As a support to the work I do, I pay a lot of attention to things published by McKinsey & Associates and the Gallup Organization. I like McKinsey because they employ some of the best thinkers in the business world and much of what they write is usually an improvement on current thinking. I have paid attention to Gallup for years because they often come out with survey data that is enlightening and useful. I have paid close attention to these two sources of information for several years now as I’ve worked to help owners and CEOs in the industry sort out their people issues.

For at least a decade, employee dis-engagement worldwide has been in the mid-80% range. In the US, employee dis-engagement has consistently been about 70%. To put it mildly, this is concerning. If you think about it, this means that in the US only 3 of 10 employees show up to work every day motivated to do anything more than the minimum required to keep their jobs and stay out of trouble. (For the other 7 of 10, doing the minimum required is the norm.) To put this into the broader context, the high levels of dis-engagement translate into low levels of motivation and productivity. This, in turn, makes operating profitable businesses very difficult.

Employment in the industry has been shrinking for 15 years. Simultaneously, total companies and total industry sales have been declining due to the impacts of digital technology and social media. Shrinking employment has coincided with the aging out of the Boomer generation which has borne the brunt of headcount reductions. In many ways this was a happy coincidence. The bad news is that headcount has declined faster than available job openings. We’ve had a recruiting problem that has overlapped shrinking headcounts for most of those 15 years. Some may not realize it but this issue didn’t suddenly materialize when COVID came along.