Causes of Employee Disengagement with Solutions

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There are two main causes to employee disengagement:

• Boredom

• Overwhelmed

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi famously documented this two-headed phenomenon with this infamous chart:

That is, individuals get bored when their skills exceed the challenge. On the flip side, individuals get overwhelmed or anxious when the challenge exceeds their skills.

To get your employee re-engaged, here are some time-tested solutions to try.

Disengaged due to anxiety and being overwhelmed

Offer training. The best thing you can do is to offer one-on-one coaching and be specific as possible as to what needs to be done.

As a manager, you should be thinking recipes. Asking someone to conjure a soufflé is intimidating. But asking someone to follow a recipe reduces the intimidation substantially.

If you can’t offer one-on-one coaching, encourage the employee to do their research. It might be watching a short YouTube video or reading answers from popular Internet forums.

Disengaged due to boredom

Identify new challenges. Find new projects or responsibilities for bored employees. Inspire them with new ideas, stories, or examples.

Deal with other causes of disengagement

Personal issues

Employees can also be disengaged due to personal issues. If that’s the case, encourage them to take time off and address their situation.

A burdensome personal matter will negatively affect productivity. The sooner they address it, the faster they’ll spring back to their typical productivity levels.

Work grievances

Employees can get disenchanted regarding some unresolved work issue. It can include:

• Being passed for promotion

• Not getting a raise

• Losing out on a sexy project

Help them short circuit their ruminations by addressing the issue head-on. That is, test and see if the work-related issue is the root of their disengagement. From there, help them unpack what happened and then talk about how they can learn from the experience over time.

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