfinancial outcomes. Gallup helps companies scientifically select people whohave the potential to be top performers and supports organizations in hiring andpromoting employees with the talent to boost employee engagement.
It is not enough to put the right people in the right jobs. Companies must
invest in their employees’ greatest talents to optimize their performance.
Gallup helps organizations discover what is naturally right with theiremployees by identifying employees’ unique strengths and then building onthem to help employees achieve their full potential.

engagement results. When used with an employee engagement initiative, Gallup’s research has proventhat investing in employee selection, strengths, and well-being has the power toboost the results companies would receive from increasing engagement alone.

38﻿Select the Right People

Though many organizations focus on strengthening their current employees’ engagement, few haverealized the potential effect the selection of managers and leaders can have on engagement andorganizational performance. Ultimately, people engage people. Gallup helps organizations ensure they
select the right people to increase their overall engagement.

Boosting Engagement Through Manager
Selection
Whom companies name as manager is one of the mostimportant decisions they make, given that managers playa critical role in driving engagement in any organization.
Whether hiring from the outside or promoting from within,organizations that scientifically select managers for theunique talents it takes to effectively manage people greatly
increase the odds of employee engagement. Instead of using
management jobs as promotional prizes for all career paths,
companies should treat them as unique roles with distinct
functional demands that require a specific talent set. The
reality is that many people who are the best performers
in their current roles do not have the talents necessary toeffectively manage people.

Gallup researchers have spent decades studying greatmanagers’ talents — naturally recurring patterns of thought,
feeling, and behavior that are productively applied in
the role — and have discovered that talents are powerfulpredictors of organizational engagement and performance.
While there are many factors to consider when hiring or
promoting, the most fundamental is how a person is likely
to behave in the role and whether he or she can fulfill therole’s responsibilities to excel.
Great managers engage their teams on several levels. First,
they display genuine care and concern for their people.
By building strong, trusting relationships with their staff,
they can engender an open and positive work atmospherein which employees feel supported and engaged. Second,39

With each new hire or promotion, employers have the opportunity
to maximize employee engagement in the workplace.

great managers care just as much about performance as they
do about their people as individuals. They set the stage for
performance by determining those metrics that matter mostand finding ways to individually motivate employees to workand strive harder. Finally, great managers value and invest
in talent. With an eye for what individuals around them dowell, they perfectly position people in areas or tasks that will
use their greatest strengths, resulting in an increased ability
for individuals to say that they have an opportunity to dowhat they do best.
The bottom line is that great managers have great talent for
supporting, positioning, empowering, and engaging theirstaff. Choosing the right managers in an organization has
an immediate effect on employees’ engagement.

Boosting Engagement Through Employee
Selection
Gallup has found that, generally speaking, employees’
perceptions of their primary manager influence about 70%of their engagement, while coworkers’ attitudes and otherfactors account for the remaining 30%. Thus, once anorganization puts the right managers in place, the next step
to strategically boosting overall engagement is to select theright employees.
In most organizations, a few key employees stand out for
their ability to foster workplace engagement. They energize
and influence others with their commitment to achievingorganizational and team objectives. The best managers
know who their standout employees are, and they would
hire more like them if they knew how.
Gallup developed the Engagement Creation Index (ECI)— an innovative tool designed to identify and measure
the talent for engaging others — to help organizations
40

SE LECT TH E R IG HT PEOPLE

transform their engagement dynamic by adjusting theirhiring practices. The ECI does more than measure acandidate’s own likelihood to be engaged, which canfluctuate over time. Most importantly, it captures acandidate’s ability to act as a catalyst to build engaged
work teams.
Gallup rigorously tested the ECI and has scientifically
proven its ability to predict which job candidates aremost likely to elevate engagement levels among theircoworkers. These individuals naturally generate energy
and commitment wherever they go, accelerating anorganization’s journey toward higher levels of engagement.
In fact, when combining the ECI with more rigorous
selection criteria, engagement scores improve even more.
The bottom line is that the ECI offers employers a powerfultool to ensure that they are making the most of eachselection opportunity.
At the end of the day, engagement is all about people.
Therefore, it is imperative for leaders to devise selection
strategies with the goal of accelerating employee
engagement. This starts with using objective selection
criteria to ensure that companies hire and promote managers
with the talent to lead and engage their workgroups.
In addition, Gallup’s selection tools, such as the ECI, canhelp organizations hire more employees like their best,
including those with a talent for helping to engage others.
With each new hire or promotion, employers have theopportunity to maximize employee engagement in theworkplace. People want to feel supported, have a sense of
belonging, and understand the contribution they can maketoward organizational goals. Making sure that they getthese things from their interactions with managers andteam members is key to driving their engagement.

DEVELOP EMPLOYEES’STRENGTHS

Gallup researchers studied human behaviors and strengths for decades
and established a compelling connection between strengths and employee

People who use
their strengths
every day are six
times more likely
to be engaged on
the job.

engagement in the workplace — one that has the power to accelerate
performance when companies work on enhancing both simultaneously.
The research shows that people who use their strengths every day are six
times more likely to be engaged on the job.
All employees have strengths — the unique combination of talents,
knowledge, and skills that help them do what they do best every day.
These strengths do more than make them unique individuals; they also serve
as employees’ — and the organization’s — greatest opportunities for success.
What leaders do or do not do with this workforce potential has considerable
implications for their organization’s future.

41

employees who received strengths-based coaching saw
their engagement scores improve substantially.
The Power of Strengths in the Workplace
The best opportunity for employees to grow and develop
is to identify the ways in which they most naturally think,feel, and behave, and then build on those talents to create
strengths, or the ability to consistently provide near-perfectperformance in a role. To help people identify what they
do best, Gallup developed the Clifton StrengthsFinder,
an online assessment of personal talent that reveals areasof greatest potential for developing strengths. Since its
launch in 1998, more than 9 million people have taken theassessment in 50 countries and in 24 languages.
Gallup works with organizations worldwide to help theiremployees discover their innate talents and apply themproductively to achieve business objectives. The CliftonStrengthsFinder provides a starting point in Gallup
strengths-based development programs and interventions
for helping individuals build on their talents, skills, andknowledge to improve performance. In its extensive
research, Gallup has found that developing employees’
strengths is a far more effective approach than trying to
improve their weaknesses.

Improving Engagement and BusinessOutcomes Through a Strengths-BasedApproach
Gallup conducts ongoing research using its Q12 Client
Database to explore the benefits of its strengths-based
interventions on employee engagement and other businessoutcomes. Recently, Gallup studied 11 client companies
with a combined 90,000 employees in 900 business units.
While most individuals in the study were located incompanies in North America, at least one of the companies
studied had a sizable international workforce scatteredacross South America, Europe, and Asia. In this study,
Gallup found that business units in which the manager or42

D E V E LO P E M P LOY E E S ’ ST R E N GT H S

the employees received a Gallup strengths intervention,such as a strengths coaching feedback session, performed
better on important measures than business units thatreceived no such coaching.
Business units with managers who received a strengthsbased intervention showed significant improvement on theiremployee engagement GrandMean scores compared withunits whose managers received no intervention. Further,
employees who received strengths-based coaching saw their
engagement scores improve substantially compared withothers who did not receive strengths-based coaching.
Beyond boosting engagement scores, Gallup found thatstrengths-based interventions affect retention, productivity,and profitability. Employees who received strengths
feedback had turnover rates 14.9% lower than those of
their counterparts. Also, business units whose managers
received strengths coaching had 12.5% greater productivity
than other units. When employees had the opportunity
to receive strengths feedback, they outperformed theirpeers who did not receive the strengths intervention by
7.8% in productivity. Additionally, units whose managers
received strengths coaching were 8.9% more profitable thanother units.

Engagement Increases When Managers Focus
on Employees’ Strengths
It is not surprising to see gains on engagement scores andother outcomes when every employee on the team receives
an opportunity to develop his or her strengths. However,
Gallup still found substantial increases in teams’ businessoutcomes when only the manager underwent strengthsbased development. How is it that the entire team benefits
when only one person — the manager — receives thestrengths intervention?

Employees who feel engaged at work and who
can use their strengths in their jobs are moreproductive and profitable, stay longer, have happiercustomers, and produce higher quality work.

Gallup has found that a manager’s approach to strengths
has a profound effect on employees’ engagement andperformance because he or she plays an important, directrole in maximizing employees’ chances to use theirstrengths every day. One Gallup study found that whenemployees felt their managers ignored them, 40% wereactively disengaged. By contrast, 22% of employees who said
their managers focused on their weaknesses were actively
disengaged, proving that even negative attention is better
than no attention at all in employees’ eyes. However, ofthe employees who said their manager focused on theirstrengths, only 1% were actively disengaged.
Managers have unique opportunities in their dailyinteractions with employees to empower them to discoverand develop their strengths, and they have the responsibility
to position employees in roles where they can do what
they do best every day. When managers succeed in theseendeavors, their teams become more engaged. And Gallup
has found that employees who feel engaged at work and who
can use their strengths in their jobs are more productive andprofitable, stay longer, have happier customers, and produce
higher-quality work. Based on findings like these, Gallup
concluded that a strengths-based management approach isthe best way to improve the employee-manager relationship.

Boosting Employees’ Strengths Builds MoreEngaging Organizations
Gallup scientists believe that the one workplacephenomenon with the greatest potential to change the world
would be for every employee to have the chance to do what
he or she does best at work each day. People can achieve
their full potential only when they are in positions where
they can consistently use their greatest talents. Using one’s
strengths every day is a powerful source of motivation forworkers and offers life-changing possibilities.
Further, companies that invest time and effort into helping
employees understand their strengths and apply them in
the workplace see greater profitability, productivity, andengagement. Yet Gallup found that only about 33% ofworkers worldwide in their initial employee engagement
measurement strongly agreed that their job provides themwith the opportunity to do what they do best daily.
What is behind this low score is that too many companies
mistakenly believe they can best achieve success by trying tohelp managers and employees overcome their weaknesses.
On the contrary, Gallup has found that while weaknesses
cannot be developed much at all, talent can be developed
extensively — making employees’ strengths a powerful
untapped resource for most organizations.

D E V E LO P E M P LOY E E S ’ ST R E N GT H S

43

To create a work environment where employees can universally agree that they can use their strengths each day, Gallup
recommends that managers and leaders focus on these steps:•• Help employees discover their strengths. People
often take their most powerful talents for granted
or may not be aware of them. Gallup’s CliftonStrengthsFinder assessment helps people identify theirgreatest strengths, and organizations can easily use
this tool as a starting point for building a strengthsbased orientation in the workplace.
•• Align employees’ greatest talents with the
expectations and demands of their roles. A manager’s
primary responsibility is to position each employee touse his or her strengths each day.
•• Find ways to apply strengths in a team setting
to achieve common goals. Help coworkers learn
and understand one another’s strengths and how
their talents complement those of others on theteam. Consider posting employees’ top CliftonStrengthsFinder themes of talent in their offices or
cubicles.

•• Use team meetings to help team members deepen
their understanding of the strengths approach, andassign team projects based on employees’ strengths.
•• Incorporate strengths into performance conversations
and reviews, and help employees set goals based on
their strengths.
•• Create a community of strengths advocates andchampions as internal experts to help everyone in theorganization use his or her strengths. These people
will help with initial launch efforts and sustain thoseefforts through the entire company’s strengths journey.

strengths area powerful
untapped resource.
44

D E V E LO P E M P LOY E E S ’ ST R E N GT H S

Enhance Employees’
Well-Being

From a global perspective, the American healthcare system stands out as
an example of out-of-control spending. However, a recent study from theOrganisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) predicts
that public spending on health and long-term care in some industrialized anddeveloping nations may soon rise at an even faster pace than that of the U.S.
Projections in the OECD report suggest that Korea, Chile, Turkey, and Mexico,
in particular, will see above-average increases in public health spending overthe next 50 years. Further, costs in emerging economies such as Brazil,
Russia, India, Indonesia, China, and South Africa are forecast to rise at aneven sharper pace than that of the 34 OECD countries.
Rising public health and long-term care expenditures are bad news for countries still
struggling to rebound from the effects of the worldwide recession because they inhibit
economic growth by consuming a substantial portion of a nation’s gross domestic product.
This leaves countries with fewer funds to invest in business, education, research, anddevelopment — all vital components to jump-starting sluggish economic engines andstemming unemployment. Consequently, unchecked healthcare costs could potentially stall
the global economic recovery.
45

Employees who are engaged in their jobs are generally inbetter health and have healthier habits than employees who
are not engaged or are actively disengaged.

Worldwide, Preventable Chronic Diseases on
the Risemore likely to participate in employer-sponsoredwellness programs.

While various factors can influence rising healthcare prices— including aging populations, increased urbanization,
uncontrolled medical inflation, and expensive technologicaladvances — the rise of preventable chronic diseases suchas obesity, Type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease also
contribute to the problem. The number of those who areobese has doubled worldwide since 1980 according to theWorld Health Organization (WHO), and it is increasing
rapidly in low- and middle-income countries.

These findings suggest that organizations that make aneffort to improve their employees’ engagement levels will
also help their workers improve the quality of their lives,
minimizing the costs of decreased productivity resulting
from chronic illnesses.

Mounting evidence suggests that leaders stand the greatest
chance of containing runaway healthcare spending byfocusing on helping individuals avoid poor health choicesthat lead to costly chronic conditions. Gallup’s studies haveshown that by investing in programs designed to improve
employees’ overall well-being, companies can boost workers’
engagement levels and gain a distinct competitive advantage
in the global marketplace.

Engaged Workers Lead Healthier Lives
While studying engagement outcomes worldwide, Gallup
discovered a correlation between employees’ engagementlevels at work and their physical health. Gallup found that
employees who are engaged in their jobs are generally inbetter health and have healthier habits than employees
who are not engaged or are actively disengaged. Engaged
employees have lower incidences of chronic health problems
such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes,
obesity, diagnosed depression, and heart attacks thanactively disengaged employees. They also eat healthier,
exercise more frequently, and consume more fruits andvegetables than their not engaged or actively disengaged
counterparts. Further, these engaged employees are46

E N H A N C E E M P LO Y E E S ’ W E L L- B E I N G“Thriving” Employees Have Lower
Healthcare Costs
In addition to measuring workers’ engagement levels,
Gallup categorizes them as “thriving,” “struggling,” or“suffering” according to how they rate their current andfuture lives on a ladder scale with steps numbered fromzero to 10, based on the Cantril Self-Anchoring Striving
Scale, where zero represents the worst possible life and 10
represents the best possible life. Gallup discovered dramaticdifferences in actual healthcare costs employers pay eachyear on employees’ behalf based on each category. In one
U.S. study, employees who are thriving had 41% lower
health-related costs compared with employees who arestruggling and 62% lower costs compared with employees
who are suffering. These findings suggest that if employers
made an intentional effort to raise well-being levels for
all workers, they would realize significant savings in their
medical costs.
In countries where employers are not directly involvedin subsidizing employees’ medical costs, organizations
still benefit greatly from employee well-being initiatives.
Gallup has found that poor physical and mental healthcontributes to a host of issues that are bad for business,
including increased absenteeism, lower performance, andlower productivity.

The highest-performing
managers find ways toimprove employees’ lives.

Engaged and Thriving Employees Are
Resilient and Agile
Beyond the advantages companies realize when they either
engage their employees or increase their well-being, Gallup
researchers discovered that attending to both simultaneously
accelerates employee engagement levels. Gallup foundthat employees who are thriving in their lives overall are
more than twice as likely as those who are struggling
to be engaged in their jobs, and thriving employees arenearly six times as likely to be engaged as those who are
suffering. However, more than half of employees worldwide
are struggling or suffering in aspects of their overall lives,
highlighting an important opportunity for managers.
When employees are engaged and thriving, they are more
likely to be agile and resilient. These employees have theirworkplace lives and their overall lives operating smoothly,
so major organizational changes or disruptions in theirpersonal lives are unlikely to throw them off course. They
are physically healthy, have strong relationships, are activein their communities, and are in control of their finances.
They also enjoy their work and are more likely to report
excellent performance and stay with their company thanthose who are engaged but are struggling or suffering intheir overall lives.
Likewise, engaged, thriving employees have fewer healthproblems. Compared with their engaged but struggling/
suffering counterparts, they have fewer unhealthy days asa result of physical or mental illness, are less likely to bediagnosed with a new disease in the next year, and are lesslikely to be newly diagnosed with anxiety and depression.
These numbers add up to big savings for companies’ bottom
line in terms of productivity and performance.

The Manager’s Role in Improving Employee
Engagement and Well-Being
Regardless of regional or cultural differences, managers
around the world significantly influence their direct reports’
engagement and well-being, which in turn affects theirorganization’s bottom line. Managers can limit active
disengagement and poor well-being on their teams byfocusing on specific Q12 elements such as connecting theirwork to the organization’s mission and purpose (Q08) andfocusing more on employees’ strengths (Q03). More broadly,
Gallup found that the highest-performing managers
find ways to improve employees’ lives while helping
them improve their work performance. Although somesupervisors might expect employees to compartmentalize
their work lives and their personal lives, great managers
know that the whole person comes to work and thateach employee’s well-being influences individual andorganizational performance. These managers inspire teamengagement and performance in part because they invest in
their employees’ overall lives and well-being.
Business leaders and managers can play a major rolein developing an approach to improve the workplaceenvironment and potentially their workers’ health and wellbeing. Leaders should consider the following insights whencreating a plan that addresses their workplace’s specificneeds, keeping in mind that Gallup found that actions that
affect employees’ lives on a personal level are the most likely
to succeed:•• Make well-being an organizational strategy —much like other organizational outcomes. Healthy
behaviors are contagious. Employees in teams affectthe well-being of others in the workgroup, so any
strategy should seek to capitalize on this powerfulchain of influence. Also, leaders who are thrivingin their own well-being are more likely to havethriving employees. Organizations should expectthat employees and those in management havehigh well-being, and leaders and managers should
reinforce this expectation.

E N H A N C E E M P LO Y E E S ’ W E L L- B E I N G

47•• Communicate a commitment to well-being
consistently in all of the programs the company
offers. Companies can help employees be more
conscious of their well-being and understand how
to improve it through various corporate programsand benefits. These benefits could include many
offerings such as retirement savings programs, social
or community activities, health-risk assessments,
exercise machines, employee assistance programs, andnutrition information programs.
•• Hold leaders accountable for well-being programs
available to employees. Leaders should constantly
evaluate programs they use for well-being
improvement. Hold the organization accountable bymeasuring well-being and tracking improvements.
Evaluate the effectiveness of existing programs toensure that they are motivational and connect to theright outcomes.
•• Consider how to embed activities to increase wellbeing in individual development plans and goals.
Encourage well-being goal setting with individuals
by having them share what feels comfortable about
their goal with at least one person. Encourage
employees to document their goals and track theirindividual well-being. Create activities and sessions
that bring opportunities for peer discussions on wellbeing topics.

•• Set positive defaults for making healthy choices.
Employees face several choices and decisions
throughout their workday. When it comes towell-being, make it easy to pick the right choices.
Make it simple to participate in retirement savings
programs, contribute to savings accounts, or takepart in health programs. In vending machines andcafeterias, ensure that healthy snacks and drinks are
the most accessible. Offer plenty of opportunities tojoin physical or social activities throughout the day.
Look for other easy ways to incorporate well-being
activities into the day-to-day routine at work.
When leaders follow these guiding principles, theircompanies will make substantial inroads to improving
employee well-being. Given the existing teams, structure,
departments, and social networks they can use to help effectchange, organizations are in a unique position to make areal difference in the lives of employees, their families, andtheir communities. Gallup found that higher well-being
among employees accelerates employee engagement, withengaged, thriving employees having the most positive effectin their workplaces. Organizations that find ways to engage
their employees and increase their well-being will reap thefinancial benefits of higher engagement and find enormous
savings in increased productivity and performance andfewer missed workdays, while enhancing employees’ overall
quality of life.

