There aren’t many things a person can rely on these days, but one thing it seems to go like clockwork is a reminder that workers are disengaged. The latest data point on this comes from Gallup’s annual report on workplace engagement, released this month, which finds it at its lowest level in a decade. Only 31 percent of U.S. employees describe themselves as “engaged,” dropping two points, to a level not seen since 2014.

The slide is even more precipitous among Gen Z, according to the report: The percentage of workers under 35 who say they’re disengaged fell five points. What’s driving that decline? According to a blog post on the research from Gallup’s Jim Harter, workers are feeling a lack of “clarity of expectations,” “feeling someone at work cares about them as a person,” and “someone encouraging their development.”

If you’re an association executive, there are good reasons to be concerned about those figures when it comes to your staff, and the post offers some straightforward advice about how they can respond. Clarify your organization’s purpose; commit to upskilling talent internally; promote and support people on your team with a track record of inspiring and engaging coworkers.

The sources of disengagement that Gallup calls out are exactly the ones associations can help resolve.

That’s all reasonable enough, though one thing it doesn’t mention is fairly obvious: Create a culture where your people feel like they have a vested interest in creating the organization’s culture. A recent article in the Sloan MIT Management Review highlights how this approach has worked out at the toy company Lego. Unsurprisingly given its business, the philosophy is rooted in a sense of play. Its chief people officer, Loren Shuster, says it prioritizes being brave, focused, and curious, themes “represented in the language and the principles of how children operate or feel free to operate in a playground, an external environment, where it’s relatively safe to experiment.”

The benefit of this approach is that it gives the whole-staff buy-in on the culture, because they helped create it. As Shuster puts it: “It came from you; this is built for you, by you, and not by a bunch of executives who may or may not be in touch with what’s happening in every part of the organization. It has a built-in mechanism of representation.” 

But association leaders should look beyond their own staff when they’re thinking about employee disengagement. That’s because the sources of disengagement that Gallup calls out are exactly the ones associations can help resolve. When professionals lack “clarity of expectations,” associations can establish standards and a community of support. The personalized experiences that associations have increasingly pursued can help workers feel seen. Their credentials and certifications offer a path to encourage their development.

Associations are often excellent at offering support to go-getters in their industries: The leaders, executives, long-tenured experts, and more who inherently see the value in the community an association provides. A deeper challenge, but a perhaps more rewarding one, is to recognize the more hesitant and often younger members of your professional community who need a sense of belonging and a clear path to professional development. Disengagement is unfortunate, but it also provides an opportunity.

[istock/Nuthawut Somsuk]