Bored staff costing NZ over $3.6b

Demotivated workers are costing the New Zealand economy $3.67 billion a year, according to a study.

It found that 15 per cent of employees are "actively disengaged" from their work.

This leads to them being less productive, less loyal and more likely to be disruptive at work.

The report claims that only 17 per cent of workers are "engaged" and providing employers with high levels of consistent performance, a drop of 6 percentage points from a survey in 2002.

The report, by management consultants Gallup, which was released this week, looked at 500 workers in October and November last year.

Gallup managing consultant Anita Pugliese said managers needed to address employees needs and "create engagement at work".

"Gallup has been studying the world's great workplaces and great managers for over three decades and we have consistently found people tend to join organisations, but they leave poor managers."

Pugliese said intervention at local workgroup level was the best way to drive employee engagement and create improved business performance.

"Even organisations labelled as 'best employers' or 'employers of choice' can have workgroups with high levels of disengagement due to varying manager effectiveness at the local level."

New Zealand did, however, fair better than Australia, where a survey found 20 per cent of employees were 'disengaged'.

Gallup used its proprietary formula and published statistical guides to calculate the cost to the economy. The maximum sampling error of the survey was 4.4 per cent.