Employee engagement is more important than ever. As the digital world constantly transforms how customers behave and businesses are run, companies have realized that a committed, passionate team of employees can make great innovations happen every day.
And yet, a new study by Gallup found that a vast majority of employees are not engaged at their jobs. In the United States, only 30% of employees said they are inspired and engaged at work. About 20% said they are ‘actively disengaged’. Overall, across 142 countries on average, only 13% of employees said they are engaged and inspired at work. In other words, only about one in eight workers in the regions studied are psychologically committed to their jobs and likely to be making positive contributions to their organizations.
This is not good news, particularly when the millennial generation is joining the workforce in ever-increasing numbers. This generation has grown up in a digital age, with social media allowing thoughts and ideas to be shared instantaneously. If these creative, young employees were able to be just as collaborative in the workplace as they are in their social lives, there’s no telling how many innovative solutions would arise. With this in mind, SAP has partnered with Gary Hamel and his team at MIX to launch the SAP Unlimited Human Potential M-Prize.
How do you think we can unleash our human potential? You can contribute your own ideas during Quick MIX - a one-week, focused crowdsourcing “Ideas Jam” based around answering a specific question: “What is the one thing you would do to help organizations unleash and organize human potential across boundaries? “ This cyber brainstorming is open to everyone, including all employees of SAP, and will be running from December 3-11, 2013. Social media is going to be front and center of Quick MIX, so that you can easily “Like” or “tweet” about ideas that interest you. And you can also easily see which posts your friends and colleagues are talking about and join the discussion.
Organizations that are built to thrive in the Innovation Economy must focus both on unleashing human capacity—designing environments and systems for work that inspire individuals to contribute their imagination, initiative, and passion every day—and on aggregating human capability—leveraging new digital and social technologies to organize talent across boundaries. This means that engagement levels as seen in the Gallup study need to go way up.
SAP, with its deep understanding of business processes combined with a history of technological innovation, is well positioned to help solve the global issue of low employee engagement. The Quick MIX initiative, along with the M-Prize, will help jump-start conversations that will lead to even bigger solutions.
So let’s add our voices to the global conversation, because your ideas are going to shape your workplace. It’s not just products and services that help the world run better and improve people’s lives. Your ideas and opinions matter. See you at the Quick MIX.
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