Employee engagement

What is employee engagement?

Employee engagement is how committed and energized people are about their work and their employer. Gallup defines it as "the involvement and enthusiasm of employees in their work and workplace." William Kahn gave an early formal definition in a 1990 Academy of Management Journal paper. Engagement differs from job satisfaction, which describes whether people like their job.

Why it matters to a revenue leader

Gallup reports that the manager accounts for 70 percent of the variance in team engagement. For a revenue leader, that makes engagement a measure of front-line managers as much as of sellers. When one team's scores drop, the useful question is what changed in how that team is led. In a services company where sellers own long customer relationships, a disengaged seller can put renewals at risk well before showing up in attrition numbers.

A mechanical services company surveys its 40 sellers across five branches. Four branches score close to the company average. One branch scores well below it, and that branch has lost three sellers in the past year. The VP Sales starts with a conversation with that branch manager.