Bottom Line
Chronic, preventable disease is a significant barrier to economic growth and recovery. In many of the world’s poorest
countries, cheap preventative measures like bed nets to block the spread of malaria and chlorine tablets to purify
drinking water are underutilized. Further, as more countries become industrialized and urbanized, the evidence
suggests that they will likely adopt the sedentary lifestyle linked to the health problems plaguing developed nations.
To date, governments and health organizations have been ineffective in developing successful strategies for either
chronic disease prevention or healthcare cost containment.
Gallup’s research suggests that businesses and organizations might be uniquely positioned to help solve thisburgeoning international crisis. Gallup has found that employers have an immense influence on their workers’
emotional and physical health — for better or for worse. By taking steps to improve employees’ engagement andwell-being, companies have the power to make an impact on escalating healthcare costs and disease burden in theircountries, one workplace at a time.
48

E N H A N C E E M P LO Y E E S ’ W E L L- B E I N GLinking Employee
Engagement toCustomer Growth

As organizations transform their workplaces through employee engagement, leaders must remember theprocess is not an end in itself. They need to use their engaged workforce in a productive, purposeful way
to get the most from every employee. A critical place to start is with the customer. Great leaders knowthat the best way to get their customers engaged and spending more is to ensure that their employees
are engaged and aligned with their brand promise.
Optimizing the emotional connection between employees
and customers must be central to what leaders andmanagers think about every day. If they do not focus on thisconnection, missed opportunities to maximize employees’
efforts quickly result in missed opportunities with theircustomers or prospects, inhibiting organizational growth.
Despite what companies stand to gain, Gallup often findsthat they struggle to connect engaged employees’ actions
into an engaging experience for their customers, and theissue is usually that employee behaviors are not aligned withthe company’s brand.

All employees need to understand how their individual
contribution relates to the company’s mission and purpose,
whether that mission is to make a profit and increase
earnings per share (EPS), to raise funds to keep a nonprofit
operation running, or to provide healthcare to those in need.
Front-line employees represent a particularly important
opportunity to fulfill this mission and purpose in directinteractions with existing and potential customers.

49

The Power of the Employee-Customer
Encounter

Every Employee Plays a Role

The moment an employee connects emotionally with acustomer is a source of untapped power that has profound
implications for a company’s productivity and profitability.
When organizations know how to prepare front-line
employees to make the most of these moments, they engage
customers — who in turn spend more, visit more often,
resist competitive overtures, promote their brand to others,
and forgive the occasional service blunder. Companies drive
real growth by empowering employees to do what is right intheir customers’ eyes.
Gallup’s HumanSigma approach is a framework companies
can use to align employee engagement and customer
engagement to optimize business outcomes. Based on
research conducted with 10 million employees and 10
million customers worldwide, the HumanSigma approachcombines a proven method for assessing the employeecustomer encounter with an actionable process for
improving it.
The HumanSigma framework consists of Gallup’s Q12
employee engagement and CE11 customer engagement
items. The CE11, like the Q12, consistently demonstrates a
powerful link to key business outcomes. Integrating them
amplifies their revenue-producing results by aligning an
engaged workforce with customers’ emotional needs.
When Gallup researchers studied the effects of combining
customer and employee engagement, they found that inworkgroups with engaged employees serving engaged
customers, the result was more than the sum of its parts.
When organizations successfully engage their customers
and their employees, they experience a 240% boost in
performance-related business outcomes compared with anorganization with neither engaged employees nor engaged
customers. Organizations that only maximize one or theother can experience growth in the short run, but they will
not be able to sustain it over the medium- to long-termhorizons unless they align engagement with their employees
and customers.

50

LI N K I N G E M P LOY E E E N G AG E M E N T TO

Not every employee is on the front lines with the customer,
but every employee is still responsible for customer
engagement. It is common for employees in supporting or
behind-the-scenes roles — such as administration, billing,
IT, and research and design, to name a few — to feel liketheir positions are not essential when it comes to engaging
customers. But they could not be more wrong. Even if they
spend day after day performing their duties without everseeing a customer, their work is still vital to the customer
experience, or else they would not be there.
Great managers help employees understand how every rolein the organization connects to the customer through thecompany’s mission and purpose. Every direct or indirect
point of contact between a company and a customer —even through a bill, a letter or email, an ATM transaction,
an online interface, or a product or service — has thepotential to make a customer feel more engaged or lessengaged with the company. Such experiences are rarely
neutral. Great managers recognize this, and they help
motivate all employees, accelerate their development, andunleash their innovation and productivity to ultimately
engage the emotions of the customers they serve at every
possible touchpoint.

When organizations successfully
engage their customers and theiremployees, they experience a240%
boost in performance-related

C USTO M E R G R OWTH

business outcomes.

Building Brand Ambassadors
The notion that a company’s employees represent the “face”
of its brand is not new. But as companies seek to win in
today’s marketplace, many executives have begun to see thepotential that their engaged employees hold as ambassadorsfor the organization’s brand. To maximize the power of their
engaged workers, companies must give them the knowledge
and resources they need to be effective. Employees must:•• know what the organization stands for and whatmakes it different from others in the marketplace•• understand the company’s brand promise and be able
to explain the most important elements of the brandidentity•• be empowered to deliver on the brand promise
Engaged employees are well-qualified to serve as acompany’s brand ambassadors. In fact, a recent study ofshop employees in a Swiss telecommunications company
found that the company’s most highly engaged workgroups,
those at the 50th percentile or above of Gallup’s Q12 Client
Database, scored considerably higher on their response to“I know what my company stands for” than did workgroups
in the lower half of the database — a mean score differenceof 4.52 vs. 4.08, respectively. When asked if they know
how to make the company’s brand promise “come to life,”
the workgroups had a mean score of 4.05, significantly
higher than the 3.27 mean score for the teams below the50th percentile.
When employees make contact with existing or potential
customers, they give meaning and dimension to a company’s
brand promise. The best employee brand ambassadors don’t
stop doing this at the end of the workday. They continue toextol the virtues and values of their company’s brand evenwhen they are off the clock — in conversations with friends,
family, neighbors, and on social media. Unfortunately, mostcompanies do not groom employees for the role of brandambassador, making it harder for customers to differentiate
their products and services from the competition.
This could be costing companies millions of dollars inlost opportunities.

For instance, in a banking study, Gallup found that 56%
of Australian bank customers, 49% of German customers,
and 44% of New Zealander customers felt that all banks
and financial services institutions are the same. By contrast,
7% of customers in New Zealand, 6% in Australia, and 4%
in Germany felt that one bank was the best in the entire
industry. This is not unique to these countries; Gallup has
discovered similar findings from banking customers in otherparts of the world.
Even so, this small percentage of customers who believethat one bank is best is a particularly valuable segment. For
example, Gallup discovered that customers in Australia
who agreed that one bank is the best are four times as likely
to be fully engaged with their bank as those who believethat all banks and financial institutions are the same.
Similarly, those customers are nearly two times as likely to
be extremely satisfied with the bank’s products and services
and to be extremely likely to recommend the bank to theirfriends and family, compared with those who perceive
no differentiation.
Brand ambassadors are essential to forging these types ofcustomer relationships. Yet a U.S. study showed that 41%
of employees strongly agree that they know what theircompany stands for and what makes its brand different
from its competitors. In Germany, 31% strongly agree.
Companies rely on these brand ambassadors to represent
the company’s brand every day in the marketplace. If
employees do not understand their company’s identityand know what sets it apart, it is unlikely that customers
will either. And that is a big miss — one with substantial
performance implications.

A U.S. study shows that 41% of
employees strongly agree thatthey know what their company
stands for. In Germany, just
31% strongly agree.

LI N K I N G E M P LOY E E E N G AG E M E N T TO

C USTO M E R G R OWTH

51

Equip Employees to Win Customers
When workers are engaged but are not aligned with their organization’s brand, it limits their power to create an engaging
customer experience that will actually drive EPS. Great companies understand that employee engagement in itself is not adestination — it is a platform to even higher performance, greater productivity, and increased revenue. In fact, fully engaged
customers represent a 23% premium in terms of share of wallet, profitability, revenue, and relationship growth over the
average customer.
To maximize employee and customer interactions and win in the marketplace, organizations need engaged employees
deployed in every facet of their operation, not just in customer-facing roles. At the same time, they must understand thatengaged employees are essential on the front lines. Each employee needs to understand the importance of his or her roleto the company’s mission and purpose, and each must be empowered to do what is right for the customer. Additionally,leaders must align each employee to the company’s brand promise and ensure that he or she is prepared and equipped to bea positive brand ambassador for the organization, both on and off the clock. Once organizations master these areas, they are
well on their way to a truly optimized workforce.

10 Ways to Improve the Customer Experience
Gallup’s research shows that few employees are aligned with or empowered to deliver the core elements of their company’s
brand identity and promise. Executives must start by engaging their employees and then taking these steps to help theirworkers become effective brand ambassadors.
1.

Acknowledge that all employees play a keyrole in bringing the brand to life. Successful
branding is not just a marketing or sales function;
it is an essential activity for human resources,
management, and leadership.

2. Audit your internal communications to ensurethat they are consistent with your brand identity andpromise. Invest in making employees aware of yourbrand promise, and empower them to act on it.
3. Articulate what your brand represents andwhat you promise to your customers. Inject thecore elements of your identity into the workplaceconstantly and consistently across time, locations,and channels. Use these elements to define not
only how you treat your customers but also how you
manage, coach, and treat your employees.
4. Deploy simple processes to ensure that you
highlight and discuss the core elements of yourcompany’s brand identity every day. Use minute52

LI N K I N G E M P LOY E E E N G AG E M E N T TO

meetings, lineups, or staff gatherings to provide
specific examples of how to deliver the brandpromise.
5. Use simple tools such as wallet cards as readyreferences to the brand, and require employees tomemorize the key brand elements.
6. Regularly assess how well your employees
know and understand your brand promise. All
employees — especially those in customer-facingroles — should believe in and feel they have theresources and permission to deliver your brandpromise. Provide additional support in areas that fallshort.
7.

Ensure that new employees understand yourbrand identity and promise. All new employees
should be able to articulate what your company
stands for and what makes you different within theirfirst 30 days of employment, and your managers
should reinforce this message every day.

C USTO M E R G R OWTH

8. Make sure that every employee understands
how his or her job affects the customer
experience. This is particularly important for roles
that are not customer-facing. Constantly connect thedots between what employees are paid to do andwhat your organization stands for.
9. Recognize employees who deliver your brandpromise to your customers. Recognition is an
important psychological need. Employees who know
they will receive recognition for acting on the brandpromise will have a strong incentive to do so.

10. Regularly solicit opinions from youremployees on new and better ways to deliver
your brand promise. Convene town hall meetings
that allow employees to share their ideas and receive
feedback. Demonstrating an authentic commitment
to alignment is the best way to embed it in yourcompany’s culture.

Executives must start by engaging their employees and thentaking these steps to help their workers become effective
brand ambassadors.

LI N K I N G E M P LOY E E E N G AG E M E N T TO

C USTO M E R G R OWTH

53

Employee Engagement
Varies Greatly by Region
and Country

While Gallup has found that 13% of employees are engaged worldwide, there
is considerable variation in engagement levels across different regions of
the world, countries, companies, and even among workgroups. This section
provides a closer look at the results from Gallup’s worldwide employee
engagement study by region, and in many cases by country. The data revealthat the outcomes associated with employee engagement are consistentworldwide. Across regions with broadly varying cultural backgrounds andsocioeconomic levels, employees who are psychologically invested in theirworkplaces are more likely to report job growth at their organizations, rate
their lives higher on average, and experience more positive emotions on adaily basis.

54

Gallup’s extensive studies and analysis show that variables
such as an employee’s educational attainment level and typeof industry and occupation can account for many differencesin engagement levels. The following analyses demonstrate
how these differences play out in regions with different
cultural characteristics and at different socioeconomic levels.
In each country, Gallup included in the study residents
only who indicated that they work for an employer. In
developing countries where many people work at informal
individual or family-based endeavors, including subsistencebased activities such as farming, fewer residents answered
the employee engagement survey items. Consequently, if
fewer than 300 people answered the employee engagement
survey items, Gallup did not report results at the country

level. For example, this report provides country-level results
for four of the 32 sub-Saharan African countries surveyed,while in Western Europe, the report lists results for all 19
countries Gallup surveyed.
Whatever challenges businesses face in a given country
or region — be they social, economic, institutional, orotherwise — their leaders should recognize the importanceof employee engagement as a factor that can help them
maintain the optimism and perseverance necessary forlong-term success. Leaders who understand the importanceof empowering and motivating their workers in any type of
workplace environment will be poised to outperform theircompetitors and help provide the critical economic growth
the world needs.

Leaders should recognize the importance of employee
engagement as a factor that can help them maintain the
optimism and perseverance necessary for long-term success.

E M P L O Y E E E N G A G E M E N T V A R I E S G R E A T LY B Y R E G I O N A N D C O U N T R Y

55

R egion

Sub-SaharanAfricaCountries included: Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Comoros, Congo(Brazzaville), Congo (Kinshasa), Gabon, Ghana, Guinea, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali,
Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Somaliland (an autonomous region of Somalia), South
Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe

In most sub-Saharan African countries, formal employment
for an employer is still relatively rare; many residents workat subsistence farming or in some other form of smallscale self-employment. Among 26 countries and territories
EngagedNot engaged

Actively
disengaged

Nigeria

12%

65%

23%

work for an employer, the lowest proportion among all

South Africa

9%

46%

global regions. Among employees, 10% are engaged, while

For results listed in this table, the margin of sampling error ranges from ±3 to ±8 percentage
points. See the appendix for a full listing of margin-of-error estimates by country.

in sub-Saharan Africa included in Gallup’s 2011 to 2012
employee study, 19% of respondents overall indicate they

Botswana

10%

52%

38%
45%

57% are not engaged and 33% are actively disengaged.
The last figure is on par with the Middle East and North

Only among the most highly educated Africans and those

Africa region for the highest in the world.

in professional job categories is the proportion of engaged

In only three countries — Botswana, Nigeria, and South
Africa — did the surveys capture enough respondents who
worked for an employer to report country-level engagement
results. South Africa has one of the highest percentagesof actively disengaged employees in the world. The mining
industry, an important source of employment in South
Africa, has been plagued by violent and destabilizing labor
unrest in recent years.

56

employees similar to the proportion of actively disengaged
employees. In most other cases, actively disengaged
employees — those who are the most negative about theirjobs and liable to spread that negativity to coworkers —outnumber engaged employees by at least 3-to-1.

EngagedNot engaged

Actively disengaged

8%

50%

42%

Elementary education or less
Secondary education

10%

60%

30%

Professional workers

19%

63%

18%

11%

51%

Tertiary education

16%

Clerical/Office workers

12%Managers/Executives/Officials

10%

Manufacturing/Production workers

Construction/Mining workers
Transportation workers

66%

65%

Farming/Fishing/Forestry workers

29%

8%

54%

38%

6%

56%

38%

61%

34%

31%

54%

6%

Sales workers

38%

61%

7%

Installation/Repair workers

23%

61%

8%

Service workers

18%

39%

47%

5%

47%

Six in 10 Engaged Employees Report Job Creation at Their Workplaces
A 2013 report from the African Development Bank states that Africa’s economy is experiencing faster growth thanany other continent. Experts note that job creation should be the focus of all African countries’ development policies toensure that growth is inclusive and that more of the continent’s vast youth population can participate in their countries’
formal economies. Many Africans themselves agree: When presented in 2012 with a list of issues their governments could
address in the next 12 months, a median of 33% across 24 African countries chose job creation as the most important,making it by far the mostcommon response.

Employers Are Hiring New People in Sub-SaharanAfricaEngagedNot Engaged Actively Disengaged

100%
80%

51

46

Hiring new people and expanding
the size of its workforce

22
Not changing
the size of its workforce

10

5

0%

33

20%

26

40%

44

60%

61

Gallup’s 2011 and 2012
employee data offer hopefulnews for job growth:
40% of employees in theregion overall say theiremployers are hiring new
people, while 13% say theiremployers are letting peoplego. However, nowhere in
the world are employees’
engagement levels moreclosely associated with theirperceptions of job creation
than in sub-SaharanAfrica; well over half ofengaged workers (61%) say

Letting people go and reducing
the size of its workforce

S ub - S aharan A frica

57

Engaged Employees in Sub-Saharan Africa Are More Than
Three Times as Likely as the Actively Disengaged to Be
Thriving
EngagedNot Engaged Actively Disengaged

66

82

80%

76

100%

60%

Thriving

their employers are hiring,
while 5% say they areletting people go. Actively
disengaged employees, bycontrast, are almost as likely
to say their organizations
are reducing the size of theirworkforce (22%) as they areto say their workplaces are
hiring new people (26%).

29% of Engaged
Employees Are“Thriving” vs. 16% of
All Employees
Despite the significant
economic gains many subSaharan African countries
have made in recent years,
poverty, disease, andpolitical instability remainprevalent across most of thecontinent. So it likely comes58

S ub - S aharan A frica

25

17

12

8

0%

18

20%

29

40%

Experienced anger“yesterday”

as no surprise that Gallup’s
surveys in 2011 and 2012
found that sub-SaharanAfricans give among thelowest life evaluations in
the world; 13% overall areconsidered “thriving,” on
par with South Asia forthe lowest figure among
all global regions. Nor
are ratings much higher
among employed residents
of sub-Saharan Africa,
16% of whom are thriving.
However, that figure nearly
doubles to 29% among
workers who are engaged
in their jobs, while 8% ofactively disengaged workers
are thriving.
As among most otherpopulations, sub-Saharan

Experienced enjoyment“yesterday”

Africans who are engaged
in their jobs also report
more positive daily
emotional states than other
employees do. Engaged
employees are significantly
more likely than actively
disengaged employees
to say they experienced
enjoyment for much of the
day before the survey andabout half as likely to haveexperienced anger.

Regional Highlight: South Africa

Engaged Workplaces Will Lead South
Africa’s Next Era of Growth
By Kolawole Mudele, Gallup Senior Consultant
The past two years have been among the most economically tumultuous in South Africa’s recent history, as labor unrest
slashed production in the country’s critical mining sector and the recession hammered many of the country’s major trading
partners in Europe. In July 2013, the International Monetary Fund revised South Africa’s forecast growth for the year to 2%,
marking a fall of 0.8 percentage points from the IMF’s April forecast. The country’s projected economic growth in 2014 wasalso revised downward by 0.4 points to 2.9%. Meanwhile, consumer confidence is at a nine-year low, unemployment is above
25%, and the value of the South African rand continues to decline sharply.
In addition to mining, labor unrest has lowered productivity in the metalworking, construction, and transportation industries,
among others. As of September 2013, strike actions in South Africa were projected to affect as many as 335,000 workers invarious sectors. The crisis is mirrored in the country’s employee engagement data, which indicate that 9% of its workforce isengaged, while 45% is actively disengaged. The latter figure is among the highest in the world.
South Africa’s polarized job market poses key challenges for the country’s workplaces and, by extension, its overall economy.
There is a sharp division between socially protected formal-sector workers and marginalized informal-sector or unemployedworkers. As The Economist noted on June 1, 2013, business regulations in South Africa are relatively burdensome, making it
difficult for job-creating small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to emerge. Wage deals between big firms and big unions
pose another barrier to start-ups by putting small companies at a disadvantage; The Economist estimates that such pay deals
reduce the number of jobs in some industries by 8% to 13%.
While the South African economy faces many structural challenges, there are nevertheless opportunities for savvy businesses
to reap the dividends of positive employee-management relations. Gallup’s assessment of many South African workplaces
finds a fundamental breakdown of trust between employees and organizational leadership. Fewer than one in five South
African employees strongly agree that their opinions count at work or that their supervisors encourage their development.
Trust and transparent communication are essential for talent management and retention; particularly in the midst of a turbulent
economy, organizational leaders should not overlook their impact.
South African organizations that successfully create values-based work environments in which information flows freely andemployees feel their opinions are taken seriously will increase the potential for positive workplace relationships and will change
the way workers think about their jobs. Employees’ perceptions of their own empowerment will in turn increase their motivationand productivity, and their businesses’ overall effectiveness. These are the companies that will lead the next epoch of growthin the South African economy.

S ub - S aharan A frica

59

R egion

Middle East andNorth Africa
Countries included: Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon,
Libya, Morocco, Palestinian Territories, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia,
the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen

Among residents across the Middle East and Northand enjoy high living standards. Engagement levels in mostAfrica (MENA) region who work for an employer, 10% are

Arab Gulf states are high by global standards; only in Saudi

engaged in their jobs, while 55% are not engaged andArabia — easily the most populous country in the Arab Gulf

35% are actively disengaged. The last figure is among theregion — are significantly less than 20% of employees

highest percentages of actively disengaged workers in any

engaged in their jobs.

global region, statistically tied with workers in sub-SaharanAfrica, at 33%.

