“What do you think of Western civilization?” a reporter allegedly asked Mahatma Gandhi.
“I think it would be a good idea,” Gandhi replied.
They might as well have been talking about employee engagement.
What do I mean? According to Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace, which measured employee engagement and well-being, up to two-thirds of employees are not engaged in their jobs and 18 percent are actively disengaged.
The cost to business is huge. The Lancet estimates that 12 billion days (amounting to $925 billion USD) worldwide in lost productivity are attributable to depression and anxiety every year. The cost to UK businesses alone is in the £21.1–23.4 billion range—the equivalent of taking the entire UK workforce out of production for a year.
Amidst chronic absenteeism (£5 billion lost annually), presenteeism (£21.1–£23.4 lost annually), labor turnover (£6.9 billion lost annually), and leave, it’s clear that employee engagement, like Western civilization, would be “a good idea.”
This raises the question: What can we do? How can we increase employee engagement and boost our bottom line? The answer goes beyond engagement into employee well-being. Even engaged employees are more likely to call in sick, are slower to convalesce, and are likelier to be seeking another job if their overall well-being is poor.
Now imagine a workforce infused with purpose and characterized by strong working relationships and a sense of community. Not only are its employees fully engaged, they are also less likely to take time off, are more productive and resilient, and thrive amidst change.
Consciously and positively investing in well-being and mental fitness programs, in other words, unlocks massive hidden business potential. Mental fitness should not be confused with well-being. Mental fitness is not just about keeping people out of the negative, it’s about enhancing, strengthening, and empowering our inner resources. It’s not about the absence of illness; it’s about the presence of inner fitness.
Does investing in mental fitness sound daunting? It doesn’t have to be. The rewards of building mental fitness are tangible and the process for achieving them is clearly defined. It can be broken down into seven steps:
Step 1: Dig Deep in 1:1 Listening Sessions
In order to address the problems, you’ll need to create a safe space for everyone to share their perspective confidentially. Actively listen to each person and take note of where they perceive conflicts, obstacles, and inflection points. A strong argument can be made for hiring a third-party vendor as we find that anonymity and distance allow for deeper and more meaningful sharing.
These 1:1 sessions with all stakeholders, when done correctly, will leave everyone feeling heard, trusted, and energized—a small, but important first step toward increased engagement.
Step 2: Diagnose the Problem
After one-on-one interviews, take a step back and assess the bigger picture. If you are working with a firm like mine, they will begin with a mix of qualitative conversations and quantitative surveys. This step sets the foundation for everything that follows. It provides an intimate, objective perspective on your organization and team. Any issues and challenges that are hindering progress will surface—and in becoming visible, these problems also will become solvable.
Collaboration is the key to this phase. This will create openness, trust, and engagement as multiple stakeholders move through the process and set targets together as one team.
Step 3: Design the Solution
The next step is to create a deeper team session to get to the root cause of the problem. Give voice to the unexpressed challenges and frustrations. Doing this will put everyone on the same page.
The goal here is to engage the team in uncovering and defining your root challenges and opportunities based on your learnings from the diagnosis. From there, you can apply your organizational expertise and learning design to develop a bespoke solution that will enhance well-being in your team and ripple outward into the organization.
Step 4: Address the Elephant in the Room
By now, you will know the elephant in the room. Your job now? Rob that elephant of its power. Start by naming the elephant, but don’t stop there. Shoot that beast down. Climb on its back. The question is whether it’s even real. That starts with planned confrontation and vulnerability—and ends in vital insights.
At Symbia, we find that a collective sigh of relief often follows this crucial step. It has to happen before real change can take place. Don’t wallow in the “why” or “how not to repeat this.” Instead, call it out and move to the next step.
Step 5: Lean Into What Makes Your Team Tick
Some 80 percent of my work with my company, Symbia, is spending time helping teams understand what makes each of them tick. Look at how they solve problems, respond to setbacks, manage stress, and deal with conflict. It’s this deeper work that always makes the difference.
Sessions shouldn’t be a choice between fun or informative: In fact, to be one, they have to be both. Get your team talking, thinking, and engaging with each other through content and exercises that connect directly to their everyday work context.
Step 6: The ‘Me’ and the ‘We’
To work at the collective level, you have to work at the individual level. Understanding how people think, feel, act, respond, and make decisions is paramount to unlocking the collective potential of the team.
Many people want to only work on the team, but the team only exists because it’s a group of individuals—that’s why it’s always important to work on both. Often, the teams we have worked with have stretching business ambitions, but when you get down to the brass tacks, many of them internally don’t believe the goal is achievable. When the focus is placed on mindset, beliefs, and values, you can ensure that both the “me” and “we” are in sync.
Step 7: Sustain the Momentum
Your team won’t change in a day: The real value comes from maintaining the energy once you’ve gotten traction. Whatever your organization’s size and scale, successfully increasing engagement in the long term means maintaining and motivating change across teams so behaviors stick and real impact happens.
Don’t wait for the issue to appear. Get ahead and adopt a prevention approach to solve employee engagement. That starts with investing in your team’s inner game. This will empower them to navigate their own minds and find solutions.
Just remember to drive this home. It’s not us vs. them; it’s us vs. the problem. Add to that a prevention-before-cure mindset and you will be on the road to achieving lasting mental fitness and unlocking a hidden edge. That’s the only advantage that matters in business and life—so it’s safe to say that Gandhi was right: “It would be a good idea.”
