What Is The Business ROI Of Employee Engagement?

There is no business ROI of employee engagement. My first reaction was shock followed shortly by disbelief.

Despite the research, the corporate attempts to improve it, their is no indication that anyone has succeeded in making significant improvements even in one company through employee engagement.

This is an extract from Robert Bacal’s “The Employee Engagement Fiasco: Why It Hasn’t Worked, Why It Can’t Work, And The Costs” recent article which I read last week. I understand the points he is trying to make, and likewise in some cases agree. However, where I strongly disagree is when it comes to assessing the business ROI of employee engagement, certainly in companies that have a continuous innovation program in place.

Continuous innovation programs are all about delivering results. Better results for the customer. Better results for the employees. For instance, it empowers employees to engage in discussion and work together to better improve customer service or internal processes. And often, saves money.

The true cost of engaging employees in the workplace

Let’s take one of our customers, Vattenfall for example.

Vattenfall run a continuous innovation programme using the Wide Ideas digital platform. Their most recent competition round saw a winning idea that is saving millions of dollars every year. An idea from an employee that thought there must be a better way. And there was (watch video below for details).

However, to see a true business ROI of employee engagement through innovation, you need an intuitive but powerful digital platform to capture ideas, a good infrastructure process to enable good ideas to rise to the surface, and strong leadership to drive change. This is why Vattenfall and many of our customers, continue to engage in innovation.

So, enjoy the next 4 mins by watching my latest video blog where I rebuke Robert’s findings. There is a business ROI of employee engagement if you include continuous innovation into the mix.