The relatively high percentage of actively disengaged workers
in Bahrain is also noteworthy and may be explained in partThe 2011-2012 employee engagement study includes

by relative economic conditions. Bahrain controls far less oil

results from 19 countries in the MENA region, and country-

than most other Arab Gulf countries, which may clarify whylevel results are reportable for 17 of the 19 countries.

its employees report a lower average household income thanThe 17 countries are divided into two groups to reflect

other countries in the region. Further, Bahrain’s employees aredifferences in sampling procedures. In five Arab Gulf

far less likely than those in most other Arab Gulf countries tocountries — Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain,

say it is a good time to find a job in their area.

Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia — Gallup interviewed country
EngagedNot engaged

Actively
disengaged

Morocco

19%

51%

31%

Lebanon15%

nationals and Arab expatriates only, excluding the sizable
non-Arab expatriate populations in each country.
Among nationals and Arab expats in most of these Arab
Gulf countries, many employees work in the public sector

Qatar

United ArabEmirates

Bahrain

KuwaitSaudi Arabia

EngagedNot engaged

Actively
disengaged

28%

62%

10%

26%

60%

14%

19%

52%

29%

80%

11%

19%
9%

64%

17%

For results listed in this table, the margin of sampling error ranges from ±3 to ±7 percentage
points. See the appendix for a full listing of margin-of-error estimates by country.

60

Libya

17%

54%

29%

55%

30%

13%

63%

25%

11%

64%

26%

Iran

7%

56%

38%

Israel

5%

73%

22%

55%

45%

Egypt

13%

Algeria

12%

JordanPalestinian
Territories

Iraq

Tunisia

Syria

55%

35%

6%

63%

5%

41%

0%

32%
53%

31%

54%

For results listed in this table, the margin of sampling error ranges from ±0 to ±6 percentage
points. See the appendix for a full listing of margin-of-error estimates by country.

EngagedNot engaged

Actively disengaged

8%

44%

48%

Tertiary education

13%

62%

25%

Professional workers

15%

Elementary education or less
Secondary education

Managers/Executives/Officials

Clerical/Office workers
Sales workers

11%

12%
11%

11%

Service workers

10%Installation/Repair workers

8%Transportation workers

Manufacturing/Production workers
Construction/Mining workers

Farming/Fishing/Forestry workers

60%

63%

60%
63%
57%

47%

9%

44%

7%

46%

6%

6%

29%

22%

28%
26%
32%

43%

47%

58%

34%

46%

48%

41%

47%
53%

In the remaining 12 MENA states in which Gallup data represent employees in each country, actively disengaged workers
make up more than a fourth of the employed population. In fact, this group includes countries — Tunisia (54%), Algeria(53%), and Syria (45%) — with the highest percentages of actively disengaged employees in the world.
The MENA region currently has the highest youth unemployment rate in the world; Gallup’s 2011 and 2012 data indicatethat about one-fourth of the region’s 18- to 29-year-olds in the workforce are unemployed, while about one-third areunderemployed. One part of the problem is that many organizations in the region select candidates based on personalconnections or “wasta,” rather than talent and fit for the role. Another is the region’s education system, which experts
commonly cite as one of the factors leading to high jobless rates among MENA youth. A 2012 World Economic Forum
report reiterates the concern that schools in the MENA region need to more closely align with labor force requirements tobetter prepare young people with the skills and knowledge they need to help meet their country’s economic demands.
One in four MENA employees with a college-level education (25%) are actively disengaged — the highest proportion
among highly educated workers in all global regions — while about half as many (13%) are engaged in their jobs. One
implication is that even among those with access to higher learning, education often fails to help them find jobs that keepthem highly motivated and productive.

Engaged Employees in the MENA Region Are Twice as Likely as the Actively Disengaged toReport Job Creation in Their Workplaces
One-third of employees in the MENA region (33%) say their employers are hiring new people and expanding the size of
their workforces — a figure that will need to rise in the coming years to meet the region’s increasing need for new jobs toaccommodate its burgeoning youth population. Gallup research has consistently shown that employee engagement helps
drive organizational growth through its relationship with key performance outcomes. Among MENA employees who are
engaged at work, about half (49%) report job creation at their organizations, while 7% say their employers are letting people
go. Actively disengaged employees, by contrast, are almost as likely to report staff reductions at their organizations (22%) as
they are to say their employers are hiring new people (27%).
M iddle E ast and N orth A frica

61

Half of Engaged Employees in the MENA Region Say
Their Employers Are Hiring
EngagedNot Engaged Actively Disengaged

100%

0%

region — from less than

10% in Syria to about half22

across countries in the

Hiring new people and expanding
the size of its workforce

Not changing
the size of its workforce

12

20%

however, varies dramatically

7

overall lives. This figure,

52

40%

44

considered thriving in theirratings high enough to be

27

60%

33

employees give life

55

80%

Overall, 20% of MENA

49

More Than One
in Three Actively
Disengaged
Employees Feel Anger

Letting people go and reducing
the size of its workforce

in Qatar (50%) and Saudi

Engagedin virtually all MENA

100%

employees rate their lives

80%

their level of engagement at

60%

third of engaged employees

40%

countries surveyed,

48
35

34

work. Regionwide, one-

63

75

differently according to

Not Engaged Actively Disengaged(34%) are thriving, but

20%

among those who are0%

that figure falls to 10%
actively disengaged.

25

economic development,

19

of political instability or

10% of Actively Disengaged Employees in the MENA
Region Are “Thriving”

10

Israel. No matter the level24

Arabia (46%) and 56% in

Thriving

Experienced anger“yesterday”

Experienced enjoyment“yesterday”

The massive public protests
that took place in Egypt,
Libya, Tunisia, andYemen in 2011 revealed anof MENA residents overall

among several MENA

anger for much of the day

undercurrent of frustration
populations, much of

it stemming from poor

economic conditions andwidespread joblessness.

Gallup’s 2011 and 2012

data reveal that one-third
62(34%) say they experienced

among those working foran employer.

before the survey, easily the

Again, workplace quality

any global region. Among

difference in workers’

residents, that figure rises toin five engaged employees

highest proportion among

makes a considerable

unemployed MENA

emotional state. About one

44%, while it falls to 28%(19%) in the MENA region

M iddle E ast and N orth A frica

felt angry for much of theprevious day, while 75% said
they experienced enjoymentthat day. By contrast, morethan one-third of actively
disengaged employees(35%) felt angry, andslightly less than half (48%)
experienced enjoyment.

Regional Highlight: United Arab Emirates

Engaged Workplaces Are Essential to
Retaining Emiratis in Private-Sector Jobs
By Ghassan Khoury, Gallup Senior Managing Consultant, and Johnathan Tozer, Gallup Senior Consultant
Employed Emiratis1 are among the most likely in the Arab
Gulf region to be engaged, at 26%. However, that leaves
almost three in four such workers not engaged or actively
disengaged at work. The United Arab Emirates is seeking todiversify its economy through continued foreign investment
and expansion of the private sector (to reduce oil-revenue
dependency by 2030) and to stem rising unemployment
among Emiratis by increasing their involvement in the private
sector. Government and industry leaders must now focus
on engaging more Emiratis in their work to assist in these
key societal objectives and promote long-term growth andglobal competitiveness.

Understand Emiratis Beyond Emiratization
One recent analysis estimates that if the public sector(UAE nationals’ preferred employer) continues its current
course of absorbing young Emirati workers, government
spending will increase by more than US$10 billion per year.
Government Emiratization initiatives seeking to promote a
minimum proportion of Emirati nationals in several privatesector industries can successfully engage and retain
Emiratis only if their individual talents and fit for each role
are considered. Instead, organizations are often engaging in“ghost Emiratization” by employing Emiratis on the “sidelines”
of their businesses.
Private-sector organizations must implement a strengthsbased approach to selection and development to ensurethat employees are right for their roles, and sustainableengagement strategies to ensure they are emotionallyconnected to their workplaces. The insights producedby such systems will also assist private-sector leaders inengaging Emirati employees over the long term throughcareer and progression planning. These systems should

also help decrease employers’ risk that their workers will
eventually defect to often more lucrative public-sector jobs
or to other private-sector organizations looking to fulfill their
Emiratization goals.

Managers Need Support in Engaging a
Multicultural Workforce
Similar to Qatar and Saudi Arabia, the UAE has amulticultural workforce, consisting of Emiratis, Arab expats,
and a sizable non-Arab expat population. Strategies andtools for engagement must be culturally adapted to thisunique situation.
Gallup studied 3,477 managers from Gulf-area organizationsin the oil and gas, banking and finance, property
development, tourism, automotive, and telecommunications
sectors. The results show that too many managers in theregion are unable to consistently clarify what they expectfrom their employees. They struggle when setting goals andobjectives, defining employees’ roles, and linking employee
performance to the organization’s growth. This lack of clarity
about expectations makes it difficult to empower employees
and create a robust performance-based organizational
culture; the result has been a deficit of accountability acrossthe region’s organizations.
In addition, business and government leaders must ensurethat they are hiring managers with real leadership talentrather than promoting employees to management positions
based solely on tenure, as is the practice in many wellestablished UAE-based companies. Organizations must
look for a more sustainable, culturally adapted, talent-based
approach to leadership and employee development. Only thencan they hope to optimize the individual and collective talentsof their employees — their “human capital.”

1 In the UAE, as in the other Arab Gulf countries surveyed by Gallup, only country nationals and Arab expats are included in the sample; non-Arab expats are not interviewed, hence, theresults do not represent these segments of the population.

M iddle E ast and N orth A frica

63

R egion

East Asia
Countries included: China (includes Hong Kong), Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan

At 6%, the percentage of engaged employees living in
East Asia is the lowest among all global regions. About
two-thirds of employees (68%) are not engaged, while
26% are actively disengaged. The percentage of engaged
employees does not reach the global average of 13% in anyof the four countries included in the region. What’s more,
actively disengaged employees far outnumber those whoare engaged in all four countries.
Engaging employees means empowering them to do what
they do best and letting them make their voices heard

EngagedSouth Korea

11%

Japan

7%

TaiwanNot engaged

Actively
disengaged

67%

23%

69%

24%

9%

60%

China (incl. Hong Kong) 6%

68%

32%

26%

For results listed in this table, the margin of sampling error ranges from ±1 to ±6 percentage
points. See the appendix for a full listing of margin-of-error estimates by country.

on issues that affect their jobs. Among Asian countries
culturally influenced by Confucianism, deference toEngagement levels are low among workers in East Asia

authority is a deeply entrenched social value. Because ofat all education levels and in all job categories. However,this predisposition, businesses may be less likely to focus

employees who are most likely to hold positions of authority

on workplace conditions that allow all employees to feel

— managers, executives, or officials and professional

capable of taking initiative — or to hire managers who

workers — are the least likely to be actively disengaged.

encourage them to do so. In 2012, 16% of employees in
East Asia strongly agreed that their opinions seem to countat work, the lowest proportion of any global region.

64

EngagedNot engaged

Actively disengaged

5%

64%

31%

7%

73%

20%

11%

62%

27%

8%

73%

19%

Elementary education or less
Secondary education

6%

Tertiary education

Transportation workers

Managers/Executives/Officials

10%Construction/Mining workers

7%

Professional workers

70%

71%

24%

63%

31%

7%

66%

Farming/Fishing/Forestry workers

4%

60%

Clerical/Office workers

3%

68%

6%

Sales workers

3%

Installation/Repair workers

19%

69%

Service workers

Manufacturing/Production workers

24%

2%

27%
36%

73%

24%

73%

25%

29%

Perceptions of Job Creation Are Prevalent Among Employees in East Asia
Overall, employees living in East Asia are nearly three times as likely to say their employers are hiring new people as
to say their employers are letting people go — 38% vs. 13%, respectively. Though engaged and not engaged employees
tend to respond similarly to this question, actively disengaged workers are more likely to report people being let go attheir workplaces.

Of the Thriving group, Actively Disengaged Workers
in East Asia Most Likely to Say Their Employer Is
Letting People GoEngagedNot Engaged Actively Disengaged

100%
80%

49

48

41

Hiring new people and expanding
the size of its workforce

Not changing
the size of its workforce

19

11

11

0%

32

20%

38

40%

51

60%

Letting people go and reducing
the size of its workforce

E ast A sia

65

In East Asia, Engaged Employees Half as Likely as Actively
Disengaged to Experience StressEngagedNot Engaged Actively Disengaged

73

80%

49

60%

37
25
8

0%

28

35

40%
20%

87

91

100%

Thriving

Experienced stress“yesterday”

Experienced enjoyment“yesterday”

Stress Drops as Engagement Rises Among Workers in East Asia
In East Asia, nearly one
in four employees overall(24%) give life evaluation
scores high enough to
be considered “thriving.”
Among the four countries
included in the region,
only in South Korea are
more than three in 10
employees (36%) thrivingin their overall lives. Life
ratings differ substantiallyby engagement level, withslightly more than onethird of engaged employees(35%) thriving regionwide,compared with 9% of those
who are actively disengaged.

66

E ast A sia

One of the strongest
relationships in thedata from East Asia is
between employees’ levelof engagement and theirlikelihood to say theyexperienced stress for muchof the day before the survey.
A 2008 study revealed thatpeople from East Asian
cultures are more reluctant
than those from othercultural backgrounds todraw on social support.
Gallup finds that engaged
workers in the countries in
East Asia are about half as
likely to have experienced

stress the previous day as
their actively disengaged
peers. This may speak to
the role that workplace
factors — and managers
in particular — play inhelping employees overcome
the hesitation to seek
support from others toattain what they need to
manage stressful situations
more effectively.

Regional Highlight: South Korea

South Korea’s Missed Economic
Opportunity
By Taek Lee, Gallup Senior Consultant; Danny Lee, Gallup Advanced Consultant;and Cheong Im, Gallup Consultant
Despite South Korea’s status as one of Asia’s economic
powerhouses, the country’s workforce has twice as many
actively disengaged as engaged employees — 23% vs. 11%,
respectively — while two-thirds of the country’s workers(67%) are “not engaged.” Among the 34 members of theOrganisation for Economic Co-operation and Development(OECD), a group of developed-world countries, South Korea’s
proportion of engaged employees falls into the bottom
quartile; in several OECD countries, that figure is more than
twice as high.
South Korea can reach much higher levels of workplaceengagement, but must consider strategies that account for
deeply ingrained cultural and traditional business practices.

Cultural and Business Norms Pose Challenges in
Raising Engagement
Certain cultural components and traditional businesspractices prevalent in South Korea may represent challenges
for leaders seeking to build more engaged workforces. To
varying degrees, many companies still use a tenure-based
promotion and pay system, called the “ho-bong” system.
At a macro level, the system places employees with moreexperience or tenure in the promotion pipeline, rather thanthose who exhibit stronger performance. The practice also
results in staffing managerial roles with tenured individuals
rather than those with an innate aptitude for leadership or
people management — talents that are critical to fostering
engagement within teams and organizations.
Further, the so-called “group mentality” ingrained in Koreansociety — which produces an emphasis on the role of teams
within organizations — fails to individualize the developmentof high-potential talent. Instead, talent development systems

are often limited by the rigidity of standardized group training.
The culture of vertical hierarchy and respect for seniority alsoprevalent in many Korean organizations tends to restrict open
communication, limiting the potential for younger workers tocontribute vital new ideas and innovations.
Though such cultural effects are difficult to change, many
Korean organizations have already proven adept at building
highly engaged workforces. A group of Korean organizations
that have implemented strategies for improving engagement
have, on average, employees that are 10 times as likely to beengaged as actively disengaged. Further, more than 60% of
their workforces are engaged in their jobs. These findings
demonstrate that cultural influences alone do not determine
the way Korean businesses are organized or managed. Thosethat emphasize employee engagement through awarenessefforts and targeted interventions are able to raise
engagement levels far above the country average.

Engagement — The Missed Opportunity
Korean businesses invest trillions of won every year inprocess improvement, change management, researchand development, and organizational transformation
efforts. However, their return on investment is limited tothe extent that projects are carried out by employees wholack psychological commitment to their organization’s
future. Increasing the number of engaged employees andmanagers driving organizational change initiatives will boost
their likelihood of success. Korean companies are currently
missing a huge opportunity by failing to establish conditions
that maximize employees’ talents, motivation, and productivity.
It is up to the country’s business leaders to change that, inturn improving the country’s global competitiveness.

E ast A sia

67

R egion

South Asia
Countries included: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka

Among six countries in South Asia included in Gallup’s 2011
to 2012 study, 10% of employed residents are engaged intheir jobs, while 61% are not engaged and 29% are actively
disengaged. The percentage of engaged employees in theregion is on par with those from the Middle East and NorthEngagedNot engaged

Actively
disengaged

Pakistan

15%

68%

16%

India

9%

60%

Africa (MENA) and sub-Saharan Africa regions, and only
higher than the 6% figure from East Asia.

Sri Lanka
Individual results are available for three of the six countries
in South Asia. Low employee engagement — and especially

14%

62%

24%
31%

For results listed in this table, the margin of sampling error ranges from ±1 to ±6 percentage
points. See the appendix for a full listing of margin-of-error estimates by country.

a high proportion of actively disengaged employees — is aparticular problem for India.
Most countries in the South Asia region suffer from severe
inequities in access to education and shortages of highskilled labor. These factors can be barriers to economic
development and workers’ abilities to develop their natural
talents. Gallup finds that workers in the South Asia region
have the lowest average education level of any global
region: 78% say they have an elementary education or less,while 8% have completed four years of education beyond
high school.

68

Reflecting the region’s low average education levels,
5% of employees in South Asia classify themselves as
professional workers — the lowest proportion among all
global regions Gallup measured. Further, 3% say they are
managers, executives, or officials — also among the lowest
proportions worldwide. A plurality of employees in South
Asia (44%) say they are farming, fishing, or forestry workers— reflecting the ongoing prevalence of low-productivity
agricultural jobs in the region. Of employees in this category,
7% are engaged in their jobs.

Elementary education or less

Secondary education

EngagedNot engaged

Actively disengaged

8%

59%

33%

69%

8%

Tertiary education

15%

23%

69%

Professional workers

23%

67%

10%

Clerical/Office workers

16%

72%

12%

13%

63%

24%

52%

40%

57%

36%

Managers/Executives/Officials

17%

73%

Sales workers

13%Transportation workers

9%

64%

7%

65%

Service workers

Construction/Mining workers

Farming/Fishing/Forestry workers

7%

Installation/Repair workers

10%

69%

8%

Manufacturing/Production workers

16%

4%

18%

27%

28%

76%

20%

Engagement a Powerful Predictor of Vital Job Creation

Hiring new people and expanding
the size of its workforce

Not changing
the size of its workforce

20

39

43

51

12

0%

18

20%

28

40%

42

the same.

46

Job creation is an important issue in virtually all global regions — but nowhere more so than in South Asia, where according
to World Bank estimates, between 1 million and 1.2 million people will enter the labor force every month for the next few
decades. Many structural constraints affect the growth of businesses in the region such as electricity, corruption, politicalinstability, and access to finance. Even so, the workplace factors through which Gallup measures employee engagement
remain a powerful predictor of whether workers say their employers are hiring people or letting them go. Overall, employees
in South Asia are about
as likely to say theirorganizations are letting
people go (25%) as to say
Engaged Employees in South Asia Most Likely totheir employers are hiring
Report Job Creation at Their Organizations(28%). However, more
Engaged Not Engaged Actively Disengaged
than four in 10 engaged
employees (42%) say their100%organizations are hiring
new people, compared with80%
18% of actively disengaged
60%
employees who say

Letting people go and reducing
the size of its workforce

S outh A sia

69

Anger Most Common among not engaged and actively
disengaged workers in South Asia
EngagedNot Engaged Actively Disengaged

100%
80%
60%

16

16

35

30
19

17
4

0%

25

20%

45

40%

Thriving

Experienced anger“yesterday”

Suffering

Almost Half of Actively Disengaged Employees Suffering
Gallup’s 2011 to 2012 study
found that in South Asia,
employees’ life evaluations
are among the lowest in
the world: 14% overall
give ratings that placethem in the “thriving”
category, while 62% are“struggling” and 24% are“suffering.” Workers’ life
ratings are closely related toengagement levels. Among
employees who are actively
disengaged, the thriving

70

S outh A sia

figure falls to 4%, while
the proportion who are
suffering shoots up to 45%.
Overall, 30% of employees
in South Asia say theyexperienced anger the day
before the survey — among
the highest figures from any
global region, and on parwith those from Central
and Eastern Europe (29%)
and the MENA region(28%). Responses vary bycountry in South Asia, withworkers in Pakistan (33%)
and India (29%) more likely
than those in Bangladesh(16%) or Nepal (17%) to
say they experienced anger
the previous day. Results
also vary by engagementlevel, with 19% of engaged
employees reporting anger,
compared with 30% of notengaged and 35% of actively
disengaged employees.

