Only 31% of employees feel actively engaged with their organisation, according to consulting firm Blessing White’s Employee Engagement Report 2011.

Nearly 1 in 5 employees feel actively disengaged, suggesting that 2011 could be a tricky year for retention.

The report, which reflects interviews with HR and line leaders as well as online responses from over 10,000 individuals across the globe, aims to not only present the fruits of Blessing White’s research but to provide a framework for a framework for organisational employee engagement.

According to the report, more employees are looking for new opportunities outside their organisation than in 2008, but that engagement levels are roughly stable. There is a strong correlation between engagement levels and age, role and tenure in organisations – the report posits that older employees and employees in positions of authority are more likely to be engaged, as well as employees who work on strategy decisions and customer relationships.

Moreover, although employees are more likely to trust their immediate managers than executives, executive trust levels can have more than double the impact on engagement levels than trust in managers.

The report also suggests that the “most alarming” findings are that executives might not be getting the employee engagement performance basics right – the least favourable response in the entire survey was for environments that were created to support high performance.