You may have heard of the term ‘quiet quitting’ around the financial industry over the last year. In workplace terms, it relates to those occasions when employees do the bare minimum in meeting job requirements and check out mentally.
You may recognise this behaviour before hearing this term and identify it with what it truly is – disengaged staff. It is also not something that has just begun to happen in the financial sector. Last year, a published workplace report identified that only 9% of UK workers were engaged or enthusiastic about their working environment, placing the UK 33rd out of 38 countries.
What Contributes to Employee Disengagement in the Financial Sector?
In truth, many factors can be behind the wave of employee disengagement in today’s world. Most of the time, it is contributed by employees feeling undervalued or underappreciated.
Many of today’s workers in finance feel that their salaries are tracking far below inflation or they are being met with unrealistic workload expectations from their management, especially when they take on workload whilst you go through the financial recruitment process. It also leads to employees feeling that their employer does not value employee well-being or workplace culture. Whatever the fuel for disengagement, there are no victors for employees feeling this way in your business.
Employers are losing out on potential productivity and growth that comes with an engaged and motivated employee whilst the employee harms their reputation by doing only what keeps them employed. At this point, it becomes a trap as employees don’t have many options for finding fulfilling employment elsewhere due to the economic uncertainty, meaning they will hang on to the job but have no heart to give any more than necessary to keep it.
Addressing the Problem
The good news is that there are always ways to re-engage a demotivated employee – and not in the way of spending time, money and effort on gimmicky perks.
Duvet days are not going to resound with an employee who is feeling that they are being denied development. The best starting point is having an honest conversation and hearing why the employee is feeling their effort is not worth it. Bad management can be just as much a cause, and that is sometimes not an intentional fault. Most people are thrust into management positions without proper training or help and are expected to keep teams of people working at full productivity. Managers themselves may be feeling that they have not developed the necessary skills to effectively succeed in the role.
Getting to the Root
There are many key areas that you should always put at the top of the employee disengagement, and take the steps to have them all addressed. The most common disengagements come from workload, wage or career progression and company culture.
These are the most important areas for any employee working for your company first and foremost. It also takes a lot of time and effort on your part to listen and engage with your employees to see less churn, higher productivity, better problem solving and higher profit margins.
For help with financial recruitment in Manchester and identifying strategies to keep your hires engaged and productive, contact the team at Imperium today.