Regional Highlight: India

Improving India’s Economy Requires
Tapping Workers’ Potential
By Paresh Rajgarhia, Gallup Senior Consultant, and Priyanka Kohli, Gallup Consultant
Ninety-one percent of employed Indians are not psychologically committed to their organizations or as productive as they
could be — i.e., they are not engaged at work. Perhaps the most pressing issue for leaders in India is the high proportion of“disruptors” — the 31% of employees who are actively disengaged. These employees are not just unhappy, but busy acting out
their unhappiness and undermining their engaged coworkers’ accomplishments. With declining confidence in the job market —34% of employed Indians in 2012 say it is a good time to find a job in their areas, down significantly from 41% in 2011 — andfewer job opportunities, many actively disengaged employees may feel they are currently unable to move on.
India’s extremely low employee engagement levels not only affect productivity in today’s workplaces, but also the potential for
innovation in tomorrow’s products and services. Companies in every sector are struggling to innovate to achieve competitive
advantage against a slowing economic climate. The country’s US$20 billion Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) industry isa significant example: research conducted in 2012 and 2013 suggests that over the past five years, Indian BPO organizations
lost 10% of the global market to advancing rivals, including China and Brazil. India’s National Association of Software andService Companies rebranded the industry as Business Process Management (BPM) to help expand its reach outside of basic
outsourcing. But to achieve real growth in the value chain, businesses must engage more of their employees, tapping the full
extent of their talents, skills, and innovation.
Although numerous external factors influence the economic situation in India, the greatest asset that leaders can measure,monitor, and improve is the nation’s “human capital.” Leaders in India need to learn from what the best organizations aroundthe world do differently, and start with three core strategic initiatives to begin spreading a culture of engagement throughout
Indian organizations:
1. Focus on the “People” Aspects of Your
Performance Management System: A Gallup
analysis of more than 50,000 Indian employees working
in 10 major industry sectors in 22 global companies
revealed that more than half (54%) felt their company’s
performance management system was not effective. This
perception is likely to demotivate employees, creating
feelings of anguish or frustration that negatively affecttheir performance and engagement. The results make it
clear that India’s business leaders must not rely merely on“process” elements, such as job descriptions and ratings
criteria, to increase workplace engagement. Systems
that develop the right people according to their uniquetalents are essential for creating high-performance
workplace cultures.

Taj Hotels Resorts and Palaces, one of India’s largest
hospitality chains, offers an excellent example of such aculture. The company’s 24,000 employees are committed
to not just satisfying, but delighting, thousands ofcustomers at more than 100 hotels and resorts everyday. In order to sustain that commitment, the company’s
entire management structure is focused on action plansdesigned to keep its employees engaged and happy.
“We see engagement as a requirement to survive — andto excel,” says H.N. Shrinivas, Taj Hotels’ Senior Vice
President of Human Resources. “The dream is to be themost admired and respected hospitality company in theworld for the sheer quality of service excellence. And that
depends on our employees.”

S outh A sia

71

2. Hire and Develop Good Midlevel Managers:
Midlevel managers make or break the leadership vision
for Indian organizations. No amount of compensation or
benefits can fix the ill effects of a bad manager on his or
her immediate team members. Gallup’s research showsthat the direct supervisor or manager has maximum
impact on an employee’s engagement, and that not all
people have the talent to lead others.
3. Give Indian Employees the Opportunity to
Perform at Their Best: “At work, do you have theopportunity to do what you do best every day?” This is
the single best question Indian organizations can ask
their employees. Today, in spite of management teams’
best intentions to create a beneficial learning climate,many training and development programs introduced byIndian organizations fail to produce the desired results.
These efforts often fall short because they don’t factor in
employees’ talents. Remedying this begins with improving
companies’ capacity to identify employees’ talents, put
employees in the right roles, and develop them according
to their inherent strengths.

India’s extremely low
employee engagementlevels not only affectproductivity in today’s
workplaces, but also thepotential for innovation
in tomorrow’s products
and services.

72

S outh A sia

R egion

Southeast Asia
Countries included: Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore,
Thailand, and Vietnam

Southeast Asia has seen significant change in recent
years. Singapore has long been one of the world’s mostEngagedNot engaged

Actively
disengaged

Philippines

29%

63%

8%

Malaysia

11%

remarkable economic success stories, but rapid growth andrising middle classes in Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia,
Thailand, and Vietnam have made the entire region central
to any conversation about the global economy and a focus
of international investors.
The economic growth in the region is also bringing about
powerful political and economic changes in some countries.
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is
promoting further growth opportunities in the region by
establishing greater regional economic integration by 2015,
including freer movement of goods, services, investment,
and skilled labor across member countries.

ThailandSingapore
Indonesia

14%

84%

9%

76%

8%

81%

77%

2%

8%

15%
15%

For results listed in this table, the margin of sampling error ranges from ±2 to ±5 percentage
points. See the appendix for a full listing of margin-of-error estimates by country.

results separately. The Philippines emerges as having thehighest proportion of engaged employees in the region.
Further, Thailand and the Philippines have among thehighest ratios of engaged to actively disengaged employees
among all countries worldwide for which individual results
are reportable. Businesses in both countries enjoyedBusinesses with highly engaged workforces will have an

notable success in 2012, as indicated by stock market gains

advantage in seizing these opportunities. Among employees

in these countries that significantly outperformed the restin nine Southeast Asian countries surveyed in 2011 andof Asia.

2012, 12% are engaged, 73% are not engaged, and 14%
are actively disengaged. These aggregated figures put
the percentage of engaged employees in the region close
to the global results (13%), but they also indicate that
Southeast Asia has a relatively low proportion of actively
disengaged employees compared with the global figureof 24%.

Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Singapore have among
the highest proportions of “not engaged” employees in theworld, suggesting an abundance of opportunities to fully
engage many more employees through targeted workplaceinterventions and employee-focused management
training. Helping employees connect their own work to
the organization’s larger purpose — and see how their

In five of the nine countries in Southeast Asia surveyed

developmental path fits into the organization’s future — isin 2011 and 2012, the sample of residents working for an

particularly important in helping not engaged employees

employer was large enough to break out their engagementtake more psychological ownership of their roles.
73

In Southeast Asia, Less Educated Are Less Engaged
Among Southeast Asians, there is a strong relationship between employees’ educational attainment and their engagementlevel. Those with an elementary education or less are more than four times as likely as those with a college-level education
to be actively disengaged at work. Correspondingly, those working in industries less likely to require higher levels of formal
education — including construction and manufacturing — are also least likely to be engaged in their jobs.

Elementary education or less
Secondary education

Not engaged

Actively disengaged

9%

68%

23%

75%

5%

13%

Tertiary education

20%

Managers/Executives/Officials

22%

Transportation workers

15%

Service workers

14%

Installation/Repair workers

10%Construction/Mining workers

8%

Professional workers

Clerical/Office workers
Sales workers

Farming/Fishing/Forestry workers
Manufacturing/Production workers

74

EngagedS outheast A sia

17%

77%

75%

3%

79%

6%

78%

14%

80%

11%

76%

10%
8%

10%

73%
81%

5%

6%

13%
13%
9%

58%

32%

78%

14%

83%

9%

Four in 10 engaged employees in Southeast Asia say
their employers are hiring

Engagement Linked
to Southeast Asians’
Life Ratings, if Not
Their Emotional
StatesAs in all global regions,employees’ engagementlevels correlate with overall
life ratings, with engaged

Not Engaged Actively Disengaged

100%

Hiring new people and expanding
the size of its workforce

Not changing
the size of its workforce

13

7

5

20%
0%

56

26

37

40%

53

60%

62

80%

41

Letting people go and reducing
the size of its workforce

Engaged employees in Southeast Asia more than
twice as likely as actively disengaged employees tobe “thriving”
EngagedNot Engaged Actively Disengaged

72

83

80%

84

100%

60%

0%

Thriving

workers more than twice

20

18

12

20%

20

40%

25

Overall, more than a thirdof workers in Southeast Asia(36%) say their employers
are hiring and expanding
the size of their workforces,
while 7% say the opposite.
Among engaged employees
in the region, the “hiringand expanding” number
rises somewhat to 41%,
while dropping to 26%
among actively disengaged
employees. It is a testament
to the strong economic
momentum in the region
that even among employees
who feel most negatively
about their workplaces,
twice as many say theiremployers are hiring as
say they are letting people
go. To sustain growth overthe long term, however,businesses in the region
must learn to maximize
each employee’s engagement
and psychologicalcommitment to theorganization’s success.

Engaged29

Reports of Job
Creation Widespread,
Especially Among
Engaged Workers

Experienced anger“yesterday”

of not engaged and 86% of

as likely to be “thriving”

engaged employees.

as those who are actively

However, the relationshipdisengaged (29% vs. 12%,
respectively). Further,less than half of actively
disengaged employees in
the region (46%) say theirjob is ideal for them vs. 76%

between employees’

engagement levels inExperienced enjoyment“yesterday”

are only somewhat lesslikely than engaged or

not engaged employees

to say they experienced

enjoyment the day before

Southeast Asia and daily

the survey. In addition,

weaker than in most otherhave experienced anger thedisengaged employees

across all engagement levels.

emotion measures is

employees’ likelihood to

global regions. Actively

previous day is relatively low

S outheast A sia

75

Regional Highlight: Indonesia

Engaging Younger Workers Is Key toIndonesia’s Economic Rise
By Vibhas Ratanjee, Gallup Senior Practice Expert, and Larry Emond, Gallup Managing Partner
Indonesia has sustained GDP growth of more than 6% in 2010, 2011, and 2012, even as the global recovery has sputteredand the two Asian powerhouses, China and India, each face an economic slowdown. Also heartening is recent Gallup researchthat shows improvements since 2006 in Indonesians’ general state of well-being, life ratings, and satisfaction with local
healthcare and education services — all harbingers of continued growth.
But is Indonesia in a position to make the most of this economic opportunity? The country faces some big domestic
challenges, including an urgent need for infrastructure development, the slow pace of economic and social change thathinders an optimal business environment, and widespread corruption. These are linked to the complex nature of a multiculturalsociety with tremendous geographic and linguistic diversity.
When one looks at external challenges, such as competition within the region, Indonesia has a major asset — its young,dynamic, and large workforce is a real vehicle for economic growth. However, other ASEAN players boast a similar asset,
so relative economic success will inevitably be linked to who manages this asset better. Whatever the business, a moreengaged and productive workforce is directly correlated with better business outcomes, which at a macro level are linked to
GDP growth.
In this respect, Gallup’s latest survey on employee engagement paints a rather grim picture. Only 8% of Indonesian employees
are engaged at work, while 15% are actively disengaged — among the highest rates in the region. If organizations — private orstate-owned — do not realize how important great workplaces are to economic development and job creation, the Indonesian
economy might well run out of steam in the next few years.
The following key factors are particularly likely to have an impact on employee engagement in Indonesia:•

76

The Rise of Gen Y and Changing Corporate
Culture: Fifty percent of Indonesia’s population
today is younger than 30. The concept of “engaging”
younger employees is starkly different from the more
traditional focus on “retaining” employees. Pay andpromotion in a hierarchical setup are unlikely to
jump-start the cultural change necessary to nurturea “learning organization” that Gen Y workers will
want to be a part of. Organizations need a better
understanding of younger employees’ expectations— including opportunities to use their talents at work,and to develop those talents over the course of theircareers. Younger employees also want their opinions

S outheast A sia

to matter. Our advice to Indonesian leaders is toactively promote a culture of openness and dialogue,
and to be serious about rewarding innovation andmerit — an urgent need for Indonesia’s stated goal of
becoming a “creative economy.”•

The War for Indonesia’s Talent: As the economy
grows, effective business leadership will be a critical
success factor that supports the country’s growth.
Indonesian leaders who understand the challenges
the local business environment presents, and are able
to harness opportunities amid sometimes unexpected
and evolving market conditions, will be immeasurablyvaluable, and prone to poaching. Organizations willneed a well-thought-out top talent strategy — one
that manages and nurtures their “people” assets tostay competitive.

•

The Role of a Manager as Coach: Traditionally,
Indonesian managers have employed a fairly
straightforward “command and control” method ofmanaging. This style might not work with today’s
Indonesian workforce — particularly younger
employees. Indonesian managers and leaders
must become better coaches and mentors to theiremployees. Additionally, organizations that prioritize
the ability to engage employees as a key criterion
for managerial roles will make significant gains in
engagement, performance, and productivity.

In the years to come, Indonesia looks poised to take its
rightful place as a regional economic powerhouse — if it caneffectively manage key challenges in navigating its growthphase. Some basic work culture issues and HR practices willneed to be reformed before Indonesian organizations cantake advantage of their mighty workforce. Organizations that
put the right emphasis on the engagement and well-being of
their employees will not only thrive and grow, but also help
carry the country to a position of economic pre-eminence.

If organizations do notrealize how important
great workplaces are to
economic development andjob creation, the Indonesian
economy might well runout of steam in the next
few years.
﻿ S outheast A sia﻿77

R egion

Australia and
New ZealandCountries included: Australia and New Zealand

In Australia and New Zealand, 24% of adults who work foran employer are engaged, while 60% are not engaged and
16% are actively disengaged. The resulting ratio of engaged
to actively disengaged employees — 1.5-to-1 — is one of
the highest among all global regions and similar to resultsfrom the U.S. and Canada (1.6-to-1).
The two countries show similar engagement results. In both,

Australia

New ZealandEngagedNot engaged

Actively
disengaged

24%

60%

16%

23%

62%

15%

For results listed in this table, the margin of sampling error ranges from ±2 to ±4 percentage
points. See the appendix for a full listing of margin-of-error estimates by country.

slightly less than one-fourth of the employed populationis engaged, while the majority of workers fall into the notengaged category. Thus, workplaces in both countries havean opportunity to move large numbers of these workers whocurrently lack motivation or emotional investment in theirjobs into the engaged category, helping organizations realize
related improvements in performance outcomes.
The engagement rate in Australia and New Zealand issomewhat higher among those few employees (4% of
those interviewed) with an elementary education or lessthan among those with higher levels of education. Similarly,
the job types in which employees are most likely to beengaged tend to be those that do not typically require
high levels of education, including farmers, installation/
repair workers, and service workers. As in most developed

78

countries, unemployment and underemployment have beenat elevated levels since the onset of the global recession
in 2007. One consequence of the recession could be thatthose with more education are struggling to find jobs thatalign with their education level, leading them to feel thatthey are not doing what they do best every day.
It is also notable that 19% of employees in leadership
positions — including managers, executives, and officials— are engaged in their jobs. Low engagement among
managers is a particularly troubling sign for businesses andorganizations, as Gallup has consistently found that theyplay the most significant role in influencing engagement
among workers who report to them.

EngagedNot engaged

Actively disengaged

Elementary education or less

34%

57%

9%

Tertiary education

24%

63%

13%

Farming/Fishing/Forestry workers

40%

47%

13%

Service workers

29%

57%

Secondary education

23%

Installation/Repair workers

59%

30%

Professional workers

57%

27%

Construction/Mining workers

59%

14%

20%

19%

64%

17%

11%

66%

Sales workers

17%

Transportation workers

14%

54%

24%

Manufacturing/Production workers

13%

26%

Clerical/Office workers

Managers/Executives/Officials

18%

62%

14%

66%

9%

17%

23%

69%

22%

Six in 10 Engaged Workers Say Their Employers Are Hiring
Among all employees in Australia and New Zealand, 40% report that their employer is hiring new people andexpanding the size of its workforce, while 22% report that their employer is letting people go and reducing the sizeof its workforce. Among engaged employees, however, the results are considerably more favorable — these workers
are more than six times
as likely to report that
their organization ishiring (59%) as to report
Engaged Employees in Australia and New Zealand Are
their organization is
the Most Likely to Say Their Employer Is Expanding
letting people go (9%).
the Size of Its Workforce
By contrast, the 36%
Engaged Not Engaged Actively Disengagedof actively disengaged
workers who say their100%organization is growing is
80%

31

42
Not changing
the size of its workforce

Letting people go and reducing
the size of its workforce

9

0%

33

20%

32

36

34

40%

24

60%

59

similar to the 31% saying
their organization is
reducing in size.

Hiring new people and expanding
the size of its workforce

A ustralia and N ew Z ealand79

Engaged Employees in Australia and New Zealand Are themost likely to experience enjoyment
EngagedNot Engaged Actively Disengaged

Thriving

11

8

20

20%
0%

81

45

40%

61

67

60%

78

80%

88

100%

Experienced anger“yesterday”

Experienced enjoyment“yesterday”

Fewer Than Half of Actively Disengaged Employees Are “Thriving”
As in all global regions,
there is considerable
evidence that organizations
in Australia and New
Zealand that engage theiremployees play a significant
role in improving theseworkers’ quality of life.
Overall, two-thirds of those
who work for an employer
give life evaluations highenough to be considered“thriving” in their overall
lives. This is the highest
thriving percentage among
all global regions. Engaged
employees in Australia and80

A ustralia and N ew Z ealand

New Zealand, however, arethriving at even higher rates(78%) than is seen in theoverall region, whereas lessthan half of those who are
actively disengaged (45%)
are thriving.
Additionally, engaged
employees in Australia
and New Zealand reportbeing in a more positive
emotional state the day
before the survey than do
actively disengaged workers.
Compared with actively
disengaged employees,
engaged workers are

more likely to say theyexperienced enjoyment formuch of the previous day
and are less likely to haveexperienced anger. Further,engaged employees arealmost twice as likely as
the overall population tostrongly agree that they likewhat they do each day.

Regional Highlight: Australia

Australia: Engaged Employees Align
to Promote Organizational Success
By Yvette Martin, Gallup Principal
Australia is among the global leaders in the ratio of motivatedand productive — i.e., engaged — employees versus negativeand disruptive — i.e., actively disengaged — ones within
its workplaces. For every actively disengaged worker inAustralian companies, 1.5 are engaged.
However, engagement results among Australian employees
pale in comparison to the best companies in Gallup’s
expansive database, which have ratios of nine engaged
employees to every actively disengaged employee. Most of
the country’s workers — 60% — fall into the “not engaged”
category, meaning they lack the psychological commitment
to maximize their efforts on behalf of their organizations.
Moreover, the 16% of Australian employees who are actively
disengaged at their workplaces cost the country around
AU$54.8 billion (US$51.3 billion) per year.
Australian organizations need strong, authentic leadershipto build on the workforce’s current engagement levels. Suchleaders know their own strengths and how to support andempower their people, so that Australian employees turn up
to work every day with a motivated mindset. More specifically,
Australia’s current and future leaders must:
1. Align Leadership Direction: Leadership teams
responsible for organizational success need to minimize
infighting and political game-playing. All leaders mustensure they understand their own innate strengths, andhow their roles relate to those of other leadership teammembers. A Top 100 ASX-listed company that introduced
a strengths-based development approach to its C-Suiteteam reports feeling significantly more cohesive. One
team member in particular whose contribution mightotherwise have been downplayed was shown to havestrong relationship-building talents, a quality lacking inthis particular team.
2. Create Alignment Between Employees’ Roles andthe Organization’s Overall Mission: In the Australiancompanies Gallup studied, we found that initially, two in
10 workers strongly agreed that the mission and purposeof their company makes them feel their job is important.
Line managers can improve this metric by simply asking
employees to articulate what they get paid to do, and what
success looks like in their role. These two questions canopen a dialogue to better align job expectations and how
individual employees feel their contributions connect tothe wider company mission and organizational goals.
3. Monitor Their Employees’ Psychological Safety:
Recent research by Safe Work Australia reveals that
depression costs Australian employers approximately
AU$8 billion per year and notes that “Work-related stressrepresents a ‘huge cost’ for worker health and productivity
and is broadly regarded as an important social determinantof global health.” From Gallup’s 2011-2012 employee
research, 47% of actively disengaged workers in Australia
and New Zealand admitted to having experienced stressthe day before, while 24% experienced sadness and 42%experienced worry. Each of these figures is close to double
the percentage among engaged employees, demonstratingthat the increasing prevalence of psychological injury
claims is a risk that could be mitigated if leaders fostered aculture of empowerment, open communication, and care in
their workplaces.

