Several of us here at Monar watched an interesting Human Capital Institute Webcast today on the topic of Increasing Employee Engagement by Improving Work-Life Balance. Here are some facts we learned through this Webcast that we thought might help shed some light on problems you’ve seen in your organization with regard to low engagement, low productivity, and turnover (you can also view some of the details of this Webcast, or register to watch one of the scheduled re-casts, here).

First of all, why is “increasing engagement” an issue we have to tackle in the first place? Well, according to the Society for Human Resource Management, highly engaged employees perform about 20% better than ambivalent and actively disengaged employees, and they are also 87% less likely to leave the organization. This means that many U.S. employers could be losing a significant amount of money every year due to inefficient performance and turnover alone, especially since the HR Solutions International Research Institute reports that 73% of the American workforce is not engaged.

As suggested in today’s Webcast, flexibility, both in work schedules and work environments, is extremely important to modern American workers. This suggests that one way to hit that elusive target of a “highly engaged workforce” is by offering more opportunities for telework and flexible scheduling. Specifically:

• Job-sharing and flexible schedule arrangements are important to 74% of workers surveyed by the HR Solutions International Research Institute.
• 72% of employees report that flexible work arrangements would be a deciding factor for them in choosing one job over another (Source: WorldatWork Telework Trendlines 2009 / The Edge Report, 2008 Robert Half International Survey).
• Intention to stay with the organization is 60% higher for employees who work from home than it is for those who work in a traditional office setting (Source: Clear Air Campaign, 2008).

So, if flexible schedules and working from home are so highly valued by U.S. workers that they are likely to lead to increased engagement, which translates into more productive employees who are more likely to stay with the organization (translation: healthier bottom lines), why aren’t all U.S. companies offering these things? “The Boss” has one answer for us:

Poignant though “The Boss’s” observations are, maybe it’s time to take a step back and allow our employees a little more flexibility; not to mention stop narrowly defining “work” as something that has to occur between the hours of 9 and 5, and within an environment that the worker generally does not enjoy. In short, the evidence seems to weigh pretty heavily in favor of the conclusion that the engagement-enhancing benefits of flexible work arrangements far outweigh the costs of breaking the 9 to 5 tradition; absolutely no vice-hats required.