How many of you out there — business owners, managers, even just simple employees — can honestly say that you love your job?

Apparently not too many.

According to research released by the Conference Board research group in January, overall workplace satisfaction is at a 22-year low.

Clearly, the American workplace is not a very happy place to be right now. Many employers, however, are a bit stuck when trying to figure out exactly how to fix the problem.

According to Roxanne Emmerich, CEO of the Minneapolis-based Emmerich Group, it’s an issue that employers need to look at.

“In 2006, employers lost one in three payroll dollars on disengaged workers … since then, those numbers have just tanked even further,” she says. “With payroll as a company’s No. 1 expense, this is something employers need to address.”

Emmerich says that many employers are often stymied by the problem.

“The issue is that employers don’t have the skill sets to get employees going and engaged,” she notes.

On top of that, the current negative workplace conditions are complex. A mid-2009 report issued by the Society for Human Resource Management found that the current economy has had no effect on job satisfaction for 58 percent of employees. While that may be true, there are a number of employees out there who have been affected, from taking on more responsibility due to shrinking workforces to feeling the sociological implications of still being employed while others may not be.

“A lot of people have been ‘left behind’ in the workplace,” says Emmerich, the author of Thank God It’s Monday and a former consultant to Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson as a key advisor on reinventing state government. “They have friends who have lost their jobs; there’s a great divide going on.”

It can have a definite impact on your company’s work environment.

“The interruption needs to happen now,” says Emmerich to employers who are dealing with this issue.

One of the first things an employer can do is deal with what Emmerich calls “energy vampires” in the workplace.

“Some people have mastered the art of this,” she says. “People like this can really suck an environment dry. And in a way, they really take over a leadership position in the workplace.”

She notes that all of us have an inherent decision making capability: We can make joyful, healthy decisions about our behavior … or we can choose not to. People who continually chose to make negative choices, particularly in the workplace, become lurking energy vampires.

If you feel a few (or more) energy vampires have taken up residence in your company, Emmerich suggests having the “conversation” with them. It’s a technique she describes in her book, but the gist of it is simple.

“It basically involves sitting down with this type of individual and taking away blame, but being very clear about what you’re saying,” she explains. “It’s about saying, ‘You’re not happy here, you need to go find your thing, the thing that makes you happy.”

There is a caveat to this. Emmerich notes that, according to recent studies, 65 percent of current employees are actively looking for a new job and there are not a whole lot of places to go right now. But acknowledging that there is a problem can be a catalyst to change attitudes.

“Often employers are the last ones to perceive that there’s a problem,” she says. “Good, productive employees are harmed when low performers aren’t addressed. You can’t have a high-performance organization if you can’t teach your employees how to be in the workplace.”

Emmerich works with clients to kick off system-wide changes that improve the workplace environment.

“It’s about constantly upgrading, and keeping the issue on everyone’s radar,” she says. “And once it’s in place, we focus not just on maintenance, but on acceleration.”

Which can definitely make coming into work, and actually liking your job, a nice bit of status quo for the entire company.

By Laurie Arendt

Laurie Arendt is editor of CRW. She can be reached at crweditor@crwmag.com