In today’s unpredictable business climate, leaders face a dual challenge: talent is both their greatest asset and a persistent constraint. While employee engagement is often discussed as a “nice to have,” the reality is that it’s a strategic lever, one that can make or break your organization’s performance. Yet, too many companies treat engagement as a soft metric, disconnected from the bottom line.
Let’s get real: ignoring employee engagement data is a costly mistake.
What’s at stake?
Disengagement isn’t always obvious, but its impact is unmistakable. When employees are just going through the motions, you’re leaving money and innovation on the table. Think about it: lower productivity, higher absenteeism, fewer fresh ideas, unhappy customers, and shrinking profits.
In one case, a company with 250 employees lost $1.79M a year to disengagement alone. That’s not a rounding error - it’s a wake-up call.
Disengagement shows up in subtle ways: low performance, resentment, disconnection, distrust, and unhealthy competition. If you’re a manager, pay attention to these signals, especially when they cluster in certain teams or roles. But here’s the catch: you can’t fix what you don’t measure.
What should we measure?
Engagement isn’t just about corporate perks or pizza parties – that’s table stakes. The real levers are job fit, manager relationships, culture alignment, and team dynamics.
Organizations that get this right outperform their peers in measurable ways. They experience higher productivity, lower absenteeism, more innovation, better customer ratings, and up to 23% greater profitability. These aren’t pipe dreams; they’re proven outcomes.
Best practice is to measure engagement with scientifically validated surveys. Keep them consistent, anonymous, and benchmarked. Use annual surveys, pulse checks during change, and Net Promoter Score (NPS) questions to build a robust strategy.
However, measuring engagement comes with a warning label: collecting data without acting on it is worse than doing nothing. It breeds cynicism and disengagement. Leaders must prioritize action items, assign ownership, set deadlines, and communicate progress. Build a disciplined roadmap through acting, reflecting, and adjusting as you go all with the backdrop of transparency. If you skip this, your efforts will come off as insincere or even manipulative.
Here are 6 practical ways leaders can take action on the data you collect:
1. Evaluate the effectiveness of current engagement surveys. Good surveys ask questions that directly and scientifically connect to the four drivers of engagement (job, manager, culture and team).
2. Assess internal capacity for interpreting and acting on data. Having the people and skills to interpret and act on the data is critical. If you discover you don’t have the internal resources needed, outside expertise and support are worth exploring.
3. Identify key performance indicators (KPIs) tied to engagement. Knowing the yardstick you’ll use to measure success is important. Without defining your KPIs early in the process, it can often leave leaders feeling like the goalpost is always moving.
4. Calculate the cost of inaction. Gathering engagement data isn’t a free exercise. To best measure your ROI on this activity it’s important to know what disengagement is currently costing you. You can use the equation:
- Employee Count x .3 (30% of American workers are disengaged) = Number of Disengaged Employees
- Average Salary x .34 (disengagement cost employers 34% of employees’ salary) = Cost per Disengaged Employee
- Number of Disengaged Employees x Cost per Disengaged Employee = Total Cost of Disengagement to your Organization
5. Implement a robust engagement survey tailored to your organization. Remember you can’t fix what you don’t measure. Taking this important strategic step is an imperative once you’ve committed to addressing the cost and impact of disengagement in your organization.
6. Establish an ongoing transparent process for action, reflection, and adjustment. Leveraging tools like RACI (which identifies who is Responsible for, Accountable to, Consulted on, and Informed of actions) is a powerful way to ensure that you don’t fall into the trap of “we asked… but then didn’t do anything with what you told us,” which often causes more harm than good.
Just like in times of economic uncertainty or when you can’t hire a star performer, silence and inaction are dangerous. Employees will fill in the blanks, and usually not in your favor. Engagement isn’t just an HR initiative – it’s a strategic imperative. Leaders who ask the right questions and act on the answers build trust, foster innovation, and drive performance.
Learn more about how employee engagement impacts your bottom line
Watch this webinar, From Insight to Impact: Driving Strategy with Employee Engagement Data, to learn how you can transform employee insights into strategic action to ensure your bottom line is protected against the cost of disengagement.
Next steps for turning engagement insights into measurable business impact with Kreischer Miller’s Talent Advisory Services
If you’re ready to move engagement from buzzword to business strategy, start by measuring what matters and acting with intention. Your people, and your bottom line, will thank you. To learn more, check out our Employee Engagement Surveys services, a new survey approach that serves as an ongoing driver of performance and can help you strengthen employee engagement and retention.