Only 31% of U.S. workers report being actively engaged at work. Seventeen percent are actively disengaged -- they haven't checked out, but they work against the practices and organizations they work for. The remaining 52% are somewhere in the middle: They are present and functional, but they're essentially unreachable by a practice owner who thinks a paycheck is sufficient motivation.
These are Gallup's numbers from the end of 2025. And in this episode of The DrBicuspid.com Podcast series on the dental practice employee life cycle, HR expert Alan Twigg of Bent Ericksen & Associates walks through what the data actually say about keeping good people and why the practices that understand this finding early have a structural advantage over others.
Twigg opens with a story from a dental Facebook group where a dentist responded to the question "How do you show appreciation?" with three words: "I pay them." It gets a laugh, says Twigg, but it is also exactly the mindset that explains why so many practices are stuck in a permanent recruiting loop.
The episode centers on two resources Twigg recommends repeatedly in his work with dental practices. The first is the Gallup Q12 -- 12 questions the firm uses to predict employee engagement -- which is notable for what does not appear on it: wages and benefits. The second is The Five Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace, which adapts the familiar love languages framework for a professional setting and gives practice leaders a vocabulary for showing appreciation in ways that are meaningful for recipients.
Twigg also introduces a concept he calls character appreciation: the difference between thanking someone for a specific action and thanking them for the character trait that drove it. Thanking a team member for their thoughtfulness in following up with a patient rather than calling the individual hits differently. It is, as he puts it, the difference between wanting someone to unload the dishwasher and wanting them to want to unload the dishwasher.
The episode closes with a discussion of psychological safety -- what it is, how quickly it can be destroyed by a single dismissive response to a new idea, and why the practice owner or manager sets the tone entirely. The Disney quote Twigg lands on summarizes it well: "It's not our fault, but it is our problem."
Listen to the full conversation below.
