Unemployment make employee engagement impossible.
Here are some souring statistics from the UK taken from the BBC Website.
- UK unemployment total reaches 17-year high.
- UK unemployment rose by 114,000 between June and August to 2.57 million, a 17-year high, according to official figures.
- The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said the unemployment rate also increased to 8.1%.
- The jobless total for 16 to 24-year-olds hit a record high of 991,000 in the quarter, a jobless rate of 21.3%.
- The number of people out of work and claiming benefits rose 17,500 to 1.6 million in September.
- Other figures showed a record cut in the number of part-time workers, down by 175,000, and there was also a record reduction of 74,000 in the number of over-65s in employment.
Soured and resolved. These statistics sour me when I think about each Mary and Martin who are personally experiencing the trials and difficulties of unemployment. It also firms up my resolve to do more to enhance employee engagement so that those of us working can make the biggest difference for ourselves, our families, our organizations, and our economies.
Some of the stats now getting my attention David, are those pointing out the kinds of jobs, substantial in number, which are not getting filled because employers’ cannot find skilled workers. We’ve long spoken of the mis-match between business and education (and not just vocational education) as a challenge to engagement, but it strikes me that we must get much, much better at articulating exactly what these missing skills are – “skills” said alone is a big bucket to sort through.
Engagement is connection and you are pointing towards a disconnect between work and skills, unemployment, and vacancies. There will be no end to work on work. Thank you for your comment Rosa.