5 Signs That Your Employees Are Disengaged

When your team is engaged, there is no doubt that you’ll notice the positive impact on your business. You’ll likely experience an uplift in productivity, morale and performance, among other positive benefits. If your company has disengaged employees, you’re unsurprisingly likely to experience the opposite.

Disengaged team members can damage your business and affect the motivation of your whole team. Thankfully, there are signs you can look for to identify disengaged team members and things you can do to increase their engagement.

What is an engaged employee, and how can you create more of them?

An engaged employee is passionate about their work and genuinely wants to be successful and achieve to the best of their ability. Every business wants engaged employees who contribute to a positive culture and tend to have positive mindsets that look for solutions rather than issues. For businesses looking to grow quickly, finding engaged employees passionate about your business and their role is an almost guaranteed way of making a great hire.

Disengaged employees, however, are the opposite. They tend not to be emotionally committed to the business or their roles within the organisation they work for. They lack energy and passion and are likely to be dissatisfied with their roles or the company.

This affects their productivity and output and can also negatively impact those around them.

Here are some signs that someone is disengaged and how you can help to resolve the problem:

1. A noticeable decrease in productivity and quality of work

   No one can run at full speed 100% of the time; however, if your once hard-working, engaged employee is noticeably less productive than usual, it could be that they’re not feeling their usual self.

   If that's not enough, another way to spot if an employee is disengaged is through their workload. A good sign of disengagement is if employees frequently miss deadlines they’d have easily met in the past.

   A reduction in activity can be due to several reasons, so sit down regularly with your team to identify occurring issues. If they express that there is something you can do to help them—excellent!

2. Isolation and withdrawal

   If one of your employees was once a social team member but has started pulling away, they’re likely disengaged.

   Withdrawal or isolation can be a sign of lots of issues, including depression, internal issues such as colleague fallouts or bullying, as well as disengagement. Investigate what is causing the withdrawal, which will help you address the situation.

   If an individual is disengaged, they’re likely to stop attending work socials or unnecessary work activities so they don’t have to spend increased time with people from the company.

3. Taking longer breaks and time off without good reason

   Productivity is optimized when people take breaks every 90 minutes; however, if an employee starts to unexpectedly extend their break times without good reason, it’s a real sign that they’re disengaged.

   When employees don’t care as much anymore, there is a good chance they don’t care much about taking longer when going for lunch, a coffee, or even the washroom. Their lack of care can also rub off onto their colleagues and lead to thinking, ‘If others aren’t working hard, then why should I?’

4. No professional appetite

   Engaged employees are invested in their company and want to push themselves to learn and reach their career goals. A disengaged employee may have once been a top performer but is now not passionate about learning or moving forward.

   There are many reasons for this, including the role not being challenging enough for them or the lack of a goal to work towards. It’s important to dig deeper when you notice these things happening.

   It could indicate that the individual wants to leave for a happier, more stimulating workplace.

5. A lack of enthusiasm for learning

   Wanting to learn, progress, and growth are all signs of engagement in employees and show motivation to improve and better themselves. When an employee has no interest in growing within your organisation, they’re unlikely to be motivated towards the business's success either.

   If an employee isn’t enthusiastic about growing in your company, they probably don’t see a future with you.

How can you re-energise your team?

If you recognise an increase in disengagement in your team, there are steps you can take to re-engage your team.

Communicate effectively

To find out what’s affecting your team’s engagement, you must ask them.

Not everyone is comfortable openly discussing how they feel about the company they work for, especially when their thoughts could be negative. Running confidential questionnaires is a great way to gain insight and feedback from your team and understand what they are genuinely thinking.

Ask questions that relate to the company culture, management, and core responsibilities to gain insight into what is affecting their motivation and engagement.

With the right feedback, it makes it easier for management and company owners to make changes that provide real solutions.

Recognise and reward

Disengagement can often stem from people feeling that they’re working hard for little in return. It is important to show how much you appreciate them by paying them correctly (which needs constant reviewing) and recognising their efforts through recognition.

When people feel they are being recognised and rewarded correctly, they’re likelier to show higher engagement in their role. They’ll also be more motivated to go the extra mile, as they know it won’t go unnoticed.

A decrease in engagement can happen to anyone at any time. It’s important to check in regularly and observe changes in behaviour so you can quickly work towards restoring your team’s engagement.

12 Employee needs for an engaged and productive workforce.