Despite what you may have heard about robots coming to take all of our jobs, for now organizations live or die on the commitment and dedication of the people that populate them. From the newest, wet-behind-the-ears recruit to the most senior executive, everyone needs to be fully invested in their performance if the organization is going to achieve a high level of success.

Your organization’s leaders need to understand the value of strong employee engagement. More importantly, they need to set an example to inspire the workforce, giving employees a role model to base their own work ethic on. In many cases, however, focusing on improved talent management strategies can help – not just with retention, but in developing the next generation of leaders to serve as role models themselves.

The dangers of poor employee engagement

Having an unsatisfied workforce can be incredibly toxic to an organization, impacting the quality of your offering or service, which can quickly result in lost customers, lost revenue or the inability to fulfill your organization’s mission. A recent Gallup poll in Germany looked at the impacts of low employee engagement, finding that a staggering 84 percent of workers in the nation felt either not engaged or actively disengaged. Similar results are found across the globe, including the United Stated federal government, which continually faces problems with employee satisfaction, engagement and leadership.

According to Gallup, that disengagement is costing organizations across the nation millions of dollars annually. That figure comes from greater absenteeism, costs related to replacing roles and disgruntled employees failing to recommend the organization to others in their social circle.

With such concerning figures coming out of Germany, a country known for its highly productive industry and workforce, organizations worldwide would do well to look at their own employee base and ask if they could be doing more to satisfy their staff. If you’ve identified any possible issues at your organization, perhaps a shake-up of your talent management is in order.

Leading the way to better engagement

While you may think that much of employee engagement is driven by financial incentives, that’s not always the case. Of course, it’s unlikely that even your most altruistic workers would turn down a pay rise or timely bonus, but simply opening up the organization’s coffers may not get the jobdone.

In fact, a study from McKinsey & Company found that three separate engagement strategies all performed better than increased monetary incentives — praise from an immediate manager, greater attention from leaders and more opportunities to lead projects. Rather than simply showing the organization’s appreciation with some extra cash, recognizing performance and helping talent develop seems to be a more effective engagement strategy. Your organization’s leaders are responsible for not just showing your employees the right way to do things, but giving them the opportunities to grow into their roles.

How can a talent management solution help?

On the path towards better employee engagement, technology can assist in how you handle the performance and development of your workforce. Such technology offers you the opportunity to identify strong performers and your most engaged employees who may be primed for more responsibility, but also identifies those who are unsatisfied and contributing to similar organizational losses as those outlined above in Germany. Modern performance management software along with people analytics also helps you track goals and employee performance, with coaching and feedback capabilities to help identify where engagement is suffering and how to address it.

Through targeted training and regular performance monitoring and review, members of your workforce are given a much clearer perspective on how they are progressing, where they can improve and the achievable rewards of higher performance.

Help your employees help themselves with technology designed to bring out the best in them.