Is Engagement a Competitive Advantage?

In BusinessWeek’s summer double issue exploring the case for optimism in today’s market, they explore the case for optimism and employee engagement: Is Optimism a Competitive Advantage.

In our most recent webinar we discussed the importance of employee engagement to limit bad behaviour in the workforce, but perhaps we missed emphasizing some of the positives engagement can have as well.  I know sometimes when we talk about employee engagement with business owners we get the rolling eyeballs telling us we’re talking ‘HR fluff.’

But then I read an article like this highlighting Best Buy seeing avg. annual sales increase of $100,000 per store when engagement goes up just 2%.  That’s not an insignificant number when you have 100’s of stores.

The article has some great examples of engagement having positive effects on companies, perhaps even saving them from certain failure.