Employee engagement, orthe complete cognitive, emotional, and physical immersion of the self in one’s work, is often touted as the pinnacle of positive employee attitudes. There is robust research to support this claim: Higher levels of employee engagement lead employees to perform work of higher quality (e.g., fewer errors), to be more committed to the organization,to be more likely to go above-and-beyond for the organization, and leave the organization at a reduced rate. As a result, organizations realize observable gains in productivity and employee replacement costs plummet. Further, engaged employees are more interested in and capable of forming strong connections with customers, as demonstrated in studies that link employee engagement to lower customer attrition rates and higher customer spending rates. An engaged workforce,then, appears criticalto developing and maintaining high-quality customer service relationships. As a consequence of the robust utility of engagement, researchersin a recent Organizational Dynamics article assert that employee engagementshould also be included as an a fifth element in the Kaplan and Norton’s Balanced Scorecard, in addition to the traditional four elements: financial, customer, internal processes, and learning and growth. The authors rightly argue that the relationship between employees connecting with and delighting customers and positive financial results from the employees’ efforts warrant such an inclusion. Beyond this article, popular press examples of such a linkage can be found at companies such as Whole Foods, Costco, and Zappos, where a customer-centric and employeecentric culture purportedly drive organizational performance.