A ustralia and N ew Z ealand81Regional Highlight: New ZealandIn New Zealand’s Competition for
Talent, Engagement Is Critical
By Robyn Reilly, Gallup Senior Consultant
For a small country competing in the global economy, New
Zealand’s current levels of employee engagement pose abarrier to global competitiveness and economic success.
Gallup’s 2011-2012 data indicate that less than a quarterof New Zealanders who work for an employer (23%) areengaged at work, while 62% are “not engaged,” meaning theyhead to work each day uninspired and lacking motivation, andwill likely do just enough to fulfill their job requirements. And
15% are “actively disengaged” — they are not only unhappy
at work, but likely to act out that unhappiness. Actively
disengaged workers account for more quality defects andsafety incidents, and have higher absenteeism and lower
retention rates, than other employees; they are estimatedto cost the New Zealand economy NZ$7.5 billion annually,
based on the New Zealand Bureau of Statistics’ average New
Zealand wage figure.
Employers that fail to foster employee engagement risk
losing talented employees not only to other New Zealandbased companies, but also to businesses in neighboring
Australia. Research by Deloitte in 2012 found that 65% of
New Zealand’s organizations are concerned about losing
employees to other employers in the country, while 36%
report concerns about losing employees to Australia.
Overcoming New Zealand’s economic challenges will requirea focus on productivity, process efficiencies, product quality,
and innovation. In order to improve outcomes in these areas,organizational leaders need to turn their attention to creating
workplaces that unlock the full potential of all New Zealandworkers — currently an underutilized commodity.
Land Information New Zealand (LINZ) is an example ofan employer that has made impressive strides toward that
goal; the government agency has seen steady improvement
in its employee engagement scores over the past several
years. In 2012, LINZ’s average engagement score was thehighest in New Zealand’s public sector, and in 2013 the82

A ustralia and N ew Z ealandagency won a prestigious award from the Institute of Public
Administration New Zealand for “Improving Performance
Through Leadership Excellence” by building a highly
engaged workplace.
Following are among the most important considerations for
LINZ and other organizations in pursuing that goal:
1. Increase Collaboration: Executives and managers
should work closely with their employees to identify
barriers to engagement and opportunities to effectpositive change. Employees provide valuable insights into
a company’s processes, systems, products, and customers— and these are essential to leaders considering
strategies to improve performance, foster business
innovation, and create a more engaging workplace.
2. Hire Great Managers: The catalyst for collaboration
is a great manager. The best managers understand that
their success, and that of their organizations, relies on
the success of their people. But not everyone can be agreat manager. Great managers seek to understand each
person’s strengths and provide workers every opportunity
to use these in their roles. It takes talent to be a greatmanager, and leaders in New Zealand need to be surethey are using tools and advice that have proven reliable
in selecting those with true, innate management ability.
3. Meet Your Employees Where They Are as People:
Employees are people, and they don’t check theirpersonalities at the door when they come to work. The
sense that they are respected as individuals at work canhave a significant impact on how they view their overall
lives. Each individual’s potential extends well beyond hisor her job description, but tapping that potential means
recognizing how employees’ unique set of beliefs, talents,
goals, and life experiences drive their performance,
personal success, and well-being.

R egion

United States
and Canada
Countries included: Canada and the United States

Among those who work for an employer in the UnitedStates and Canada, 29% are engaged in their jobs, while
54% are not engaged and 18% are actively disengaged.
The ratio of engaged to actively disengaged employees is
1.6-to-1 — the highest among all regions worldwide, though
the ratio among employees in Australia and New Zealand isclose, at 1.5-to-1.

United States
CanadaEngagedNot engaged

Actively
disengaged

30%

52%

18%

16%

70%

14%

For results listed in this table, the margin of sampling error ranges from ±<1 to ±3
percentage points. See the appendix for a full listing of margin-of-error estimates by country.

The U.S. and Canada continue to show signs of recovery

high proportion of employees in the middle engagementfrom the global recession of 2007-2009. In the U.S.,

category represents an opportunity for employers inhowever, some economists regard the economic upturn

Canada to focus on workplace conditions and management

as a “jobless recovery” and agree that job creation should

techniques to help increase these workers’ psychologicalremain a top priority. Canada’s economy came throughcommitment to their work and move more of them into thethe recession better than many developed economies;

engaged column.

its unemployment rate remains slightly above 7%. Labor
market conditions in each country may have an effect on
employee engagement rates, as employees could be more
likely to remain in jobs for which they are overqualified
if they perceive a lack of sufficient employment
opportunities elsewhere.

In the U.S. and Canada, engagement rates trend downward
slightly with employees’ higher levels of educational
attainment. However, the ratio of engaged to actively
disengaged workers is highest among those in jobs that
tend to require more education such as professionals andthose in leadership roles. As noted, the recession has led

Employee engagement results differ significantly between

many educated workers to settle for jobs that do not fully

the U.S. and Canada, with employees in Canada about half

use their talents, leaving them unfulfilled. In both countries,

as likely as those in the U.S. to be fully engaged at workcollege-educated workers are less likely than those with

— 16% vs. 30%, respectively. However, a strong majority

a high school education only to strongly agree with the(70%) of Canadian employees are simply not engaged,

statement “at work, I have the opportunity to do what I dowith 14% falling into the actively disengaged category. The

best every day.”83

EngagedNot engaged

Actively disengaged

32%

52%

17%

Tertiary education

28%

57%

15%

Managers/Executives/Officials

34%

53%

13%

28%

56%

16%

Service workers

28%

52%

20%

Sales workers

26%

54%

20%

24%

51%

Elementary education or less

Secondary education

29%

Professional workers

52%

30%

Farming/Fishing/Forestry workers

Construction/Mining workers

56%

28%

Clerical/Office workers

Manufacturing/Production workers

17%

53%

25%

Transportation workers

14%

55%

27%

Installation/Repair workers

19%

20%

54%

23%

21%

25%

54%

23%

Perceptions of Job Growth Strong, Except Among Actively Disengaged Employees

84

U nited S tates

and C anada

Hiring new people and expanding
the size of its workforce

Not changing
the size of its workforce

17

29

42

44

41

12

0%

29

20%

39

47

A 2013 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development report predicts unemployment rates in the U.S. andCanada will decline modestly through the end of 2014. Overall, perceptions of job growth among employees in the twocountries seem to support that prediction: According to Gallup data collected in 2011 and 2012, 40% report that theiremployer is currently hiring
new people, while 17%report that their employer isletting people go. However,
Actively Disengaged workers in the U.S. and Canada
while engaged employees
More Than Twice as Likely as Engaged workers to Say
in the two countries are
Their companies Are Letting People Go
nearly four times as likely to
Engaged Not Engaged Actively Disengaged
report that their employers
are hiring as they are to say
100%
they are letting people go,
actively disengaged workers
80%
are as likely to report job
losses at their organizations
60%
as they are to report40%
job growth.

Letting people go and reducing
the size of its workforce

Almost All Engaged Employees in the U.S. and Canada
Experienced Enjoyment the Previous Day
EngagedNot Engaged Actively Disengaged

72
61

60%

68

80%

40

40%

Thriving

12

8

24

20%
0%

88

94

100%

Experienced anger“yesterday”

Experienced enjoyment“yesterday”

Nearly Seven in 10 Engaged Employees “Thriving” vs. Four in 10
Actively Disengaged Workers
Employees’ overall life
evaluations in Canada andthe U.S. are among thehighest in the world, with59% classified as “thriving.”
However, employees who
are least happy at work —i.e., those who are actively
disengaged — are far lesslikely than engaged or not
engaged workers to view
their lives that positively.
Employees’ day-to-day
emotional states also reflect

these differences. Almost
all engaged employees inthe two countries (94%)
and the vast majority of notengaged workers (88%) say
they experienced enjoyment
for much of the previous
day, but that number
falls considerably to 72%
among actively disengaged
employees. Similarly,
actively disengaged
employees are more likely
than other workers to say

they felt angry the previous
day. Perhaps most tellingly,
while slightly less than onethird of employees overall in
the U.S. strongly agree thatthey like what they do eachday, this number doubles
to about two-thirds among
engaged workers.

U nited S tates

and C anada

85

Regional Highlight: Canada

Engaged Workplaces Have a
Productivity Edge in Canada’s Booming
Finance and Energy Sectors
By Jason Cowles, Gallup Managing Consultant
The number of employees in Canada who are engaged — i.e.,
who feel emotionally connected to their workplaces and havethe resources and support they require to succeed — has
dropped from 20% in Gallup’s 2009 analysis to 16% in thecurrent 2011-2012 study. In an economy that did not feelthe full brunt of the 2009 financial crisis and is on a positive
trajectory to a full recovery, significant opportunities exist
for organizations and leaders who can improve engagementlevels in their workforces to capitalize on this growth.

years as demand for qualified workers has far exceeded
supply. This has serious ramifications for the industry as
a whole, because not engaged or actively disengaged
employees have significantly higher safety incidents,
levels of absenteeism, and turnover. Thus, organizations
that have focused on engaging their employees will
benefit tremendously from lower business costs as well as
improved performance outcomes such as higher overall
productivity figures.

Two rapidly growing industries have become the catalyst
for this recovery: the banking and energy sectors. Canada
is widely considered to have the most efficient and safest
banking system in the world. With only five major banks
controlling the majority of the Canadian market, competition
is intense for top talent. However, talented employees areoften not identified, fully utilized, or given the development
opportunities necessary for future leadership positions. This
results in high turnover levels throughout the banks and alargely disengaged workforce.

Canada is uniquely positioned to lead the developed worldon the path to recovery. Given that just 16% of its workers
are engaged, 70% are not engaged, and 14% are actively
disengaged, leaders and managers across all organizations
have the opportunity to shift the pendulum back toward
engaging their human capital. They can do this by working
continuously to incorporate the fundamentals of engagement
into their teams and by creating actionable plans that can bemeasured and executed at every level of the organization.

In the financial services industry, the quality of employeecustomer interactions is of paramount importance and is oneof the leading indicators of growth in banks’ customer base.
With more than 290,000 employees spread across these fiveinstitutions, there is tremendous opportunity for institutions
that grasp the connection between employee engagement
and customer loyalty, put actionable plans in place to improveengagement, and fully use their human capital to driveincreases in productivity and profitability.
In the energy services sector, based largely in western
Canada, wages for skilled labor have skyrocketed in recent

86

U nited S tates

and C anada

Additionally, Canadian organizations traditionally havefocused largely on employee satisfaction as the predominantfactor in determining an employee’s engagement level, andhave failed to capture the emotional attachment component
that characterizes engaged employees and teams. With 84%
of employees in the country not falling into the engaged
category and therefore not giving their full discretionary
effort (in world-class organizations, as many as 60% or moreof workers are engaged), organizations that place a trueemphasis on creating a culture of engagement will emerge
as industry leaders and capitalize on the opportunities arecovering economy provides.

R egion

Latin America
Countries included: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic,
Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay,
Peru, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, Uruguay, and Venezuela

Among the 22 Latin American countries Gallup surveyed
in 2011 and 2012, 21% of employees are engaged, while
60% are not engaged and 19% are actively disengaged.
The resulting ratio of engaged to actively disengaged
EngagedNot engaged

Actively
disengaged

Panama

37%

51%

12%

Brazil

27%

62%

12%

Colombia

26%

61%

13%

employees is 1.1-to-1 — the highest figure among regionsin the developing world and falling only behind the U.S.
and Canada (1.6-to-1) and Australia and New Zealand(1.5-to-1) globally.
With increased foreign direct investment and moderate
GDP growth, the economic environment in Latin America
has improved considerably in the past decade. Further,
unemployment has reached near historic lows for theregion. The positive momentum in the Latin American
job market has heightened the competition for talented
workers among businesses in the region and increased
the importance of building loyalty among employees by
ensuring that they have what they need to be fully engaged
in their jobs.
Individual results available for 18 of the 22 countries in
Latin America vary significantly. In Panama and Costa Rica,

Costa Rica

Guatemala
El Salvador

33%

26%

55%

14%

19%

24%

56%

58%

20%

23%

59%

18%

23%

58%

20%

Uruguay

22%

54%

24%

Venezuela

18%

60%

22%

Argentina

16%

56%

28%

59%

27%

Chile

Dominican
Republic
Bolivia

Nicaragua
HondurasPeru

EcuadorParaguay
Mexico

24%

53%

22%
19%
17%

53%
55%

62%

16%

70%

12%

60%

14%

18%

25%

26%
21%

14%

28%

For results listed in this table, the margin of sampling error ranges from ±2 to ±5 percentage
points. See the appendix for a full listing of margin-of-error estimates by country.

at least one-third of employees are engaged, outnumbering

Engagement rates increase somewhat with Latin American

actively disengaged workers by more than 2-to-1.

employees’ educational attainment levels. Among those with

Conversely, fewer than 15% of employees in Paraguay andno more than an elementary education, actively disengaged

Mexico are engaged and more than a quarter fall into theworkers significantly outnumber engaged employees, while

actively disengaged category.

the opposite is true among college-educated employees.
87Correspondingly, the engaged-actively disengaged ratio is most favorable in job types that tend to require higher levels of
education and provide a more autonomous working environment such as professional workers and those in management orleadership roles.
Notably, the engaged-actively disengaged ratio is lowest among sales workers in Latin America: 16% are engaged, while
21% are actively disengaged. This finding is troubling from a job creation perspective, as it implies many front-line sales
employees in the region may not be in the right role or have the support they need to generate brand loyalty through theirinteractions with customers. As Gallup’s data show, improved customer ratings are among the key performance outcomes
associated with higher levels of employee engagement.

Elementary education or less
Secondary education

Tertiary education

Professional workers

Not engaged

Actively disengaged

17%

58%

25%

25%

60%

14%

25%

63%

12%

23%

60%

17%

21%

51%

28%

57%

22%

64%

19%

22%

61%

Managers/Executives/Officials

24%

Installation/Repair workers

22%

Manufacturing/Production workers

21%

63%

21%

65%

Service workers

Construction/Mining workers

Farming/Fishing/Forestry workers
Clerical/Office workers

Transportation workers
Sales workers

88

Engaged

L atin A merica

21%

18%
16%

67%

57%

63%

17%

9%

21%

16%

15%
21%

Life Evaluations,
Daily Emotions Most
Positive Among
Engaged Employees
Latin Americans tend torespond more positively toquality-of-life questions
than most populations
Gallup surveyed worldwide.
Slightly more than half of
employees regionwide (55%)
rate their overall lives highly
enough to be considered

EngagedNot Engaged Actively Disengaged

100%

Hiring new people and expanding
the size of its workforce

Not changing
the size of its workforce

11

6

0%

21

20%

17

41

35

40%

54

60%

61

80%

53

Letting people go and reducing
the size of its workforce

Two-Thirds of Engaged Employees in Latin America“Thriving” in Life vs. Less Than Half of Actively
Disengaged Employees
EngagedNot Engaged Actively Disengaged

72

60%

85

80%

80

100%

55
40%

0%

Thriving“thriving” — a far higher
proportion than in any

other developing region. As

14

12

20%

21

42

Slightly more than onethird of Latin Americans
who work for an employer(37%) say those employers
are hiring new people, while
11% say the opposite. These
numbers vary more broadly
by engagement level thanin any other global region
except sub-Saharan Africa.
A majority of employees
in Latin America who are
engaged in their jobs (53%)
say their organizations are
expanding the size of theirworkforces, while about
one-third of not engaged
and one-fifth of actively
disengaged employees
say the same. Conversely,
actively disengaged
employees are almost threetimes as likely as engaged
employees to report that
their organizations areletting people go (17% vs.
6%, respectively).

Most OF Engaged latin american Employees Say Their
Employers Are Hiring, Compared with One-Fifth of
Actively Disengaged Employees

66

Employee
Engagement More
Strongly AssociatedWith Job Creation in
Latin America Than in
Most Regions

Experienced anger“yesterday”

than half (42%) of actively
disengaged workers.

in other regions, however,While about half ofview their lives differently

overall strongly agree thatof engagement at work.

each day, that figure rises

two-thirds (66%) arein five among engaged

employees in Latin America

employees in Latin America

according to their level

they like what they do

Among engaged employees,

to slightly more than four

thriving, compared with lessemployees. Further, as

Experienced enjoyment“yesterday”

in most regions, Latin

America’s engaged workers
are the ones most likely
to say they experienced
enjoyment for much of

the day before the survey,
while actively disengaged
employees are thosemost likely to say theyexperienced anger theprevious day.

L atin A merica

89Regional Highlight: Latin America

AN ENGAGED POLICE FORCE MAKES
COMMUNITIES SAFER
By Jesus Rios, Gallup Regional Director
In 2010, a national police corps in Latin America initiated a strategy aimed at creating a more humane, trust-based relationshipbetween police officers and the citizens they serve. Senior leaders in this institution were convinced that it needed toovercome the legacy of a militaristic, “results at any cost” mindset that often led to undue pressure in the workplace, frequent
personnel relocations, and lack of regard for officer work-life balance. Further, such excessive operational focus often led
to behaviors that hurt the corps’ relationship with local communities and damaged its reputation, both nationally and in theinternational human rights community.
Because the foundation of this program is great relationships in the workplace, senior leaders of this corps enlisted Gallup to
help them improve the engagement of their police force. In the first wave of this initiative, 1,633 senior officers took the Q12
survey and participated in action-planning sessions. Gallup demonstrated in this first wave that operational units led by highly
engaged senior officers had the best reduction in high-impact crime rate, were involved in fewer disciplinary investigations, andachieved better citizen satisfaction scores than operational units led by less engaged senior officers.
In the second and third waves, approximately 5,000 officers in 151 substations took part in the Q12 employee engagement
survey and an accompanying change initiative. A Business Impact Analysis revealed that substations in which Q12 overall meanscores improved by at least 0.2 percentage points outperformed all other substations at increasing the number of capturesand narcotics seizures, as well as reducing household break-ins, personal thefts, and business thefts. Moreover, substations
with large Q12 mean score improvements (0.5 points or more) experienced twice the improvement in total captures seen by
substations with no Q12 gains (72% vs. 36%, respectively).
This important initiative demonstrates that Gallup’s employee engagement science is not only effective in improving businessrelated outcomes like profitability, but can also help public-sector institutions address important governance issues such as
crime reduction and community vigilance.

90

L atin A merica

R egion

Western Europe
Countries included: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Italy,
Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and theUnited Kingdom

Among the 19 Western European countries Gallup
measured in 2011 and 2012, 14% of employees areengaged, while 66% are not engaged and 20% are
EngagedNot engaged

Actively
disengaged

21%

69%

10%

Portugal

19%

65%

UnitedKingdom

actively disengaged. The resulting ratio of engaged toactively disengaged employees is 0.7-to-1 — a low figurecompared with other parts of the developed world suchas the U.S. and Canada (1.6-to-1) and Australia and New
Zealand (1.5-to-1).
Many countries in Western Europe — including France,
Ireland, Italy, and Spain — continue to suffer from severe
employment crises, particularly among young people.
Residents of these countries are among the least likely
in the world to say it is a good time to find a job in theircommunities. Low levels of confidence in local job markets
may lead many workers to remain in workplaces that fail toengage them, rather than seeking employment elsewhere.
Though employee engagement results vary significantly
among Western European countries, in no country do
engaged employees make up more than about one-fifth ofthe employed population. What’s more, in only seven of theDenmark
Malta

61%

20%

18%

62%

20%

17%

57%

26%

Iceland

16%

75%

10%

Norway16%

77%

Switzerland

16%

76%

Spain

IrelandSweden

19%

16%

16%

Germany

15%

Austria

14%

Slovenia

16%

65%

20%

73%

12%

61%

24%

74%

12%

72%

14%

7%
8%

15%

70%

14%

68%

Belgium

12%

66%

22%

France

9%

65%

26%

Italy

Luxembourg

FinlandNetherlands

14%
11%
9%

76%

80%

16%

18%

14%
11%

For results listed in this table, the margin of sampling error ranges from ±1 to ±6 percentage
points. See the appendix for a full listing of margin-of-error estimates by country.

