The Hidden Payroll Leak Costing You Thousands Each Year

Every time you run payroll, a silent expense is bleeding from your bottom line—whether you see it or not.

It’s not a vendor overcharge.
It’s not mismanaged overhead.
It’s something far more invisible—and far more costly.

It’s disengagement.

According to Gallup’s research, disengaged employees—those who show up, do the minimum, and mentally check out—cost U.S. businesses 11.5% of their total payroll.

If your annual payroll is $2 million, that’s $230,000 quietly vanishing from your business each year.

This Isn't Just a Culture Problem. It's a Financial One.

Disengagement doesn’t always look like drama. It often shows up as neutrality:
– Tasks completed with no sense of ownership
– Minimal participation in meetings
– A “wait to be told” mindset
– Quiet resistance to change

These patterns don’t just affect morale—they impact every metric that matters:

• Profitability: +23% in highly engaged teams

• Productivity: +18% in sales performance

• Turnover: -43% in low-turnover organizations

• Customer loyalty: +10%

• Absenteeism: -81%

• Quality defects: -41%

• Safety incidents: -64%

These aren’t soft numbers. They’re performance drivers. And if your team isn’t fully engaged, these missed gains translate into real financial losses.

Engagement Is a Strategic Lever—Not a Perk

Too often, engagement gets lumped into “culture” conversations and relegated to surface-level fixes: pizza parties, ping-pong tables, free snacks.

But real engagement isn’t about perks—it’s about clarity, purpose, and performance alignment.

Engaged employees:

• Know what’s expected of them

• Feel their work matters

• Receive regular feedback

• See a future inside the business

These are structural issues, not emotional ones. And solving them can unlock the kind of growth that most owners are chasing through other, far more expensive means.

Run the Numbers for Your Business

Take a moment and calculate 11.5% of your total payroll.
That’s your disengagement cost—the money you're already spending but not converting into value.

Now imagine what your business could do if even half of that waste was turned into performance gains.

Better yet: consider the impact of a 23% increase in profitability. What would that look like for your company?

This is the real ROI of engagement.

✅ Ready to See Where You Stand?

If you’re unsure where your team falls on the engagement-performance spectrum, it’s time to stop guessing.

We’ve developed a Team Performance Checkup that helps business owners like you pinpoint the gaps—and start building a team that drives growth without burning you out.

Because engagement isn’t optional. It’s your next strategic advantage.

→ Download the Team Performance Checkup and start clearing the path to profitable growth.