Being Part of a Team Boosts Engagement

Keeping employees engaged is a concern for companies around the world. After surveying more than 19,000 workers across the globe, the ADP Research Institute found that only about 16% of workers overall are fully engaged. However, some policies and behaviors have moved the needle.

Some of the factors that companies focus on in trying to understand engagement — age, gender, where one actually works — aren’t all that determinative. But the researchers did isolate one factor that transcends all categories: whether the worker is part of a team.

This teamwork data raises an interesting question: Is engagement dependent on a worker’s physical proximity to other team members? The data says no; in fact, largely the opposite is true. People who work remotely at least four out of five days in a typical week are almost twice as engaged as those who do so less than one day a week. The critical factor is whether virtual workers feel that they’re part of a team. If they do, they’re twice as engaged as their office-bound colleagues.