Fostering employee engagement represents a vast untapped approach to increasing labor productivity in Russia. Modern Russia's workforce has a number of advantages, including high literacy and labor participation rates and an impressive proportion of people with post-secondary education. Yet Gallup's 2012 data show that more than 80% of the country's employees are less than fully engaged at work; they lack an emotional connection to their workplaces and are not enthusiastic about their jobs. Further, almost one-fifth of all Russian workers are actively disengaged, meaning they harbor negative feelings about their jobs that prevent them from creating value for their businesses. Instead, they often do more harm than good and hinder Russia's overall economic performance. Fostering employee engagement thus represents a vast untapped approach to increasing labor productivity in Russia. The country's GDP per hour worked is about 40% that of the U.S., where employees are more likely to be engaged with their jobs. If Russian employers could move the country's actively disengaged workers -- currently 19% of all employees -- into the "not engaged" category, they could increase their output per worker by almost 4%. This increase, applied to the $42,635 (U.S.) average output per worker in Russia, amounts to $1,646 (U.S.) per person, or more than $116 billion (U.S.) overall. Four ways to win employees' hearts and minds To increase productivity, Russia is rightly investing in innovation and technology projects, such as the Skolkovo Innovation Center near Moscow. But attempts to create a more innovative culture will do little to increase the average productivity of Russian employees unless they are accompanied by organizational changes designed to win the hearts and minds of those employees. The following are among the most important considerations in pursuing that goal:
Focusing on the key strategies above -- and continuously tracking progress on those strategies -- will make a significant contribution to Russian employees' productivity. This, in turn, will fuel business growth and strengthen Russia's economy. Author(s)Izabella Khazagerova is a Senior Consultant at Gallup. January 14, 2014 |