19 countries surveyed do engaged employees outnumber
those who are actively disengaged.

91

Engagement rates are slightly higher among Western Europeans with an elementary education or less than among
those with a college education. Further, those in job types that tend to require more education — such as professionals
and managers, executives, and officials — are no more likely to be engaged than those in more routinized job types likemanufacturing and construction. In the region’s generally weak job markets, many highly educated workers may be forced tosettle for jobs that fail to use their education — and thus are less likely than their less-educated peers to feel that they havethe chance to do what they do best every day.
EngagedNot engaged

Actively disengaged

17%

62%

Tertiary education

12%

65%

21%

69%

20%

Farming/Fishing/Forestry workers

22%

63%

15%

Managers/Executives/Officials

15%

Sales workers

14%

Elementary education or less

Secondary education

Construction/Mining workers
Professional workers

64%

14%

69%

17%

65%

21%

14%

Clerical/Office workers

13%

Manufacturing/Production workers

Installation/Repair workers

W estern E urope

19%

17%

Service workers

Transportation workers

92

15%

14%

13%
9%

69%
65%
61%

63%

63%

68%

19%
16%
21%

25%

24%

24%
23%

Not Engaged Actively Disengaged

100%
80%

0%

Not changing
the size of its workforce

22

34

Hiring new people and expanding
the size of its workforce

16

18

29

20%

48

40%

49

50

60%

34

Letting people go and reducing
the size of its workforce

Actively Disengaged Employees in Western europe
About twice as likely as engaged employees to feelanger
EngagedNot Engaged Actively Disengaged

60%
40%

The severity of Western
Europe’s debt crisis andthe accompanying austerity
measures in many countries
may help explain whylife evaluations in mostof the region tend to belower than those in othereconomically developed
regions. In November 2012,
workers in Spain, Portugal,
Greece, Italy, France, andBelgium protested against
cuts that lowered wages andreduced social protection

0%35

Six in 10 Engaged
Workers Are“Thriving”

63

80%

80

87

100%

53
Thriving

14

24

20%

13

Overall, 28% of employees
living in Western Europe
say their employer is hiring
new people and expanding
the size of its workforce,
while somewhat fewer —23% — say the opposite.
Engaged employees in theregion, however, are twice
as likely to report theirworkplaces are hiring (34%)
as they are to say they areletting people go (16%).
Among actively disengaged
employees, those figures
are reversed: 34% say theirorganizations are letting
people go, while 18% saythey are hiring.

Engaged

59

Engaged, Actively
Disengaged Workers
Have Opposing Views
of Job Creation in
Their Workplaces

Engaged Employees in Western Europe about
Twice as Likely as Actively Disengaged to Say Their
Employer Is hiring

Experienced anger“yesterday”

Experienced enjoyment“yesterday”

programs. Regionwide, 50%

in Western Europe are

only factors that contributework for an employer are

lives highly enough to be

they the most important,of Western Europeans who

more likely to rate their“thriving” in their overall

considered thriving andin the U.S. and Canada

positive emotional state the

New Zealand.

results demonstrate Gallup’s

However, as in virtually all

it comes to one’s job, pay

lives, compared with 59%

more likely to have been in aand 66% in Australia andday before the survey. These

regions, engaged employees

consistent finding that whenand benefits are not theto life quality. Nor are
given that employees’

feelings of empowerment

and emotional connection
to their workplaces are
significantly related to
the way they evaluate
and experience theirlives overall.

W estern E urope

93Regional Highlight: Germany

Germany Has A Serious Management
Problem
By Marco Nink, Gallup Senior Practice Consultant
The specter of employee disengagement is haunting the German economy. Just 15% of workers in Germany are engaged with
their jobs, while 61% are not engaged and 24% are actively disengaged, according to Gallup Daily tracking. This doesn’t bodewell for the health of the German economy. Gallup estimates that actively disengaged employees cost the economy over 100
billion euros per year in lost productivity.
German companies must get a handle on this negative development. If more and more employees fail to bring their best effort
to work every day — regardless of what generation they belong to — it’s because companies are failing to create a culture thatmeets employees’ needs and expectations.
In particular, companies should investigate the criteria they use to promote people in their organization and closely evaluate
how effectively their managers motivate and inspire people. Companies also must recognize that building employee
engagement takes talent, and promoting people who lack the talent to manage hurts workers, companies, and profits.
A key problem is that German management education pays little attention to actually managing people. The M.B.A. degreereflects that the educational emphasis is on managing finances and administering processes. But good management also
requires a focus on people, something that German companies currently lack. In far too many businesses, employees withthe longest tenure or the greatest subject-matter expertise are moved into management, regardless of whether they have an
aptitude for managing people.
As a result, the talent for managing people is more of an accidental dividend than a desired characteristic among German
managers. Managers who can engage their workers will build better, more profitable teams — but companies that don’t
understand this talent and don’t look for it won’t successfully recruit engaging managers. By ignoring the benefits ofengagement and the managerial talent to support it, German companies will continue to leave their financial well-being
to chance.

94

W estern E urope

Regional Highlight: United Kingdom

United Kingdom: Great Companies
Strengthen Employee Focus During
Difficult Times
By Peter Flade, Gallup Managing Partner
In 2012, the number of people in the United Kingdom who
felt involved and enthused at work remained static at slightly
fewer than one in five — but there is, paradoxically, good
news. As leaders across the U.K. face the harsh realitiesof the Great Recession, the country’s employees are more
likely to be engaged at work than are employees in other key
European economies, including Germany and France.
Employee engagement has not decreased significantlyin the U.K. despite the ongoing European financial crisisand the widespread uncertainty it has created. It could bethat employees have lowered their workplace expectations
amid the crisis and their own fear of losing their jobs — but
this is unlikely because people experience engagement in
the moment, and it is primarily an emotional rather than arational state. A multiyear Gallup study released in 2013,
which examined why some companies are able to buck the
global trend of miserable workplaces, reveals that exemplar
companies never use macroeconomic conditions as an
excuse for not creating an engaged workforce. Quite theopposite — difficult times spur them on toward greater
efforts to keep their employees loyal and optimistic about theorganization’s future.
Thus, a more plausible explanation may be that U.K.
leaders are more focused on the spirit and outlook of theiremployees during difficult times, when followers need thatkind of leadership the most. My advice to leaders facing thischallenging economic climate is to seize the opportunities toimplement strategies to increase employee engagement:
1. Engaged employees are outnumbered by actively
disengaged workers in U.K. workplaces. In other words,
for every enthusiastic employee in the U.K.’s labor force,
there is more than one who is actively disengaged. This
compares with ratios of two engaged employees for every
actively disengaged employee in Denmark and Norway.

It is revealing that the most engaged workplaces Gallup
has studied — a handful of which are in the U.K. — haveon average nine engaged employees for every actively
disengaged one.
2. Eliminating active disengagement would add more than
£50 billion to the U.K. economy. Gallup research reveals
that eliminating active disengagement from the workforce
would result in a significant increase in output per worker.
This increase, applied against the current average output
per U.K. worker, would amount to between £52 billion and£70 billion (approximately US$83 billion to $112 billion) in
productivity gains nationwide per year.
3. Most employees are “not engaged,” representing prime
opportunities to increase productivity. Fifty-sevenpercent of employees in the U.K. fall into the gray areaof just being not engaged at work. These people feelno meaningful attachment to their job and/or company.
Sadly, it probably wouldn’t take a great deal to get themengaged; replacing or retraining their current manager
would probably do the trick.
4. Engagement bolsters emotional well-being in stressful
times. Work is the primary activity for many people during
their waking hours, so their engagement level affects theextent to which they enjoy their lives. Ninety-one percent
of U.K. employees who are engaged at work say theyexperienced enjoyment “yesterday,” versus 72% of those
who are actively disengaged. More worrying, actively
disengaged workers are at least twice as likely as those
who are engaged to say they experienced anger or stressyesterday. In other words, jobs to which people give theirfull involvement and enthusiasm act as a bulwark to otherpressures, probably including those emanating from theongoing economic stress.
W estern E urope95R egion

Commonwealth of
Independent States
and Nearby Countries
Countries included: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia1, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova,
Mongolia2, Russia, Tajikistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan

Gallup measured employee engagement levels in 2011 and2012 in nine former Soviet republics in the Commonwealthof Independent States (CIS) and participating CIS member
Ukraine, former CIS member Georgia, and former Soviet
satellite state Mongolia. Among these countries, 18% of
employees are engaged, while 62% are not engaged and
21% are actively disengaged. The resulting ratio of engaged
to actively disengaged employees is 0.86-to-1, which
compares favorably with other transitional economies inCentral and Eastern Europe (0.4-to-1).

Not engaged

Actively
disengaged

23%

50%

28%

19%

63%

19%

Moldova

22%

Ukraine10%

Azerbaijan

5%

RussiaBelarus

9%

62%

16%

67%

23%

63%

32%

58%

33%

For results listed in this table, the margin of sampling error ranges from ±3 to ±6 percentage
points. See the appendix for a full listing of margin-of-error estimates by country.

Though employee engagement results vary significantly

Having a college education is associated with higher

among these CIS and nearby countries, engaged

engagement levels among employees living in countries

employees do not make up more than one-quarter of thein this group. Relatedly, employees in leadership roles

working population for any of them. In Ukraine, Belarus, and— including managers, executives, and officials — post

Azerbaijan, engaged employees make up one-tenth or lessthe strongest engagement results among job types inof all residents who work for an employer. Further, in fivethese countries. This is a positive sign for workplacesof the six reportable countries, the percentage of engaged

in the region, as Gallup research has consistently

employees is equal to or less than the percentage who aredemonstrated that the quality of workers’ managers is vital

actively disengaged.

to employees’ engagement.

1 Although included in this group of countries, Georgia withdrew from the CIS in 2009.
2 Mongolia is included because of its proximity to other countries in the group.

96

Kazakhstan

EngagedEngagedNot engaged

Actively disengaged

Elementary education or less

15%

52%

33%

Secondary education

Tertiary education

16%

23%

63%
61%

16%

Managers/Executives/Officials

34%

53%

13%

Construction/Mining workers

23%

Professional workers

23%

Installation/Repair workers

Service workers

Sales workers

24%

58%

28%

67%

20%

63%

25%

13%

65%

12%

Manufacturing/Production workers

57%

66%

13%

Farming/Fishing/Forestry workers

12%

18%
14%

Transportation workers

65%
52%

19%

Clerical/Office workers

21%

25%
16%

22%

61%

12%

27%

Reports of Job Creation Among the Lowest Worldwide, Except Among Engaged Employees
Perceptions of job creation are lowest in the world among employees living in CIS and neighboring countries. Overall, 24%
report that their employers are hiring new people, the lowest figure among all regional groups; however, the 26% figure forCentral and Eastern Europe is statistically similar. Nearly four in 10 engaged workers say their employers are expanding thesize of their workforces, compared with about two in 10 not engaged or actively disengaged employees.

Engaged Employees in the CIS and Nearby Countries
Are Almost Twice as Likely as Other Workers to Say
Their Employer Is Hiring New People
EngagedNot Engaged Actively Disengaged

100%

Hiring new people and expanding
the size of its workforce

24
Not changing
the size of its workforce

12

22

8

0%

21

20%

39

40%

52

60%

54

67

80%

Letting people go and reducing
the size of its workforce

C ommonwealth of I ndependent S tates and N earby C ountries

97About Half of Actively disengaged employees in the CIS and
Nearby Countries felt enjoyment the previous day
EngagedNot Engaged Actively Disengaged

100%

74

84

80%

Thriving

19

12

0%

11

15

25

20%

41

40%

51

60%

Experienced anger“yesterday”

Experienced enjoyment“yesterday”

Engaged Employees Significantly More Likely Than Other Workers to
Be “Thriving”
Regionwide, 26% of thoseliving in the CIS and nearby
countries who work for an
employer give overall life
ratings that put them inthe “thriving” category,similar to the thriving
figure among employees
in Central and Eastern
Europe. Among engaged
workers living in the CIS
and neighboring countries,

98

four in 10 are thriving intheir overall lives, comparedwith 15% of actively
disengaged employees.
Similarly, engaged
employees have morepositive daily emotional
experiences than notengaged or actively
disengaged workers. They
are almost five times as

C ommonwealth of I ndependent S tates and N earby C ountries

likely as actively disengaged
employees to strongly agree
that they like what they
do each day. The benefitsof liking what they do arereflected in higher rates ofenjoyment and the lower
rates of anger among
engaged employees whencompared with those whoare actively disengaged.

Regional Highlight: Russia

Russia’s Opportunity to Boost
Economic Productivity and Growth
By Izabella Khazagerova, Gallup Associate Principal
Modern Russia has a number of workforce advantages, including high literacy and labor participation rates, and a highproportion of people with post-secondary education. Yet Gallup’s 2012 data show that more than 80% of the country’s
employees are less than engaged at work — i.e., they lack an emotional connection to their workplaces and are notenthusiastic about their jobs. Further, almost one-fifth of all Russian workers are actively disengaged, meaning they harbor
negativity about their jobs that prevents them from creating value for their organizations. Instead, they often do more harm than
good and hinder Russia’s overall economic performance.
Fostering employee engagement thus represents a huge untapped potential to increase labor productivity in Russia. The
country’s GDP per hour worked is about 40% that of the U.S., where employees are more likely to be engaged at work. If
Russian employers could move Russia’s actively disengaged workers (currently 19% of all employees) into the neutral — i.e.,“not engaged” — group, they could increase their output per worker by 3.86%. This increase, applied to the US$42,635
average output per worker in Russia, amounts to US$1,646 per person, or over US$116 billion overall.
Russia is rightly investing in projects to increase productivity through innovation and technology, as represented by the
Skolkovo Innovation Center near Moscow. But attempts to create a more innovative culture will do little to increase the average
productivity of Russian employees unless they are accompanied by organizational changes designed to win the hearts andminds of those employees. The following are among the most important considerations in pursuing that goal:
1. Improve the Quality of Management andLeadership. Gallup research has demonstrated that ateam’s immediate manager is responsible for the lion’sshare of its members’ engagement. A great manager
can create the motivation and energy a team needs toperform well, while a bad one can destroy that motivationand spread discontent among employees. This has huge
implications for business outcomes; for example, highly
engaged teams have 48% fewer workplace accidents
and 41% fewer defects than those with low engagementlevels. Organizational leaders must remove managers
who consistently fail to engage their employees, musthire and promote for leadership talent, and must provide
more opportunities to develop and reward people
management skills.

2. Promote a Culture of Trust and Integrity: Seventyseven percent of Russians surveyed in 2012 said
corruption is widespread within the country’s businesses.
Leading organizations committed to change should
implement sound corporate governance and a zerotolerance policy for unethical behavior to assist in creating
empowered and productive workforces. These can include
methods for reporting such behavior anonymously and bepromoted organizationwide to help promote a culture oftrust and integrity.
3. Give More Opportunities to Older Generations.
Workers in Russia aged 50 and older are 1.4
percentage points less likely than those aged 25 to
34 to strongly agree that their opinions count. Many
Russian organizations fail to maximize the potential of

C ommonwealth of I ndependent S tates and N earby C ountries

99

older employees, instead providing more opportunities
to younger, less experienced workers. This mindset
originated in the 1990s, when the transition from aplanned to a market-based economy depended on
workers’ flexibility and agility. In 21st century Russia,
however, there is a greater demand for seasoned “people
managers” and specialists with extensive experience.
Employees from older generations are best positioned tosatisfy this demand.
4. Continuously Strive to Eliminate Disengagement
and Measure Progress. Workplaces in Russia that
implement engagement strategies achieve a ratio offive engaged employees for every actively disengaged
employee, compared with the overall Russian working
population ratio of 1-to-1. These examples show that it
is possible to foster an engaging workplace culture in
Russia and use it as a strong competitive advantage.
Organizations can achieve this through strategic initiatives
aimed at overcoming barriers to engagement (e.g., acommand-and-control culture, fear of speaking out, or asilo mentality) and fostering engagement enablers (e.g.,
empowerment and accountability, a culture of open andhonest dialogue, and frequent collaboration).
Focusing on the key strategies outlined above — andcontinuously tracking progress on those strategies — will
make a significant contribution to Russian employees’
productivity, in turn fueling organizational growth andstrengthening Russia’s economy.

Fostering employee
engagement represents ahuge untapped potential
to increase laborproductivity in Russia.

100

C ommonwealth of I ndependent S tates and N earby C ountries

R egionCentral andEastern Europe
Countries included: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus,
Czech Republic, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Kosovo, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia,
Montenegro, North Cyprus, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, and Turkey

Among the 20 Central and Eastern European countries
Gallup surveyed in 2011 and 2012, 11% of employees areengaged, while 63% are not engaged and 26% are actively
disengaged. The ratio of engaged to actively disengaged
employees is 0.42-to-1 — a low figure even when comparedwith other transitional economies such as those in the
Commonwealth of Independent States and nearby
countries (0.86-to-1).
Residents of the Central and Eastern European countries
Gallup surveyed are among the least likely in the world
to say it is a good time to find a job in their communities.
Regionwide, 24% of employees say they are satisfied withthe availability of good jobs. Low levels of confidence in thelabor market could lead workers to remain in workplaces
where they feel no emotional connection rather than seek
more engaging employment elsewhere.

EngagedPoland17%

Latvia13%

Estonia

Not engaged
68%

Actively
disengaged
15%

16%

64%

20%

12%

68%

21%

11%

69%

20%

11%

69%

20%

10%

62%

28%

9%

58%

33%

Czech
Republic

8%

62%

30%

Croatia

7%
3%

60%

33%

Bulgaria

Macedonia

Albania

Montenegro

Slovakia

Hungary

Lithuania

Bosnia andHerzegovina

Turkey

12%
11%

11%

72%
57%

58%
56%

65%

15%

32%
31%

33%

32%

For results listed in this table, the margin of sampling error ranges from ±2 to ±8 percentage
points. See the appendix for a full listing of margin-of-error estimates by country.

Though employee engagement results vary significantly

disengaged employees is close to one-third. Further, in 13

among workers in Central and Eastern European countries,of the 14 countries measured, actively disengaged workers

engaged employees do not make up more than one-fifth

outnumber engaged employees. And in eight of the 14of the working population in any of them. In seven ofcountries, there are more than twice as many actively

the 14 reportable countries, the percentage of actively

disengaged employees as engaged employees.

101Engagement rates increase among employees living in Central and Eastern Europe who have a college education.
Conversely, those with an elementary education or less are more than twice as likely to be actively disengaged as employeeswith a college degree. Similarly, engagement is higher among occupations that typically require more education and tend
to be characterized by more autonomy and influence such as managers and professional workers. Engagement among morelabor-intensive occupations is low, with, for example, 2% of farming/fishing/forestry workers engaged at work.

Elementary education or lessNot engaged

Actively disengaged

11%

57%

32%

Secondary education

10%
17%

63%

68%

27%

Managers/Executives/Officials

26%

63%

11%

Clerical/Office workers

13%

68%

Service workers

11%

59%

30%

59%

33%

Tertiary education

Professional workers

Installation/Repair workers

18%
11%

69%
67%

15%

13%
19%

22%

Construction/Mining workers

10%

63%

Sales workers

7%

65%

28%

Farming/Fishing/Forestry workers

2%

58%

40%

Manufacturing/Production workers

Transportation workers

102

EngagedC entral and E astern E urope

8%
6%

69%

27%

25%

Among employees inCentral and Eastern
Europe, 24% rate theirlives highly enough to
be considered “thriving”

EngagedNot Engaged Actively Disengaged

100%

50

0%

34

Hiring new people and expanding
the size of its workforce

10

16

20%

Not changing
the size of its workforce

13

28

40%

52

60%

59

80%

37

Letting people go and reducing
the size of its workforce

Engaged Employees in Central and Eastern Europe
are three times as likely as actively disengaged to be“thriving”
EngagedNot Engaged Actively Disengaged

87

100%

74

80%

0%

overall, which is slightly
below the global figureof 28% among employees
Gallup interviewed
worldwide. Engaged
employees are thriving at
a much higher rate (41%)
than the overall population,
while the actively

26

38
Thriving

21

20%

13

40%

50

60%

26

Unemployment remains
very high among mostCentral and Eastern
European countries —particularly the Balkan
states, where the WorldBank recently reported
the unemployment rate
is at more than 20% andcontinues to rise. In Central
and Eastern Europe, 26%of the employed population
overall reports that theiremployer is hiring new
people, which is one of thelowest figures in all regions
where Gallup surveyed
worldwide. As among
most countries in Central
and Eastern Europe,
however, responses vary
widely by employees’ levelof workplace engagement.
The engaged population
is more than two times as
likely to report that theirorganization is expanding(37%) as the actively
disengaged population is(16%). Conversely, actively
disengaged employees
are more than threetimes as likely to say theiremployer is letting peoplego (34%) as are engaged
employees (10%).

