Are American Employees Staying Put?

An employee-engagement survey of more than 18,000 corporations worldwide by Corporate Executive Board indicates that employees who intend to stay at their current job and/or voluntarily take on extra work (that's "discretionary effort" in survey parlance) increased during the first quarter of this year.

"We're finding that employees continue to be highly concerned about their chances out in the labor market. However, at the same time, things are getting better where employees currently work," said Mark E. Van Buren, Managing Director of Corporate Executive Board. "We are seeing companies working harder to entice their current employees to stay rather than going out into an uncertain labor market. via American Employees are Staying Put - May 25, 2011

Or are they?

We just released the results of our latest Employment Confidence Survey and found 73 percent of employees expect to leave their job for a new employer in the future, 38 percent expect to leave their job in less than three years, 28 percent expect to do so in less than two years and 14 percent expect to do so in less than one year. via Glass Door - March 29, 2011.

Consider the sources and their perspective.

Corporate Executive Board

To drive corporate performance, senior executives at the world’s leading organizations use CEB to help them and their teams with actionable insights, analytic tools, and advisory support to quickly and confidently focus efforts on what they need to know, and do, next. We provide essential information by analyzing and disseminating the most successful practices from our connected global network of clients. 200,000 business leaders; 5200 organizations, 52% of companies on The Dow.

Glass Door

The Glassdoor Team is a small yet seasoned group of individuals looking to provide greater transparency into one of the most important aspects of our lives – our jobs. Contributions to the blog are designed to present a unique perspective on current events, offer commentary on the inside workings on specific jobs at a multitude of companies, and provide details on the latest happenings from within Glassdoor.

Consider these statistics for employee engagement:

• the percentage of actively engaged employees continues to hover around...26-30% and the percentage of actively disengaged employees remains constant at 15 - 20%.Gallup, March 2010.

• the percentage of actively engaged employees continues to hover around...30% and the percentage of actively disengaged employees remains 17%. Blessing-White, May 2011.(Hat tip to SmallBiz Trends .)

If employee engagement percentages, actively engaged and actively disengaged, remain unchanged then how is it that a greater percentage of employees now report that they are willing to invest more discretionary effort?

Maybe the key word for this change in employee engagement is worldwide? Fast Company's article is titled American Employees are Staying Put. And the charts in the article do show results from American companies. And those results from American companies appear impressive. Maybe the growth in loyalty and discretionary effortis from their overseas employees where employee engagement historically has been even lower.

The report did say that these are the results from a survey in the first quarter of 2011. Maybe, it is a sign that companies have recognized employees are their greatest asset. And, having recognized it, have decided to invest in this asset.

That would help change the ROA for publicly traded companies since the mid 60's from a negative 75%. Thinking About A Recovery? Don't Bet On It by John Hagel.

That would help companies expect to generate these results:

• earnings per share 160% higher*

• return on assets 100% higher*

• revenue growth 150% higher*

• profitability is 40% higher*

• Recouping the $300 billion per year in lost productivity **

* The Corporate Lattice

** Gallup