Engaged workers report good health

WASHINGTON, April 21 (UPI) -- Those engaged in their work tend to report excellent health but emotionally disconnected workers or the jobless tend to report poor health, a U.S. survey says.

A special Gallup daily tracking series was conducted to explore American workers' engagement levels -- based on worker responses to 12 workplace elements with proven linkages to performance outcomes, including productivity, customer service, quality, retention, safety and profit.

Engaged employees are involved and enthusiastic about their work, while those not engaged are satisfied, but not emotionally connected to their workplaces and are less likely to put in discretionary effort.

The actively disengaged are emotionally disconnected from their work and workplace and jeopardize the performance of their teams, Gallup officials report.

At least one-in-five unemployed respondents and actively disengaged workers report that poor health kept them from their usual activities on three or more days out of the past 30, while engaged workers were less than half as likely to report having three or more unhealthy days in the past 30, the survey indicates.

Workplaces that create environments that disengage employees might be creating health risks to those employees as troubling as those of the unemployed, the pollsters say.

The telephone interviews were conducted Nov. 16 to Dec. 15 with a random sample of 3,421 U.S. adults -- 1,266 unemployed, 400 actively disengaged, 1,116 not engaged and 594 engaged respondents. It has a margin of error of 2.8 percentage points to 4.9 percentage points.