Computational Leadership

Chapter 3Breaking the Death‐by‐Meetings Curse and Other Engagement Killers

Employee engagement—also referred to as work engagement—is another important factor in leadership driven by computational leadership science (CLS). A highly engaged workforce promotes organizational well‐being and next‐level performance, whereas a disengaged workforce leads to negative spiraling where employees detach, relationships break down and dissolve, people leave as soon as they can, and organizational goals suffer.

This toxic trend is perhaps why companies spend more than $100B annually on engagement initiatives and why attention to retaining an engaged workforce is increasing. PwC recently found that hiring and retention is the number one concern among business leaders, while Gartner found that workforce issues such as engagement rose 32% in importance from 2021 to 2022 to grab the number three spot on its top ten list of CEO priorities—just behind growth (number one) and tech‐related transformation (number two).^1,2

Top management is prioritizing and investing so heavily in engagement because an engaged workforce significantly outperforms a disengaged workforce on almost every measure of performance. Gallup's extensive meta‐analytic review of “the relationship between engagement at work and organizational outcomes” finds that highly engaged organizations—relative to disengaged groups—score:

• 23% higher in profitability;
• 18% higher in productivity (sales);
• 10% higher on customer loyalty and engagement; ...