Empower don't entitle

Businesses have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to improve their employee engagement scores. Yet Gallup, who has measured engagement scores since 2000, has seen little if any change. Engagement has been defined a number of ways including employees who consistency give discretionary effort and have a desire to remain employed at their company. Gallup defines engagement as employees who are involved in, enthusiastic about and committed to their work and workplace. Engagement is directly linked to performance thus profit.

Performance and engagement are both results of cultural, technological and physical environments. Performance consultants agree that workplace performance is affected as much as 80 percent by environmental factors such as tools, materials and procedures, specificity and timeliness of feedback and clarity of expectations.