A couple of months ago I wrote about a different way to look at the impact workforce engagement has on the bottom line.

Everyone agrees that happy employees tend to stay with a company longer.  But just ’cause an employee stays with a company longer, it doesn’t mean they are working harder and smarter. 

So, I look at the nature of engagement in terms of productivity and salary.  The measures are pretty simple and straight-forward, so there is very little pushback from senior leadership.  Here are three real examples:

Company 1:  Has seen engagement increase from 45% to 54%, while the level of “unengaged” workers has dropped from 29% down to 20%.  By moving three in ten of their unengaged employees to feeling engaged with the organization, they created a $1.5 million positive change in the productivity of their workers. 

Company 2: A 450 employee company has seen their engagement increase from 52% to 58% while their unengaged workforce has dropped from 26% to 21%.  Based on an average salary of $30,000, we have created a positive impact of nearly $600,000 in added productivity.  In fact, this company has moved from a “productivity deficit” to a “productivity surplus” in the past two years.

Company 3: A company with nearly 7000 employees, we’ll be interviewing their employees in early 2008.  If we are able to move one in ten of their unengaged employees to feeling fully engaged, and improve the “affective commitment” of just one in six of their reluctant workers (reluctant to leave and reluctant to work hard), we can affect a productivity turnaround of nearly $8 million dollars.

Yea, I know, very cool.  $8,000,000 is a bunch of money.  It comes out to an improvement of $1,142 per employee in productivity.  A little less than the $1,333 improvement Company 2 achieved, and the $1,250 increase in Company 1.

See why I love numbers.  They prove that doing the right thing for employees pays off.  In real money.