Engaged Employees in Central and Eastern Europe
More Likely to Say Their Employer Is Expanding

41

Engaged Employees
Most Likely to Report
Badly Needed Job
Creation

Experienced anger“yesterday”

disengaged are thriving at amuch lower rate (13%).
Similarly, engaged
employees are more likely
to report positive emotional
states the day before thesurvey, experiencing higher
rates of enjoyment andlower rates of anger thanExperienced enjoyment“yesterday”

those who are not engaged
or actively disengaged.
Engaged employees inCentral and Eastern Europe
are more than two times
as likely as the region’s
employed population overall
to strongly agree that they
like what they do each day.

C entral and E astern E urope

103Regional Highlight: Poland

Energy in Engaged Workplaces Will
Help Fuel Poland’s Return to HighGrowthBy Anna Manchin, Gallup Regional Director, and Sathya Srinivasan, Gallup Managing Consultant
The Polish economy is outside of the eurozone and, aided by the country’s fiscal policies and large internal market, was among
the European economies least affected by the global downturn. Poland’s 2011-2012 employee engagement results reflect
similar percentages of engaged (17%) and actively disengaged (15%) workers; as in most countries, however, the bulk of
Polish employees (68%) fall into the middle “not engaged” category.
About one in three Polish employees strongly agree that their job allows them to do what they do best each day, and one infour strongly agree that their opinions seem to count at work. Perhaps most notably, only one in five strongly agree that theirsupervisor encourages their development.
As in virtually all countries, Poland could reap economic benefits from a more engaged workforce — particularly in areas
where Eastern European workforces tend to score lower than Western European ones, such as individual attention toemployee development. In this regard, employees’ immediate managers can make all the difference by talking to individual
team members about their progress and supporting their development, as well as clarifying how their jobs support thecompany’s overall mission and purpose.
The Polish operations of one multinational insurance company offer a good example of the momentum boost that an increasein engagement can bring, even in a short time. As a result of action plans focused on improving workplace communicationand employee recognition, as well as identifying poorly performing managers, RSA Poland’s ratio of engaged to actively
disengaged workers climbed from 5.33-to-1 in 2011 to 18.75-to-1 in 2012. Division leaders noted that there was a renewedenergy in the workplace, and that even visitors to RSA Poland could tell the difference.
Moving forward, more Polish businesses will need to find ways to heighten employees’ positivity and enthusiasm for their jobs.
Over the past decade, the country has become one of Eastern Europe’s economic success stories, thanks to its liberalization
reforms of the 1990s and European Union membership since 2004. However, ongoing economic success is hardly a given:in the first quarter of 2013, Poland’s GDP growth slowed to its lowest level since the early days of the global financial crisis.
To help guarantee long-term economic gains, Polish leaders must consider how to boost the productivity of the country’s
workforce — a strategy that will require businesses to focus on maximizing employee engagement.

104

C entral and E astern E urope

Engagement
Around theWorld:
Summing Up
Although 13% of employed respondents worldwide are engaged intheir jobs, regional results vary considerably according to economic
and cultural conditions. The makeup of a given workforce isa major factor in these results, as Gallup consistently findsthat average engagement levels vary by industry and job type.
Generally, employees whose roles are more likely to require higher
levels of autonomy and self-expression — such as professional
workers and managers or executives — are more likely than thosein less individualized roles to be engaged.
However, great managers work to ensure that employees in anyrole have enough latitude in how they do their jobs to develop
a sense of ownership over and pride in their work. The best
managers do this by clearly defining the outcomes for which
employees are responsible, and then letting them find their own
route toward those results. As the case study on the police force in
Latin America demonstrates, employee engagement is associatedwith improved performance across job types — even in those forwhich the “workplace” may be an entire community.
Links Between Engagement and Perceptions of Job Creation,
Life Quality Are Present Worldwide
The finding that engaged employees are most likely to report job growth intheir organizations is consistent worldwide. To some extent, this relationshipmay result from a variation in engagement levels among job types for which﻿

105For many students in the developed world, a four-yearcollege degree may not be the best path to a job thatmakes the most of their inherent talents.
there is more or less demand. For example, in sub-SaharanAfrica, engagement is highest among professional workers;
these workers are most likely to say their employers are
hiring. However, differences tend to persist even within job
categories: 61% of engaged professionals in sub-SaharanAfrica say their employers are hiring, compared with 26% ofactively disengaged professionals.
The links between employees’ engagement and their life
ratings are also present worldwide. Among all global
regions, engaged workers are at least 1.6 times as likely as
actively disengaged workers to be “thriving” in their overall
lives. The ratio is highest in South Asia, where engaged
employees are 5.5 times as likely to be thriving as those whoare actively disengaged.
Engaged employees are almost universally more likely todescribe a more positive emotional state the day before theinterview. It is important to note that the causality in these
relationships could run both ways — i.e., happier people
who are more optimistic about their lives may also be more
optimistic about their workplace conditions. The world’s
best managers take workplace engagement and well-being
indicators into account when considering employees’ needs,
understanding that workers who are engaged at work andthriving in their overall lives tend to be at their healthiest
and most productive.

Regional Differences Highlight Need to Align
Education With Employers’ Needs
The regional data indicate interesting patterns in therelationship between employees’ educational attainment
and their likelihood to be engaged at work. In developing
regions where higher education is less common — such106

as sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia
— engagement trends upward with education. In suchregions, university degrees are almost certain to lead to job

types that make good use of their relatively rare levels of
expertise. For most developing countries, increases in accessto higher levels of education go hand in hand with economic
diversification and development. However, in economicallydeveloped countries where higher education levels arecommonplace, the opposite may be true, as well-educatedpeople may be less able to find jobs that they feel allow themto do what they do best. Studies show that 50% of recent
college graduates in the U.S. are unemployed or in jobs that
don’t require a college degree. Brandon Busteed, Executive
Director of Gallup’s Education Division notes that this
implies a “big disconnect between degrees conferred and thejobs available today.”
Gallup’s data underline the importance of aligningeducation with labor market conditions to maximize
employee engagement and productivity. For many students
in the developed world, a four-year college degree may
not be the best path to a job that makes the most of theirinherent talents. Trade and technical schools may needmore focus as alternatives to four-year colleges, particularly
in developed countries that are currently seeking to restore
their manufacturing bases.
The common thread in all countries is that expanding thetypes of educational opportunities available will help more
students obtain a greater sense of where their talents lie.
Employee engagement hinges on people’s capacity to seek
— and find — jobs that allow them to do what they do bestand on managers giving employees the latitude they need touse their strengths in their daily work lives.

﻿ E ngagement A round the W orld : S umming U p

What theBest

Do Differently
It bears repeating that only 13% of the world’s workers are engaged in their jobs. Given the proven links
between employee engagement and financial outcomes, if organizations worldwide could find a way
to double the number of engaged employees, it would dramatically improve their balance sheets andchange the world’s entire economic trajectory.
Doubling the number of engaged employees may seem unrealistic, but Gallup sees these sorts of substantial increases
in employee engagement all the time — regardless of country or region. If the successes Gallup’s clients achieve are any
indication, doubling the number of engaged employees is not wishful thinking — many of our clients, both large and small,are already doing it or are well on their way. The median engagement level among all of Gallup’s clients is 47%, and it iseven higher among our best clients, the winners of the 2013 Gallup Great Workplace Award. These organizations have an
average of 63% engaged employees and boast nine engaged employees for every actively disengaged employee — a ratio thatis more than 16 times the global average.
The best organizations that Gallup has studied deeply integrate employee engagement into the following four areas:
1.

Strategy and Leadership Philosophy. Although more organizations worldwide are beginning to recognize thecentral role employee engagement plays in driving profit and growth, leaders still fail to provide a clear vision
to their people of how engagement connects to the company’s mission and growth strategy. If leaders portray
employee engagement simply as a survey or a human resources initiative — or worse, aren’t involved at all — they
will not realize the business results we’ve outlined in this report. The best leaders understand that there is anemotional undercurrent to everything they do, which affects how they conduct business every day. They take astrategic, top-down approach to engaging leadership teams and then cascade engagement through the ranks ofmanagers to employees on the front lines.

2. Accountability and Performance. Highly engaged organizations hold managers accountable — not just for theirteam’s engagement, but also for how it relates to their team’s overall performance. They embed engagement into
managers’ balanced scorecards and use it as performance evaluation criteria. What’s more, the most engaged
organizations that Gallup works with infuse engagement into their culture through the tone their leadership sets
and the way employees and managers do their work. Engagement permeates every conversation, whether it’s a oneon-one meeting, a team huddle, or a regional assessment.

﻿107

3. Communication and Knowledge Management. Leaders in the best organizations take a strategic approach
to aligning their employee engagement communication efforts. They find ways to communicate engagement’s
impact throughout the year and share engagement tools and best practices within the organization. They use
every opportunity, touchpoint, and available communication channel to reinforce and recognize the organization’scommitment to employee engagement. Employee engagement is fully integrated into the organization’s lexicon.
4. Development and Ongoing Learning Opportunities. The world’s top-performing organizations startengaging employees from the minute they show up on the first day. These organizations have well-defined andcomprehensive leader and manager development programs, but they also go one step further — they fully integrate
employee engagement into these programs. They take leaders’ and managers’ development seriously and focus on
the development of individuals and teams. Employee engagement is a fundamental consideration in their people
strategy.
The most highly engaged organizations do not get that way by accident; it takes proper execution, hard work, andperseverance to master the integration of each of these four critical components. These top-performing organizations areoutcomes-focused. They define and rigorously measure success at every level in the organization in a way that focuses every
person, team, department, and business unit on driving performance and results.
Transformation is not easy — it takes a lot of energy and effort to initiate change, and even more to build on thatmomentum — but it is possible. As our research shows, the benefits are tremendous for organizations that get it right.
They are more productive and profitable. They are more likely to retain top talent and attract new talent because their
engaged culture differentiates them from other workplaces. They get the most from their employees by tapping into their
passion, potential, and discretionary efforts. And they get the most from their customers when employees become brandambassadors for the company and learn to maximize each customer interaction.
These organizations consistently outperform their competitors, and they consistently grow and thrive — even in challenging
economic times.
Right now, the bleak reality is that 63% of the world’s employees have essentially checked out, and an additional 24% areacting out their unhappiness and undermining the accomplishments of the 13% who are committed to innovation andorganizational progress.
We hope this report will serve as a wake-up call to business leaders worldwide who are serious about putting theircompanies — and their countries — back on the path to real, sustainable growth.

108﻿﻿ W hat the B est D o D ifferently

Ed O’Boyle

Jim Harter, Ph.D.

Global Practice Leader

Chief Scientist, Workplace
Management and Well-Being

APPENDIX: METHODOLOGY NOTES AND
REFERENCES
METHODOLOGY
In general, the data in this report came from Gallup’s Q12 Client Database, the Gallup World Poll, and Gallup Daily
tracking studies. Some findings came from Gallup’s 2012 meta-analysis. Please see the following pages for details.


GALLUP’S Q12 CLIENT DATABASE
Gallup’s historical client database contains information from clients who took the Q12 survey between 1996 and 2012.
It holds data from 25 million respondents from 2.8 million workgroups and 1,110 clients in 195 countries and 16
major industries.
Gallup updates its database annually. Findings used to conduct research and set benchmarks are based on three-year
rolling periods. Gallup’s 2013 Q12 Client Database includes data from 2010, 2011, and 2012, with data from 7.8 million

respondents, 1,024,000 workgroups, and 352 clients in 179 countries and 13 major industries.

Gallup’s 2012 Q12 Client Database includes data from 2009, 2010, and 2011, with data from 7.5 million respondents,
965,000 workgroups, and 401 clients in 177 countries and 16 major industries.
Gallup’s 2011 Q12 Client Database includes data from 2008, 2009, and 2010, with data from 7.4 million respondents,
955,000 workgroups, and 491 clients in 180 countries and 16 major industries.


THE GALLUP WORLD POLL
Gallup is entirely responsible for the management, design, and control of the Gallup World Poll, which continually
surveys residents in more than 160 countries, representing more than 98% of the world’s adult population, using randomly
selected, nationally representative samples. Gallup typically surveys 1,000 individuals in each country, using a standard
set of core questions that has been translated into the major languages of the respective country. In some regions,
supplemental questions are asked in addition to core questions. Face-to-face interviews are approximately one hour, while
telephone interviews are about 30 minutes. In many countries, the survey is conducted once per year, and fieldwork is
generally completed in two to four weeks. A full description of each country’s sample size, month/year of data collection,mode of interviewing, languages employed, design effect, margin of error, and details about sample coverage is available
on Gallup.com.
Question Design
Many World Poll questions are items that Gallup has used for years. When developing additional questions, Gallup
employs its worldwide network of research and political scientists to better understand key issues with regard to question
development and construction and data gathering. Hundreds of items were developed, tested, piloted, and finalized. The
best questions were retained for the core questionnaire and organized into indexes. Most items have a simple dichotomous(“yes or no”) response set to minimize contamination of data because of cultural differences in response styles and to
facilitate cross-cultural comparisons.
109Translation
The questionnaire is translated into the major conversational languages of each country. The translation process starts
with an English, French, or Spanish version, depending on the region. One of two translation methods may be used:
1) Two independent translations are completed. An independent third party, with some knowledge of survey researchmethods, adjudicates the differences. A professional translator translates the final version back into the source language. 2)
A translator translates into the target language, and an independent translator back-translates to the source language. An
independent third party with knowledge of survey methods reviews and revises the translation as necessary.
Training and Field Quality Control
Gallup selects vendors based on experience in nationwide survey research studies and conducts in-depth training sessions
with local field staff prior to the start of data collection. To assist the fieldwork team with training and to ensure consistency
and structure, Gallup provides a standardized training manual.
Gallup follows European Society for Opinion and Market Research standards for quality control that at minimum includes
30% quality control. The supervisor accompanies each interviewer for one full interview within the first two days ofinterviewing. The supervisor accompanies interviewers on a minimum of 5% of subsequent interviews. Interviewers re-contact
a minimum of 15% of households to ensure correct execution of random route procedures and within household selection.
Sampling and Data Collection Methodology
With some exceptions, all samples are probability-based and nationally representative of the resident population aged 15
and older. The coverage area is the entire country including rural areas. The sampling frame represents the entire civilian,
non-institutionalized, and aged 15 and older population of the entire country. Exceptions include areas where the safety ofinterviewing staff is threatened, scarcely populated islands in some countries, and areas that interviewers can reach only by
foot, animal, or small boat. Telephone surveys are used in countries where telephone coverage represents at least 80% of the
population or is the customary survey methodology.
In countries where face-to-face surveys are conducted, a three-stage sampling methodology is used. The first stage is
the identification of 100 to 135 ultimate clusters (primary sampling units), consisting of clusters of households. Where
population information is available, sample selection is based on probabilities proportional to population size; otherwise,
simple random sampling is used. In the second stage, random route procedures are used to select sampled households.
Unless an outright refusal occurs, interviewers make up to three attempts to survey the sampled household. In the third
stage, respondents are randomly selected within the selected households by means of the Kish grid.
Data Preparation
Each Gallup World Poll data set goes through a rigorous quality assurance process before being publicly released. Gallup’s
regional directors of survey research review the data for consistency and stability by interviewer and region. If the regional
director suspects a problem, it may be necessary to collect new data. After review by the regional directors, Gallup scientists
perform additional validity reviews. The data are centrally aggregated and cleaned, ensuring correct variable codes andlabels are applied. The data are then reviewed in detail for logical consistency and trends over time. Once the data arecleaned, weighted, and vetted, the final step is to calculate approximate study design effect and margin of error.

110

A P P E N D I X : M E T H O D O LO GY N OT E S A N D R E F E R E N C E SGALLUP DAILY TRACKING
The methodology for the Gallup Daily tracking survey in the U.S. relies on live interviewers and dual-frame telephonesampling (which includes listed landline and RDD cellular phone sampling to reach those in cellphone-only households)
and uses a multi-call design to reach respondents not contacted on the initial attempt. Gallup interviewers employ a “mostrecent birthday” selection method for choosing adult respondents within a landline household. Gallup Daily tracking
includes Spanish-language interviews for Spanish-speaking respondents, and interviews in Alaska and Hawaii.
Gallup weights the data daily by number of adults in the landline household to adjust for any disproportion in selection
probabilities and by the respondents’ reliance on cellphones. Next, Gallup weights the data to compensate for nonrandom
nonresponse, using targets from the U.S. Census Bureau for age, region, gender, education, ethnicity, and race. The
resulting sample represents an estimated 95% of all U.S. households.
Gallup weights data summarized at the state, congressional district, and Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) level twice
per year (for states) or once per year (for congressional districts and MSAs) to ensure that samples are representative of
these areas.


ENDNOTESWORLDWIDE, ONLY 13% OF EMPLOYEES ARE ENGAGED at WORK
Employee Engagement Among the Global Population, 2009-2012: Gallup has conducted two waves of worldwide employee
engagement research, the first based on data collected in 2009 and 2010 and the second, on which this report is based, fromdata collected in 2011 and 2012. For the more recent study, engagement results were collected among 73,752 respondents
in 141 non-U.S. countries via the Gallup World Poll and 151,335 U.S. respondents using Gallup Daily tracking. Employee
engagement questions were asked only of those respondents who indicated they were employed for an employer, either
full time or part time. Only among countries for which at least 300 employed respondents were sampled are country-level
engagement data reported.
Engagement Among Employees, Country by Country: This information comes from Gallup World Poll data gathered in2011 and 2012, except in the U.S. where it is based on Gallup Daily tracking surveys from January-December 2012. The
table lists employee engagement results for each country in which at least 300 employed respondents were sampled, alongwith the percentage-point margin of sampling error associated with each figure.
EngagedNot
engagedActively
disengaged

Albania

11% ±469% ±620% ±5

Algeria

12% ±435% ±5

Argentina

16% ±3Australia

24%±3EngagedNot
engagedActively
disengaged

Austria

14% ±474% ±512% ±453% ±6

Azerbaijan

5% ±3

63% ±632% ±656% ±428% ±4Bahrain

19% ±552% ±729% ±660%

16%Belarus9%58%

33% ±4

±4

±3

±3

±5

Superscripted numbers represent the percentage-point marginof sampling error for each figure. Margin-of-error estimatesincorporate the influence of data weighting.

Superscripted numbers represent the percentage-point marginof sampling error for each figure. Margin-of-error estimatesincorporate the influence of data weighting.

Country-level figures may not add to 100% as a result of rounding

Country-level figures may not add to 100% as a result of rounding

A P P E N D I X : M E T H O D O LO GY N OT E S A N D R E F E R E N C E S

111

112

EngagedNot
engagedActively
disengaged

Belgium

12% ±466% ±622% ±5

Bolivia

23%

58%

20%

Bosnia andHerzegovina

9% ±4

58% ±733% ±6

Botswana

10% ±552% ±838% ±8Brazil

27%

±3

62%

±3

12%

±2

Bulgaria

12%

±4

68%

±5

21%

±5

Canada

16% ±370% ±314% ±3

Chile

24%

±3

58%

±4

18%

±3

±1

68%

±3

26%

±2

±4

±5

±4

EngagedNot
engagedActively
disengaged

Lebanon15% ±355% ±530% ±4

Libya

17%

54%

±6

29% ±5

Lithuania

10% ±362% ±528% ±5

Luxembourg

14% ±472% ±514% ±4

Macedonia

12%

57%

±8

32% ±7

Malaysia

11% ±481% ±4

8% ±3

Malta

19% ±561% ±620% ±5

Mexico

12%

60%

±3

28% ±3

Moldova

22% ±562% ±616% ±4

±5

±5

±2

China

6%

Montenegro

11% ±458% ±631% ±5

Colombia

26% ±461% ±413% ±3

Morocco19% ±551% ±631% ±5

Costa Rica

33% ±453% ±514% ±3

Netherlands

9%

80%

±4

11% ±3

Croatia

3%

±2

65%

±4

32%

±4

New Zealand

23% ±362% ±315% ±2

±3

62%

±5

30%

±5

±3

Czech Republic

8%

Nicaragua

22% ±453% ±525% ±4

Denmark

21% ±569% ±510% ±4

Nigeria

12%

65%

±6

23% ±6

Dominican Republic

23%

±5

59%

±5

18%

±4

Norway16% ±477% ±47% ±3

Ecuador

16%

±3

70%

±4

14%

±3

Pakistan

15% ±368% ±416% ±3Egypt

13% ±355% ±432% ±4

Palestinian Territories

11%

64%

±6

26% ±6

El Salvador

24%

±4

56%

±5

20%

±4

Panama

37% ±451% ±412% ±3

Estonia

16%

±4

64%

±5

20%

±4

Paraguay

14% ±359% ±527% ±4

Finland

11% ±376% ±414% ±4

Peru

17%

62%

±5

21% ±4

France

9%

65%

±4

26%

±4

Philippines

29% ±463% ±58% ±3

Germany

15%

61%

±3

24%

±2

Poland17% ±568% ±615% ±4

Guatemala

26% ±455% ±519% ±4

Portugal

19%

65%

±6

16% ±5

Honduras

19%

±4

55%

±5

26%

±5

Qatar

28% ±662% ±710% ±4

Hungary

11%

±4

56%

±6

33%

±5

Russia

19% ±363% ±319% ±3

Iceland

16% ±375% ±410% ±3

Saudi Arabia

9% ±3

80% ±311% ±3

India

9% ±1

60% ±231% ±2Singapore

9%

76%

±4

15% ±3

Indonesia

8%

±2

77%

±3

15%

±3

Slovakia

11% ±369% ±520% ±4

Iran

7%

±3

56%

±6

38%

±6

Slovenia

15% ±470% ±516% ±4

Iraq

6% ±3

63% ±631% ±6South Africa

9%

46%

±5

45% ±5

Ireland

16%

±4

65%

±6

20%

±5

South Korea

11% ±367% ±423% ±4Israel

5%

±2

73%

±4

22%

±4

Spain

18% ±462% ±420% ±4Italy

14% ±368% ±518% ±4

Sri Lanka

14%

62%

±6

24% ±5

Japan

7%

69%

±4

24%

±3

Sweden16% ±373% ±412% ±3

Jordan

13%

63%

±5

25%

±4

Switzerland

16% ±476% ±4

8% ±3

Kazakhstan

23% ±550% ±628% ±5

Syria

0%

55%

±5

45% ±5

Kuwait

19%

±4

64%

±5

17%

±4

Taiwan9% ±460% ±632% ±6

Latvia

13%

±4

72%

±5

15%

±4

Thailand14% ±484% ±4

2% ±2

±2
±2

±2
±3

±4

±4

±4

±5

±3

±3

±4

±0

Superscripted numbers represent the percentage-point marginof sampling error for each figure. Margin-of-error estimatesincorporate the influence of data weighting.

Superscripted numbers represent the percentage-point marginof sampling error for each figure. Margin-of-error estimatesincorporate the influence of data weighting.

Country-level figures may not add to 100% as a result of rounding

Country-level figures may not add to 100% as a result of rounding

A P P E N D I X : M E T H O D O LO GY N OT E S A N D R E F E R E N C E S

EngagedNot
engagedActively
disengaged

Tunisia5% ±2

41% ±554% ±5

Turkey

7%

60%

33%

Ukraine10% ±367% ±5

United Arab Emirates

26% ±360% ±4±3±6

EngagedNot
engagedActively
disengaged

United Kingdom

17% ±157% ±226% ±1

United States

30%

52%

±0

18% ±023% ±5

Uruguay

22% ±354% ±424% ±414% ±3Venezuela

18% ±460% ±522% ±4±6±0

Superscripted numbers represent the percentage-point marginof sampling error for each figure. Margin-of-error estimatesincorporate the influence of data weighting.

Superscripted numbers represent the percentage-point marginof sampling error for each figure. Margin-of-error estimatesincorporate the influence of data weighting.

Country-level figures may not add to 100% as a result of rounding

Country-level figures may not add to 100% as a result of rounding

HOW EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT DRIVES GROWTH
2012 Employee Engagement Meta-Analysis: Gallup’s most recent meta-analysis on employee engagement accumulated
263 research studies across 192 organizations in 49 industries and 34 countries. Within each study, Gallup researchers
statistically calculated the business/work unit-level relationship between employee engagement and performance outcomesthat the organizations supplied. In total, Gallup studied 49,928 business/work units including 1,390,941 employees. Gallup
examined nine outcomes: customer loyalty/engagement, profitability, productivity, turnover, safety incidents, shrinkage,absenteeism, patient safety incidents, and quality (defects).
Individual studies often contain small sample sizes and idiosyncrasies that distort the interpretation of results. Metaanalysis is a statistical technique that is useful in combining results of studies with seemingly disparate findings, correcting
for sampling, measurement error, and other study artifacts to understand the true relationship with greater precision.
Gallup applied Hunter-Schmidt meta-analysis methods to 263 research studies to estimate the true relationship between
engagement and each performance measure and to test for generalizability. After conducting the meta-analysis, Gallup
researchers conducted utility analysis to examine the practical meaning of the relationships.
Increased Engagement Leads to Higher Earnings per Share: Of 111 publicly traded organizations in Gallup’s 2012 Q12
Client Database, the study included 49 organizations that met the following inclusion criteria: Gallup surveyed the majorityof the organization (vs. partial organization or subsidiary), 2008-2012 earnings per share (EPS) data were available, Q12
data in 2010 and/or 2011 were available, and the organization had a high Q12 response rate (mean of 90%). Comparing
each organization’s engagement level with Gallup’s 2012 Q12 Client Database (2009, 2010, and 2011), Gallup ranked 12 ofthese 49 organizations in the top decile (top 10%), 17 in the top quartile (top 25%), and 32 below the top quartile. (The topquartile grouping includes the top-decile organizations.) Gallup compared difference in EPS for each of the three groups
with their industry equivalents (top competitors who were not Gallup clients).
WHAT THE WORLD WANTS IS A GOOD JOB
See The Coming Jobs War by Jim Clifton, published in 2011 by Gallup Press.
See also “Global Migration Patterns and Job Creation” by Jim Clifton, PDF available for download on Gallup.com.
Life Evaluations Among Employees, Country by Country: This information comes from Gallup World Poll data gatheredin 2011 and 2012, except in the U.S. where it is based on Gallup Daily tracking surveys from January-December 2012.
Gallup classifies respondents as thriving, struggling, or suffering according to how they rate their current and future lives
on a ladder scale with steps numbered from zero to 10 based on the Cantril Self-Anchoring Striving Scale. Those who rate
their present life a 7 or higher and their life in five years an 8 or higher are classified as thriving, while those who rate bothdimensions a 4 or lower are considered suffering. Respondents whose ratings fall in between are considered struggling.
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The following table lists the percentage of employed respondents in each country who are thriving, struggling, andsuffering, along with the percentage-point margin of sampling error associated with each figure. Results are listed for eachcountry in which at least 300 employed respondents were sampled.
Thriving

Struggling Suffering

Algeria

27% ±567% ±5

6% ±3

Iran

15% ±455% ±630% ±6

Argentina

55%

42%

3%

Iraq

28%

59%

±6

13% ±4Australia

67% ±433% ±4

1% ±1

Ireland

51% ±647% ±62% ±2

Austria

72% ±526% ±52% ±2Israel56% ±541% ±53% ±2

Azerbaijan

10%

75%

15%

Italy

31%

64%

±5

5% ±2

Bahrain

22% ±567% ±611% ±4Japan

24% ±361% ±415% ±3Belarus38% ±551% ±510% ±3

Jordan15% ±469% ±516% ±4

Belgium

63% ±636% ±6

1% ±1

Kazakhstan

38% ±559% ±63% ±2

Bolivia

34%

63%

3%

Kuwait

34%

64%

±5

2% ±1

Bosnia andHerzegovina

18% ±567% ±615% ±5

Latvia

21% ±463% ±516% ±4

Lebanon12% ±362% ±426% ±4

Botswana

16% ±677% ±7

7% ±4

Libya

26%

71%

±5

3% ±2

Brazil

63%

±3

36%

±3

2%

Lithuania

29% ±561% ±510% ±3

Bulgaria

14%

±4

60%

±6

25%

Luxembourg

49% ±548% ±53% ±2Canada70% ±329% ±31% ±1

Macedonia

19%

59%

±8

22% ±7

Chile

48%

±4

49%

±4

4%

±2

Malaysia

30% ±567% ±5

3% ±2

China

23%

±2

68%

±3

9%

±1

Malta

35% ±558% ±66% ±3

Colombia

59% ±539% ±42% ±1

Mexico

58%

38%

±3

3% ±1

Costa Rica

62%

±4

35%

±4

3%

±1

Moldova

29% ±560% ±611% ±4

Croatia

35%

±4

57%

±4

8%

±2

Montenegro

25% ±557% ±618% ±4

Czech Republic

29% ±563% ±58% ±3

Morocco

18%

68%

±6

14% ±4

Denmark

81%

±5

19%

±5

0%

Netherlands

68% ±532% ±50% ±0Dominican Republic

30%

±5

59%

±5

11%

New Zealand

63% ±335% ±3

1% ±1

Ecuador33% ±563% ±55% ±2

Nicaragua

33% ±457% ±510% ±3

Egypt

9% ±2

70% ±420% ±3

Nigeria

28%

70%

±6

1% ±1

El Salvador

21%

±4

58%

±5

21%

±4

Norway79% ±421% ±40% ±0Estonia

25%

±4

64%

±5

12%

±3

Pakistan

14% ±363% ±423% ±4

Finland74% ±424% ±41% ±1

Palestinian Territories

9%

68%

±6

23% ±6

France

44%

±4

53%

±4

3%

±1

Panama54% ±445% ±4

1% ±1

Germany

47%

±3

48%

±3

5%

±1

Paraguay

31% ±467% ±52% ±1Guatemala

36% ±553% ±511% ±3

Peru

34%

62%

±5

5% ±2

Honduras

24%

±4

63%

±5

13%

±3

Philippines

18% ±469% ±413% ±3

Hungary

13%

±4

65%

±5

22%

±5

Poland28% ±665% ±67% ±3

Iceland

81% ±419% ±3

1% ±1

Portugal25%61%

14% ±4

India

15%

59%

25%

±4

±5

±1

±6

±4

±5

±5

±2

8%

±4

±1

±5

±2

±1
±5

±1
±3

±2

Superscripted numbers represent the percentage-point marginof sampling error for each figure. Margin-of-error estimatesincorporate the influence of data weighting.

Indonesia

24%±372% ±3

3% ±1

±6

±4

±5

±5

±6

±3

±5

±6

±4

±5

±5

±6

Superscripted numbers represent the percentage-point marginof sampling error for each figure. Margin-of-error estimatesincorporate the influence of data weighting.
Country-level figures may not add to 100% as a result of rounding

Country-level figures may not add to 100% as a result of rounding

114

Struggling Suffering

33%

±4

59%

Thriving

Albania±6

A P P E N D I X : M E T H O D O LO GY N OT E S A N D R E F E R E N C E SThriving

Struggling Suffering

Qatar

50%

±7

Russia

26%

±3

3%

Taiwan29%

Saudi Arabia

46% ±452% ±42% ±1

ThailandSingapore

33% ±564% ±54% ±2

Slovakia

31% ±559% ±5

Slovenia

35%

55%

South Africa

15% ±482% ±4South Korea

36% ±4

Spain

37%

Sri Lanka

4% ±2

78% ±5

Sweden74% ±4

Switzerland

72%

±4

±5

2%

63%

±3

11%

Thriving
Syria

±5

48%

±7

Struggling Suffering
68% ±529% ±561%±610% ±439% ±659% ±63% ±2

Tunisia

10% ±366% ±524% ±410% ±3

Turkey20% ±566% ±614% ±4

9%

Ukraine

21%

60%

±5

19% ±53% ±2

United Arab Emirates

57% ±442% ±41% ±1

57% ±4

8% ±2

United Kingdom

55% ±243% ±2

2% ±0

58%

5%

United States

58%

40%

±0

2% ±0

19% ±5

Uruguay

50% ±446% ±44% ±2

25% ±41% ±1

Venezuela

58% ±539% ±5

4% ±2

27%

1%

Superscripted numbers represent the percentage-point marginof sampling error for each figure. Margin-of-error estimatesincorporate the influence of data weighting.

±6

±5

±5

±2
±2

±3

±2

±1

Superscripted numbers represent the percentage-point marginof sampling error for each figure. Margin-of-error estimatesincorporate the influence of data weighting.

±2
±6

±5

±0

Country-level figures may not add to 100% as a result of rounding

Country-level figures may not add to 100% as a result of rounding

PAYROLL TO POPULATION: A NEW MEASURE OF ECONOMIC ENERGY
See “Global Payroll to Population Rate Drops to 26% in 2012” by Jenny Marlar, Aug. 5, 2013, on Gallup.com.
Gallup’s 2012 employment data are based on telephone and face-to-face interviews with 224,975 adults, aged 15 and older,conducted in 140 countries and areas. For results based on the total global sample, one can say with 95% confidence thatthe margin of sampling error is less than ±1 percentage point. For results based on the regional samples, the margin oferror ranges from a low of less than ±1 point in Europe to a high of ±2.2 percentage points in the non-European Union
Europe region. For results based on country-level samples, the margin of error ranges from a low of ±1.7 points to a high of±4.2 points.
EMERGING MARKETS need engaged employees to grow
INDIA: Labor Unrest Reflects Widespread Disengagement: See “Preventing Economic and Societal Meltdown in India”
by Jim Clifton, Oct. 26, 2012, on “The Chairman’s Blog.”
BRAZIL: High Engagement at Risk: See “Opinion Briefing: Brazilians’ Growing Discontent” by Jan Sonnenschein, June
26, 2013, on Gallup.com.
SPOTLIGHT: CHINA
See “China’s Puzzling Flat Line” by Steve Crabtree and Tao Wu, in the Gallup Business Journal, Aug. 10, 2011.
See “Employee Engagement Increases in China, but Still Very Low” by Daniela Yu and Rajesh Srinivasan, Feb. 20, 2013,
on Gallup.com.
See “China Has a Serious Workplace Problem” by Jim Clifton, March 6, 2013, on “The Chairman’s Blog.”

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SELECTION AND ENGAGEMENT
See the “Development and Validation of a Selection Tool That Predicts Engagement” by Yongwei Yang, Nikki Blacksmith,
Joe Streur, Sangeeta Badal, Jim Harter, and Paula Walker; paper presented at the 25th Annual Society for Industrial andOrganizational Psychology conference, April 2010.
STRENGTHS AND ENGAGEMENT
See “How Strengths Boost Engagement” by Jim Asplund and Nikki Blacksmith, in the Gallup Business Journal, April
7, 2011.
See “Driving Engagement by Focusing on Strengths” by Brian Brim and Jim Asplund, in the Gallup Business Journal, Nov.
12, 2009.
See The Clifton StrengthsFinder 2.0 Technical Report: Development and Validation by Jim Asplund, Shane J. Lopez, Tim
Hodges, and Jim Harter, available for download on Gallup.com.
Findings from Gallup’s global client engagement database are from 2010-2012, first administration-only clients in 142
unique companies with 967,085 respondents.
WELL-BEING AND ENGAGEMENTEngaged Workers Lead Healthier Lives: See “In U.S., Engaged Employees Exercise More, Eat Healthier” by Daniela Yu
and Jim Harter, Jan. 16, 2013, and “Actively Disengaged Workers and Jobless in Equally Poor Health” by Jim Harter andSangeeta Agrawal, April 20, 2011, on Gallup.com.
“Thriving” Employees Have Lower Healthcare Costs: See “Unhealthy, Stressed Employees Are Hurting Your Business,” a
Q&A with Tom Rath and Jim Harter in the Gallup Business Journal, May 22, 2012.
Engaged and Thriving Employees Are Resilient and Agile: Gallup researchers merged two independent Gallup Panelsurveys to form a longitudinal sample of 8,494 adults, aged 18 and older. Gallup administered these two Health Experiencesurveys March/April 2011 and February/March 2012.
Gallup researchers used generalized linear model (GLM) estimation methods to study the predictive relationships of wellbeing and engagement on multiple outcome variables. Researchers also included a well-being and engagement interaction
term in the model to study if the effects were additive or multiplicative beyond just engagement or well-being. Gallup
researchers controlled for the following demographic characteristics in each of the GLM estimations: age, gender, race,
marital status, income (log), and education.
LINKING EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT TO CUSTOMER GROWTH
See “The Business Impact of Human Emotions,” a Q&A with Ed O’Boyle, in the Gallup Business Journal, Nov. 1, 2012.
See “The Power of the Employee-Customer Encounter,” a Q&A with Ed O’Boyle, in the Gallup Business Journal, Nov.
15, 2012.
See “When Engaged Employees Meet Engaged Customers,” a Q&A with John Fleming and Jim Asplund, in the Gallup
Business Journal, Feb. 14, 2008.
See “Your Employees Don’t ‘Get’ Your Brand” by John Fleming and Dan Witters, in the Gallup Business Journal, July26, 2012.
116

A P P E N D I X : M E T H O D O LO GY N OT E S A N D R E F E R E N C E SSee “Think Your Bank Is Different? You’re Wrong” by Jai Gill and David Helvadjian, in the Gallup Business Journal, July
5, 2012.
See “Creating Impact in B2B Relationships” by Ed O’Boyle and Craig Kamins, in the Gallup Business Journal, March
27, 2012.
Gallup conducted the Swiss telecommunications company study over the Web in 2013 with 421 employees in 55 shops
across Switzerland.
Gallup conducted the retail banking study in 2009 in Germany with 3,836 banking customers over the telephone. In
Australia, Gallup interviewed 3,300 banking customers by phone in 2012. In New Zealand, Gallup interviewed 2,584
customers by phone in 2011.
Gallup conducted the brand ambassador study in the U.S. with 3,000 randomly selected workers. In Germany, Gallup
interviewed 2,198 employees over the phone in 2012.
REGIONAL BREAKOUTS
East Asia: See “A Positive Approach to Workplace Stress,” a Q&A with Shelley E. Taylor, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology
at UCLA, in the Gallup Business Journal, June 14, 2007.
South Asia
India: See “How 24,000 Employees Worldwide Keep One Brand Promise,” a Q&A with H.N. Shrinivas, Senior Vice
President of Human Resources at Taj Hotels, in the Gallup Business Journal, Sept. 24, 2013.
See “Gallup Reveals the Formula for Innovation” in the Gallup Business Journal, May 10, 2007.
See “What Your Performance Management System Needs Most” by Megha Oberoi and Paresh Ragjarhia, in the
Gallup Business Journal, April 4, 2013.
Southeast Asia
Indonesia: See “Opinion Briefing: Indonesia’s Economic Emergence” by Steve Crabtree, May 31, 2013, on Gallup.com.
See “Why Indonesia Needs Authentic Leaders” by Vibhas Ratanjee and Meiliany Wu in the Gallup Business Journal,
Sept. 17, 2013.
United States and Canada: See “College-Educated Americans Less Engaged in Jobs” by Shane Lopez and Preety Sidhu,
July 18, 2013, on Gallup.com.
Western Europe: See “World Remains Glum About Job Prospects” by Andrew Dugan, June 21, 2013, on Gallup.com.
Germany: See “Germany Has a Serious Management Problem” by Marco Nink, in the Gallup Business Journal, April
23, 2013.
ENGAGEMENT AROUND THE WORLD: SUMMING UP
See “College Path May Not Be Best” by Brandon Busteed, July 18, 2013, on “The Gallup Blog.”

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