20 key problems that manifest with a disengaged workforce

We meet with many HR professionals at our workshops and in our ‘front line’ activities helping organisations deal with employer branding-related challenges – particularly those that are a direct result of disengaged employees. The challenges faced by these HR professionals are so prevalent that we thought it would be useful to record them. Here they are – challenges from organisations both large and small:

• Employee morale falls across the organisation
• Employee productivity falls
• Employee turnover increases
• Increased absenteeism
• Poor attitude results in dissatisfied customers
• Product defect rate increases
• Lack of focus on business objectives
• Lack of direction – becomes hard to move forward as a team
• Work in silos – become individual and defensive
• Change initiatives don’t gain traction
• High levels of workplace stress, affects relationships and quality of work
• Infighting and point scoring
• Poor brand representation
• Job seeking and inappropriate use of organisation’s time
• Leaders viewed with apathy and skeptism
• Ghost interviews
• Cliques form – long termers v newbies
• Diminishing loyalty to the organisation
• Employees not reliable
• Negative world of mouth and malicious gossip – inside and out

Any of these problems can have a detrimental effect on your organisation’s bottom line and should be identified quickly before they have a chance to take hold.



Tony Heywood is a Fellow of the Design Institute of Australia, founder of Heywood Innovation in Sydney Australia with affiliates in Melbourne, Gold Coast, London, Singapore and Mumbai.
tony@heywood.com.au
www.heywood.com.au