Fifth Annual Study Examines Employee Engagement of More Than 5,000 U.S. Employees

Temkin Group, a leading market research and consulting firm that helps organizations transform their customer experience, released a new research report: “Employee Engagement Benchmark Study, 2016.” The report analyzes the level of engagement that more than 5,000 full-time U.S. employees have with their employers, and compares these results to similar Temkin Group studies from the previous four years.

The study, which is based on a survey of employees completed in Q3 2015, shows that 77% of employees in companies that have significantly better financial performance than their peers are highly or moderately engaged, compared with only 49% of employees in companies with lagging financial performance. The study also compared companies with high levels of customer experience to those who have lagging customer experience, and found that customer experience leaders have 1.5 times as many engaged employees.

“Unengaged employees can’t create engaged customers,” states Bruce Temkin, Customer Experience Transformist & Managing Partner of Temkin Group. “Engaged employees are the foundation to a successful organization.”

Some of the other findings from the research include:

• Fifty-seven percent of U.S. employees are highly or moderately engaged, the same level as last year.
• Compared with disengaged employees, highly engaged employees are more than four times as likely to recommend the company’s products and services and do something good for the company that is not expected of them, 2.5 times as likely to stay at work late if something needs to be done after the normal workday ends, and seven times as likely to recommend that a friend or relative apply for a job at their company.
• Sixty-three percent of highly engaged employees always try their hardest at work, compared with 42% of disengaged employees.
• Companies with 500 to 1,000 employees have the most engaged employees, while those with more than 10,000 employees have the least.
• 25- to 34-year-old employees are the most engaged group, while 45- to 54-year-old employees are the least engaged.
• Senior executives are 1.6 times more likely than individual contributors to be highly or moderately engaged.
• Of the 15 industries measured in the study, construction has the highest level of moderately and highly engaged employees (71%).

To gauge employee engagement, the research uses the Temkin Employee Engagement Index, which is a three-question assessment completed by survey respondents.