Employee engagement: just another jargony buzzword, right?

Pump the brakes. Engagement is crucial for companies to maximize profits. Don’t believe me? Believe this list of reasons I compiled.

1. Productivity

You hire two identical workers. Each has the same skill level, the same education, and strikingly similar personality traits. You suspect they might be twins separated at birth. Puzzlingly, once they begin working, you notice major discrepancies in performance. Customers are consistently pleased with worker #1, yet cannot say enough bad things about worker #2. Worker #1 has a stellar sales track record, while Worker #2 is at the bottom of the store. The decisive factor? You guessed it: engagement. Engaged employees work harder, are more enthusiastic, and convey a sense of fulfillment lacking in the disengaged. This translates to lower costs, more profits, and better customer satisfaction and retention.

2. Outcome

Consider two mindsets: task-centric and goal-centric. Which one would you rather your employees adopt? The difference is in the scope of the picture. The task-centric employee narrows his view to the immediate action at hand, striving to complete it without attempting to understand its implications or where it fits in the larger matrix of strategy. Engagement leads to goal-centric employees who are able to step back and analyze the macro portrait of an enterprise, allowing them to tailor their efforts to the ultimate goal rather than hastily completing a piece of it without regard to the big idea.

3. Safety

A study of beverage company MolsonCoors found that engaged employees were five times less likely than disengaged employees to experience a safety incident. Further, the average cost of a safety incident for an engaged employee was $63, compared to $392 for a disengaged employee. It’s unclear if the company’s beer products had anything to do with these incidents either way, but what IS clear is that engagement, once again, is a source of money saved.