Engaged and happy staff can save millions for businesses

The Australian, in partnership with employee engagement platform WorkL, has launched its quest to find the best places to work.

Join The Australian’s quest to find the best places to work

Employee disengagement and attrition costs a median-sized S & P 500 company $228m a year, a McKinsey study says.

Of this cost, about $138m is attributable to staff leaving or attrition and $90m to disengagement.

Drilling down to details, the study says there are six key factors that contribute about $56m of the $90m expense caused by disengaged employees.

These six factors are:

● Inadequate total compensation (mainly pay) - 12 per cent

● Lack of meaningful work - 12 per cent

● Lack of workplace flexibility - 11 per cent

● Lack of career development and advancement - 10 per cent

● Unreliable and unsupportive people at work - 9 per cent

● Unsafe work - 9 per cent

Businesses that address these six factors can save a substantial amount of money every year.

These factors mainly contribute to flight risk – the likelihood that staff may leave the organisation.

Take the survey to find the key to staff engagement

Companies which have a lower staff turnover can train more and pass on more of the skills and experiences of their staff to their customers, says Lord Mark Price, founder of workplace experience platform WorkL. It makes business sense to be a good employer, he says.

“If you look at the data we draw from organisations around the world, 28 per cent of the workforce is looking to leave within the next nine months,” says Lord Price.

Businesses which are among the best workplaces, on the other hand, manage to reduce flight risk to single digits. This is the advantage of implementing HR strategies based on a dashboard of rich data.

Such a dashboard about employees – what drives them and what engages them, where they find their satisfaction and their frustration, and what the flight risk of the organisation’s staff is – is provided to businesses taking part in The Australian-WorkL Best Places to Work 2024.

There are 12 main categories of awards up for grabs, and the fee for entering starts at just $1400 for organisations with 10 to 49 employees. Higher fee applies for larger organisations. Entries close on December 15. The results will be published early next year.

In the lead-up to the closing date for the award entry, The Australian is inviting companies to share their happiness stories.

The details of The Australian Best Places to Work 2024 are here