If you haven’t already taken the quiz on Tuesday’s blog post, stop reading and go back and take the quiz.

If you have already taken the quiz here are the survey results.

What do employees want from their jobs?

According to the survey results, here are the ten factors in order of importance to employees:

1. Full Appreciation for Work Done
2. Feeling “In” on Things
3. Sympathetic Help on Personal Problems
4. Job Security
5. Good Wages
6. Interesting Work
7. Promotional/Growth Opportunities
8. Personal Loyalty to Workers
9. Good Working Conditions
10. Tactful Disciplining

How did you compare to the overall survey results? I can tell you that my priorities for my own career were quite different than the ones listed above.

Towers Perrin has done a global workplace survey entitled: Closing the Engagement Gap: A Road Map for Driving Superior Business Performance. The study can be downloaded at http://www.towersperrin.com/tp/showhtml.jsp?url=global/publications/gws/index.htm&country=global. You have to register to download.

Towers Perrin conducted this survey with 90,000 employees in 18 countries. The breakdown results are available for each country in the report. It is a very interesting report and breaks down some of the stereotypical myths about employee engagement. Towers Perrin also has a book available called “Closing the Engagement Gap” and a blog at http://engagementgapblog.com/ on employee engagement.

On the website ad for the book Towers Perrin makes the following statement:
Nine out of every 10 workers in the world want to take on challenges, are eager to learn, and ready to put discretionary effort into their jobs. Unfortunately, only two employees in 10 do so. While this discrepancy — a workforce's "engagement gap" — may seem a de facto standard, it doesn't have to be. Employees have shown us how to close the gap, and organizations that act on this input see performance soar.

From this statement we can see that employees want to be engaged and it makes good sense for employers to fill that need. I find it interesting how difficult it appears to be to fill that gap. Think about what engages you as an employee and how you can better engage your employees if you have a leadership position. Taking some time to step back and assess some of the information available on employee engagement may have a large payback.

Employee Engagement may fall under Human Resources in your organization, however, it is in everyone’s best interest to be fully engaged as an employee and to help people reporting to you be fully engaged. Take some personal responsibility for this issue and reap the rewards.