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According to Gallup’s 2017 State of the Global Workplace Report, a staggering 85% of employees are disengaged at work.
In other words, the vast majority of the employees in Gallup’s research are not emotionally connected with their day-to-day work or company. The result? A whopping $7 trillion in lost productivity, turnover, poor customer experience, absenteeism, and lower profitability.
For companies looking to grow and expand, the lack of engaged employees is a significant problem that can wreak havoc on long-term success.
To combat the issues that disengaged employees present, companies invest over $100 billion every year on tools and tactics. However, what Gallup’s research shows is that traditional approaches to engaging employees are not as effective as they once were.
Why are engaged employees important you may be wondering? Further Gallup research has found that companies with engaged employees outperform those who don’t by 202%.
If companies are spending billions on employee engagement with very little return on their investment, the question then becomes: what can they do to ensure employees develop an emotional connection with their work and company?
Over the years, many forward-thinking companies – AT&T, Siemens, and Pfizer to name a few – have found success in a practice that has enabled them to supercharge their employee engagement efforts: crowdsourcing.
Throughout history, crowdsourcing has played an important role – even before it was considered a “thing.”
From the British government crowdsourcing ideas from the public to find a way to measure a ship’s longitudinal position in 1714, to the Oxford English Dictionary leveraging 800 readers to catalog words in 1884. There are countless examples of how tapping into the intelligence of crowds helps uncover valuable solutions and opportunities.
Today, crowdsourcing continues to be a useful practice that has been applied towards a variety of use cases, such as raising startup capital – also known as crowdfunding.
As the old saying goes: there’s strength in numbers.
When it comes to employee engagement, there’s a subset of crowdsourcing that has given enterprises around the world the ability to drive engagement across borders and language barriers in a new, much more efficient way: crowdsourced innovation.
Crowdsourced innovation, and the software that enables it, gives enterprises the power to tap into the collective intelligence of their entire employee-base through innovation challenges. These challenges can help companies surface new solutions, such as process improvements, and identify opportunities, such as new business models.
An innovation challenge is simply asking your crowd (e.g. employees) a question related to a larger business objective. For example: what new markets should we enter in 2019 to expand our business by 2x? The more specific you can make your question the better.
There are countless stories of companies that have leveraged crowdsourced innovation to create an efficient and effective way of engaging employees. Plus, they were able to generate significant value beyond engagement:
The stories go on and on.
Imagine having this capability in your hands.
To not leverage the knowledge and experience of employees on a consistent basis is to leave opportunity on the table.
For employees, crowdsourced innovation creates an even playing field in that it doesn’t matter what their role is or how long they’ve been with the company…they can contribute.
When employees have a voice in the business and are able to contribute in meaningful ways, growth happens. This is one of the reasons why companies like Google and Facebook have been so successful over the years. They have employees that feel heard, and executives that want to hear from them and don’t hesitate to take action when a great idea presents itself regardless of who it came from.
Final thoughts
Despite the dismal percentage of employees that are engaged in their work life, there are companies that have found a way to change the status quo – through crowdsourced innovation.
For companies to be successful now and far into the future, their employees have to be engaged every step of the way. Traditional employee engagement tactics are no longer as effective as they once were.
In the modern workplace where collaboration is critical for success and employees are hungry to have a voice, crowdsourced innovation is a practice that gives companies the flexibility to do both and a whole lot more.
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