Kenneth Miller | September 2016 | last updated October 2023 

A recent article in Forbes defined employee engagement as “The emotional commitment the employee has to the organization and its goals.” It went on to say that this emotional commitment drives employees to actually care about their work and their co-workers as well as the organization; they don’t work for just a paycheck or the next promotion, but to further the goals of the enterprise. And when they’re thus engaged, they use discretionary effort–going the extra mile, if you like.

The synchrony of attitudes, beliefs and behaviors of all stakeholders is the force that can drive this sort of emotional commitment–and the alignment of personal and organizational goals that enables it–and create an organizational culture of engagement. Unfortunately, this occurs in only a distinct minority of organizations. 

Globally, just 15% of the workforce is engaged at work according to Gallup, and though the 32% US engagement level tops the OECD countries, that is likewise an embarrassingly poor performance.

Over the last couple of decades, hundreds–maybe thousands–of surveys, studies, analyses, reports, etc have been published on this subject by a wide variety of consultants, academics and researchers with remarkably similar results, and not much in the way of change over that period; certainly nothing that would suggest any materially positive trend.

Numerous studies, notably including a 2019 Gallup perspective on employee engagement strategy, document the favorable effects of increasing engagement levels–from reduced turnover and absenteeism, to improved safety records, less shrinkage, fewer defects, higher customer ratings, increased revenue, higher levels of profitability and greater stock prices (to name a few!).

And the numbers are impressive. Among others, Gallup cites 41% less absenteeism, 59% less turnover, 70% fewer safety incidents, 40% fewer defects, 20% higher sales, and 21% greater profitability.

This is not a new phenomenon. In the early 1990s, Kotter and Heskett’s landmark book, Corporate Culture and Performance, reported profit growth over an 11-year research period 755% (not a typo!) greater among companies with a positive culture of engagement versus those with an exclusively shareholder-centric focus. This striking finding demonstrated in stark terms the superiority of an approach that views profit as an outcome rather than the singular focus. Since then, study after study has reinforced the validity of this research.

So that is why we must care about engagement.

Creating an organizational culture that promotes the sort of engaged workforce described by Forbes above is at once the greatest opportunity and most direct path to improved organizational performance for the overwhelming majority of enterprises–yet culture is hands-down the least understood and most chronically under-managed attribute of a vast majority of organizations.

The late Edgar Schein–MIT Professor Emeritus and a genuine icon in the field of organizational culture–summed it up this way:

                 “The only thing of real importance that leaders do is create and manage culture”, 

but he also admonished,

                  “Culture is the most difficult organizational attribute to change”.

Thus we confront the dreaded, but ubiquitous, Culture Conundrum–a test of individual and organizational will that only a relative few have managed to successfully navigate.

So how do we create an engaged workforce? What are the characteristics of a workplace that facilitates engagement? Every expert has his or her list, but we think most would agree with the following attributes of an environment conducive to broad-based engagement: