Dive Brief:
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Despite low-to-moderate economic growth in both countries, new research shows a contrast in the progress that employers in Canada and the U.S. have made to improve employee engagement levels.
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The study, the 2016 Trends in Global Employee Engagement from Aon Hewitt, found U.S. companies had small improvement in overall engagement scores—from 63% in 2014 to 64% in 2015. Even so, across the 15 different engagement dimensions the report measured, a dozen showed improvement among U.S. employers.
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By contrast, Canada has higher engagement levels than the U.S. (69%), but saw no change in engagement levels from 2014 to 2015. And unlike the U.S, Canada only had one improvement across the 15 engagement dimensions the report measured. For the study, the top 5 drivers of engagement were employee value proposition, talent & staffing, enabling infrastructure, career opportunities and performance management.
Dive Insight:
Teryluz Andreu, Aon's U.S. Engagement leader, says American employers are realizing that the way forward to drive productivity and profitability in a tight labor market is to re-think the way they lead and manage people to create a more engaging work experience.
According to the survey, which polled employees from 1,000 global organizations across 60 industries, many U.S. employers apparently are "doubling down" on talent as a way to spur growth, despite economic pressures and volatility. The efforts are reflected in the improvements Aon found across almost all engagement dimensions in the U.S., Andreu said.
Globally, employee engagement is trending up, Aon found. A quarter of all employees fall into the “highly engaged” category and another 40% are categorized as “moderately engaged,” giving a total worldwide engagement score of 65%. That compares to 62% from a year ago, when 22% of employees surveyed were “highly engaged” and 40% were “moderately engaged.”