The Gallup organization recently did a study that concluded that disengaged (i.e. unenthusiastic, unmotivated etc..) employees cost, on average, an additional 33% of the money spent on salaries.  That is,  if you’re a small business with a $1 million dollar payroll, you are incurring a $300,000+ cost burden if you do not have highly engaged employees.

How do you get there?

First of all, you have to have an understanding of what engagement is and how you measure it? Engagement is a condition in the culture of an organization by which your employees ..

• Derive considerable meaning from their work,
• Take the initiative to solve problems as they develop
• Take the initiative to continually improve
• Have strong meaningful relationships at work. Not only do they  feel positive about their co-workers and managers but express positivity in their day to day behaviors

To achieve engagement takes four things:

• Effective leadership,
• A well-designed selection process (remember the old saying, one bad apple spoils the bunch)
• A deep understanding of your employees (managers on down) motivations, work preferences, styles etc..
• The ability to execute using the above understanding

For a dozen years, we've used an assessment system that enables organizations to develop the understanding discussed above. It provides the metrics that create the understanding that then enables an organization to put all 4 elements together to create a high performance workforce. From our experience, it’s the missing link in the effort to create a highly productive organization.