Contemporary Challenges with Employee Engagement in Fast Growing Organizations

Size does matter! To elaborate further, there is a clear correlation between the size of the organization and the percentage of engaged employees, according to research by Gallup (2017). The larger the organization, the lesser the percentage of engaged employees is. Figure 08 makes this point very clear - there is a 12% drop in employee engagement level, as the size of the organization goes from less than 25 employees to 5,000 or more.

Figure 08: Percentage of Engaged Employees by Company Size

Source: (Gallup, 2017)

Another way to interpret Figure 08 is, in organizations with less than 25 employees, about 51% are disengaged or actively disengaged while for organizations with 5000+ employees, this percentage rises to 71%. This becomes even more alarming when the percentages are converted to numbers – the 71% totals to 3,550 disengaged or actively disengaged employees for an organization with a workforce of 5,000 people. 

Though these numbers are concerning, the reason why larger organizations have a lesser percentage of engaged employees is not so difficult to understand. In a small sized company, the chances are that most of the employees would know each other, the leaders of the organization would know each of the employees. Further, the employees would have a clear understanding of the organizational mission & vision as well as how the role they play within the organization fits into the big picture – according to Armstrong (2009), the employees’ understanding of their role and how it fits in the holistic view, is one of the two key elements that must be present for engagement to exist. If the employees have questions, they have the privilege of being able to reach out to the leaders (Gallup, 2017). According to Northouse (2007), leadership has a strong influence on the level of engagement of an employee. As the number of employees increase, the employees and the leaders would grow apart and the organizational leaderships ability to stop an employee feeling like just another brick in the wall, would decline hence the higher rate of disengagement.

At the organization I am currently employed at, the size of the workforce has grown from 50 employees in 2013 to 450 in 2019. According to an employee satisfaction survey from 2015 when the company size was 109 employees, only 03 responses (3%) have been received as “strongly disagree” or “disagree” to the statement “I would recommend a friend to work here” whereas the same question had 14 such responses (5%) in 2018 when the company size was 285. Similar patterns have been seen over the years on the other underlying questions on the surveys. This indicates a slight increase in probable disengaged/actively disengaged number of employees, as the size of the company grew.

For instance, think of a lemonade stand run by three happy little kindergartens – how much energy & passion each of the three little “employees” would bring to the table, in their business. Now imagine, if just a fraction of that engagement can be replicated in an organization with 5,000 employees – how the business would thrive!

References:

Armstrong, M. (2009). Armstrong's handbook of human resource management practice. 11th ed. London: Kogan Page, pp 338-340.

Northouse, P. G. (2007). Leadership Theory and Practice. 7th ed. California: SAGE Publications, pp.170-172.

Gallup (2017) State of the American Workplace. [Online] Available at: https://news.gallup.com/file/reports/199961/SOAW_Report_GEN_1216_WEB_FINAL_rj.pdf [Accessed 16 September 2019].