Employees have identified three traits guaranteed to kill enthusiasm.

Consider that the HR consulting firm Towers Perrin recently surveyed 90,000 employees to get a fix on their attitudes about work and whether or not they care about the job — or “are engaged,” in the parlance of the poll.

Here are some results:

• Only 21% said they truly care about their work and their employers enough to go above and beyond the minimum that’s expected.
• An astounding 38% said they had pretty much mentally  checked out — they felt no connection with the company and were essentially putting in time to get a paycheck.
• The rest said they were somewhere in between the two extremes.

Now comes the analysis — why a lot of employees don’t care or are lukewarm at best. It comes down to three attitudes by managers that kill enthusiasm:

They don’t know what they don’t know. Maybe they don’t get out of their offices enough. But for whatever reason, it appears a lot of managers have no idea that their employees don’t care. Employees expect ostrichlike managers to get out and ask about the problems and the reasons for apathy.

They don’t care. A lot of employees feel certain their managers know about the problem, but don’t care. Why? Many managers don’t see the connection between employee satisfaction and revenue.

They don’t have power. Many employees believe that their managers get marching orders from above, and don’t question those orders. Swimming upstream is just too much work and hassle for those managers.

Here are the highlight numbers from the survey of 500 HR managers by Towers Perrin:

• 50% of companies have or will introduce or increase investments in wellness and health promotion in 2009 and 2010.
• 32% have or will introduce or increase financial incentives, such as bonuses or premium discounts, for wellness or health promotion activities in 2009 and 2010. Another 30% are considering the use of such incentives and bonuses.
• 45% say they’re considering introducing or increasing penalties for nonparticipation in wellness or health-promotion activities.

Even in a recession?
So, not only are companies investing in wellness, but they’re also weighing whether to punish employees who won’t get on the wellness bandwagon. Why, even in a recession?

For one thing, employers are getting desperate about cutting healthcare costs and controlling near-epidemics in diabetes and obesity.

For another, a study by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services shows that a dollar invested in wellness yields up to $4.90 in health and absentee savings for employers.

Interesting footnote: ZoneDiet.com did a study that shows obesity has worsened since the onset of the recession. The reason: It’s just a theory, but analysts believe that in tough times, people are more apt to turn to food for comfort.

Take Google, for instance. The so-called dream employer ended up with a public-relations nightmare and a lot of angry employees when it nearly doubled the employees’ share of what had been  reasonably priced, company-sponsored daycare.

You probably don’t get the kind of publicity that Google does. Few of us do. But everyone has employees — who get angry when perks are pulled.

Still, sometimes cutting or changing a benefit is unavoidable. A survey last year by Towers Perrin showed that 11% of publicly traded companies said they had cut at least one benefit. The most common ones to fall under the ax were company cars, club memberships, life and health insurance packages, and financial-planning services.

So, what do you do
So, again, consider what employee reaction will be if someday you have to take away or change a benefit that seems reasonable and do-able today. And how will you get employees to swallow the idea?

Sigal Barsade, a management professor at the University of Pennsylvania recommends:

• Make it fair and across-the-board. If some employees — usually higher level ones — get to retain the benefit, expect the move to lead to anger and poor performance among employees who lose the benefit. Worse, if you try to keep it a secret, expect a full-scale employee revolt.
• Make it equitable. The Google case is a good example. By drastically raising the employees’ share for daycare, the company sent off signals that the benefit was being made accessible only to higher-paid people. That’s when things got ugly for the once-admired employer.
• Give the reason — other than “to save money.” It’s not that saving money is an evil goal. It’s that when employees perceive it as the only goal, they rebel. If, for example, you’re pulling one benefit to make sure employees get to keep a another higher-priority benefit, say so. If it’s to keep wages at high level, mention that. Whatever it is, the reason should be tied to what’s best for the employees, and not just to what’s best for the company’s bottom line.