How Escape Games Are Effective for Assessing Employee Engagement

For those of us with full-time jobs, it is incredible to think about what a large part of our lives are spent at work. For those of us who enjoy what they do and the people they work with, those hours spent earning a living can actually be enjoyable. However, if you’re in a job that is not challenging for you or one in which you feel like your input is not valued, working can be an incredible drudgery. This is where employee engagement comes in.

According to a Gallup report, how you feel about work can be categorized as actively engaged, disengaged or actively disengaged. If you are actively engaged, you are challenged by your work, your input is valued and you believe you have opportunity for advancement. If you are disengaged, then you aren’t experiencing any of these positive feelings. If you are actively disengaged chances are everyone knows it because you are consistently complaining about your job, you’re missing work and your performance is suffering. Based on this study, only 31% of employees are actively engaged!

As a leader, how do you identify those employees that are disengaged and help them to re-engage in their jobs? While a re-engagement solution may vary by employee, identification of disengaged team-members and their cause can be done at The Clue Room.

First, book an escape game event for your team. During the game, see which team members actively participate for the full 60 minutes and which members stand off by themselves or find a comfortable chair to take up residency. This is often a pretty good sign of a team member that has disengaged from their team and sees no point in working together on this fun and collaborative exercise.

For a possible cause of the employee disengagement, see how your team leaders interact with staff members during the game. According to an article written by Martin Luenendonk, CEO and co-founder of Cleverism, a leading educational website that helps people actually get their dream job, people don’t quit because of their company.  They quit because of their boss.

In particular, this article mentions that lack of recognition for accomplishments at work are often a chief cause for employee disengagement: “Everyone wants to know that what they are doing counts, and the most effective way of letting someone know that their work counts is by recognizing their efforts.”

Without consistent recognition, employees start feeling like small cogs in a very huge machine, like all the effort they are putting into their work is not being appreciated.”

Evidence of a manager’s use of recognition for accomplishments can be seen at The Clue Room, as well. In an escape game, there are a number of puzzles and mysteries that must be solved in a 60 minute period.  Most involve team-work, communication and thinking outside-the-box. It’s encouraging to see managers delegating leadership and complimenting their teams as they solve puzzles and move towards successfully escaping.  On the flip side, it’s noteworthy to see managers who take control of a game and try to solve all the puzzles themselves.  Team members with those types of leaders, often move to the sidelines and rarely escape.

In a job market where it is more and more difficult to find great employees, keeping your employees engaged is now more important than ever.  Using The Clue Room Escape Game company to help identify disengaged employees and possible causes is critical to re-engaging employees and reducing employee recruiting costs. 

Learn more about how to book your team-building and employee engagement event today by visiting our ‘Team-building‘ page or calling 303.955.1722.