Employee Engagement For Dummies

Chapter 21

Ten Ways Engaged Employees Help Your Bottom Line

In This Chapter

Recognizing the many advantages of engaged employees

Backing up those advantages with numbers

Some people believe that employee engagement is just a soft science, all about “making employees happy” and other touchy-feely stuff like that. But the fact is, employee engagement has a real impact on an organization's bottom line. In fact, employee engagement can be so effective, even the numberiest of numbers people can appreciate its importance! This chapter outlines ten key effects of an engaged workforce on a company's profitability.

It's All About the Effort, Baby!

Someone once said, “Hard work is the yeast that raises the dough.” (Get it? Dough, like money?) Hard work is also synonymous with “above and beyond” effort or discretionary effort — a term you may see in this book one or two (or 800) times.

When you engage your employees, you capture their heads and their hearts. As a result, they put forth a tad more effort than they would otherwise, and most likely, a tad more effort than your competitors’ employees. The aggregate effect of all your employees giving a tad more effort, or of their discretionary effort, is exponential.

When you capture the discretionary effort of your employees, you win. If ...