Proctor & Gamble figured it out in 1885, and the rest of the US business world got on board in the 1990s. They figured out that “employee engagement” was a real thing. They started to understand that when they invested in creating an environment where employees could connect with their work, colleagues, managers, and the company, they could improve their bottom line. Executives learned and put money behind the idea that in a workplace where employees want to do their work and actually care about it (dare I say even, their employees are enthusiastic about their work and their job), companies saw higher retention rates, productivity, and customer loyalty.
I call myself an “employee engagement purist.” I believe and have observed it in practice. When you take care of your employees, really take care of them, empower them, respect them, and even love them, everything else falls into place.
Though corporate America jumped on this bandwagon in the late nineties and now collectively invests billions (yes – with a “b”) in employee engagement programs, the concept of teacher or educator engagement in the workplace didn’t hit the scene until 2010. Some strides have been made in bringing awareness to educator engagement in our K-12 public schools, but there is much work. Information, tools, and resources to effectively implement and reap the benefits of coherent, systematic, standardized teacher engagement programs are not in the hands of principals and administrators the way they need to be. At EducateHX, we’ve learned that school administrators are talking about teacher engagement but don’t have what they need to get into meaningful action.
A 2023 McKinsey study reveals that almost one-third of US K-12 educators intend to leave their teaching positions by the upcoming school year, citing factors such as increased attrition, insufficient hiring, and pervasive feelings of being overworked and undervalued, compounded by uninspiring leadership and overall teacher well-being concerns. According to a 2022 National Education Association poll, 55% of teachers plan to exit their current roles earlier than planned, marking a significant increase from the 37% reported in 2021. Between February 2020 and May 2022, they saw the departure of 300,000 public school teachers from the education sector.
Private-sector companies in the US spend billions of dollars annually on employee engagement data collection and full-scale employee engagement programs. Why have we not actively invested in arguably society’s most valuable resource, our teachers?
It has been almost fifteen years since educator engagement awareness trickled into mainstream conversation. Enough time has passed, and the challenges and obstacles facing our teachers have become more evident than the time to act is now. By adopting tried-and-true methods for decades by successful private-sector companies, we can create a world where teachers and professors can thrive in their workplaces, freeing them to do what they do best - educating the next generation.
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