Why does employee engagement matter?

I’ve been rambling on this month about how to drive employee performance.  If you missed the run-down so far, you can check out the posts here:

What You Pay Does Matter

3 Steps to Winning A Best Place to Work Award

3 Steps for Driving Employee Engagement through Personalization

But why does it matter? Why would you or any organization want to pay competitively, win a great place to work award and/or drive employee engagement through personalization.

We’d argue first that it is simply the right thing to do. But this reason alone won’t keep you in business. However, doing these things just might.  Consider this data quoted in The New York Times article, Why You Hate Work.

“In a 2012 meta-analysis of 263 research studies across 192 companies, Gallup found that companies in the top quartile for engaged employees, compared with the bottom quartile, had 22 percent higher profitability, 10 percent higher customer ratings, 28 percent less theft and 48 percent fewer safety incidents.”

Make your employees happy, and most likely they will take care of everything else.