Gallup recently announced that two-thirds of the U.S. workforce is disengaged. This latest report reflects a general trend of declining worker engagement, despite an increase in the number of employers that are actively branding themselves as “mission” or “purpose” driven. That branding implicitly, and at times explicitly, suggests that profits alone are not the sole illuminating force of their business. Employee engagement is ultimately a measure of how connected one feels to their workplace, and how likely they are to go above and beyond to help the company achieve its goals and mission.
So it intuitively follows that being a purpose or mission driven organization should result in higher, not lower employee engagement. Why, then, does this disconnect persist (even though there are shining examples of high engagement in purpose driven companies)? One possible explanation is that branding alone is not enough to be an actual purpose driven organization. The cognitive dissonance between the words of a company and its actions has started to gain serious consideration and study.
