Employees who are in engaged in their work and workplace are twice as likely to report their organization is hiring new workers as those who are actively disengaged, according to a new Gallup poll.

 Workers who are emotionally disconnected from their work and workplace are far more likely to report their organization is letting people go than those who are engaged.

 Americans report these substantial differences in their organization's hiring practices even though, collectively, Gallup finds overall U.S. job creation holding steady in recent months.

 These findings are from a special Gallup Daily tracking series conducted January through June 2011 to thoroughly explore American workers' engagement levels.

 Gallup's employee engagement indexis based on worker responses to 12 actionable workplace elements with proven linkages to performance outcomes, including productivity, customer service, quality, retention, safety, and profit. More recent research has found significant linkages between engagement at work and health and wellbeing outcomes.

 Engaged employees are involved in and enthusiastic about their work. Those who are not engaged may be satisfied but are 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 their teams' performance.

 Engagement low but improving

Overall, in the first half of 2011, 30 percent of U.S. workers employed full or part time are engaged in their work and workplace, up slightly from 28 percent in late 2010. Job creation has also improved from +10 at the end of 2010 to +15 in June. Approximately half of U.S. workers are not engaged, and nearly one in five are actively disengaged, unchanged from late 2010.

 Currently, the American workforce has 1.5 engaged employees for every actively disengaged employee.Gallup management research has found the ratio of engaged to actively disengaged employees varies greatly across different organizations, from more than eight engaged employees for every actively disengaged employee in the most highly motivated organizations to fewer than one engaged employee for every actively disengaged employee in the least motivated workforces. Engagement also varies across countries worldwide.

 About Gallup's Employee Engagement Index

Gallup's employee engagement index is based on decades of research studying which workplace elements matter most in driving performance outcomes across organizations throughout the world. Gallup researchers identified 12 elements that are summarized into 12 survey items. A composite of employee responses to the 12 items is used to formulate the engagement index groupings: engaged, not engaged, and actively disengaged.

 Survey methods

Results are based on telephone interviews conducted as part of the Gallup Daily tracking survey Nov. 16-Dec. 15, 2010 and Jan. 2-June 30, 2011, with random samples of 2,526 (2010) and 4,434 (2011) adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia, selected using random-digit-dial sampling.