Tag: economic engagement

A few years ago, I visited two companies in the same industry, just a few miles apart. They shared industry challenges and had similar products and customers. On the surface, these companies were identical. Inside, they were opposites. 

At Company A, people moved quickly but mechanically—heads down and voices flat. When I asked one frontline employee how things were going, he shrugged and said, “It’s a job.” The work got done, but the place felt expressionless and drained of energy. 

From the second I walked in, Company B buzzed with life. People compared notes on a customer request, riffing together on a new idea, and others laughed in passing, pulling to the side to check in. When I asked the same question there, an employee smiled and said, “We’re making money by making our customers happy. It’s not always easy, but what we do matters.” 

The difference wasn’t salary or perks. It was leadership. Company A treated people like hired hands or task takers. Company B treated people like partners or trusted contributors with responsibility and a voice in shaping their organization’s future. 

What keeps engagement stagnant 

“Hired hand” is a farm term: extra labor, brought in to get the job done, not to help run things long-term. Many workplaces still operate that way. Employees follow orders, get measured on compliance, and rarely get asked how to better serve customers. Even popular engagement tools like Gallup’s Q12 emphasize “feel” over the economic game. Customers and profit aren’t a focus. So people stay on the sidelines instead of in the huddle. 

Leaders have measured employee engagement for decades. The trend line, however, is stubborn. Gallup reports that global engagement dipped again in 2024, and managers saw the sharpest drop. That matters because disengagement doesn’t stay in one seat. Instead, it spreads. Even customers sense you’re going through the motions, and ideas dry up because people don’t feel safe or valued. Lean or AI show up as threats, not tools. Then comes turnover, and every exit drains talent and trust. 

People don’t want to be “hands” 

Humans want to contribute to something bigger. William Kahn’s foundational research on engagement describes people “bringing their full selves” to role performance when conditions support meaning, safety, and availability. Decades later, Dan Pink popularized a similar trio: autonomy, mastery, and purpose. The throughline: when work is reduced to transactions—do the task, get the paycheck—motivation flattens. 

The real question leaders must ask is, “Am I treating employees like laborers or partners?” The fix isn’t another program. It’s engaging your employees in the purpose of the business itself. As I’ve written about in Harvard Business Review, work must become more than a paycheck. 

Economic engagement connects every person to how the company serves customers profitably. People see the scoreboard or how value is created, learn to read it, help improve it, and share in the reward of that improvement. When leaders make this shift, compliance turns into commitment. Research shows that profits follow. 

Two proof points leaders can use 

1. WD-40’s learning-obsessed culture: Under longtime CEO Garry Ridge, WD-40 built a “tribal” culture that prizes learning and contribution. HBR chronicled how the company created psychological safety, invited ideas from everywhere, and aligned recognition with customer-focused results—supporting both growth and retention. The lesson for smaller firms is that you don’t need a giant HR department to build a high-engagement shop. Instead, you need rituals that teach, include, and celebrate progress. 
2. New Belgium Brewing ownership culture: The craft brewery company uses ownership and open-book habits to create businesspeople at every level. For years, employees reviewed financials together and shared results through an ESOP. They trained everyone to think in terms of margins, cash, and customer outcomes. A 2025 Rutgers case documents how those practices built a resilient, growth-minded culture—even as the ownership structure evolved. 

The playbook: Make economic engagement real this month 

Well-intentioned engagement efforts often stop at how people feel instead of true economic transparency and understanding or how people win. Feel-good perks can help, but they’re not a substitute for connecting the day’s work to customer value and profitability. If people don’t see the scoreboard, don’t help set the plays, and don’t share the win, they’ll act like spectators, even if they’re enthusiastic about the department barbecue. 

1. Put customers and profit on the wall, literally.
   Choose a visible, teachable metric that tells the story of serving customers profitably, such as on-time delivery, first-call resolution, gross margin, and new customer acquisition. Teach what moves this metric. Update the numbers weekly; discuss results, good and bad, with the team. 
2. Use transparency as a tool.
   You don’t need to publish salaries. You do need to explain how revenue becomes profit and cash, and where your constraints are. Then, invite teams to find and fix one bottleneck per quarter or focus on one key metric that changes concrete financial outcomes. 
3. Tie upside to outcomes.
   Create simple gain-share or team bonus plans tied to the line-of-sight metrics. When the scoreboard improves beyond a threshold, everyone earns. Shared success turns “their profits” into “our wins.” HBR has documented performance lifts when employees have a stake and understand the economics. 
4. Upgrade manager conversations.
   Gallup research shows engaged managers are pivotal. Require brief, regular check-ins that connect the person’s work to customer outcomes and to the weekly numbers. Train managers to ask their partners, “What’s one idea to move the metric?” 
5. Celebrate learning, not just wins.
   Steal a page from WD-40. Normalize learning with blame-free language. When you miss the mark, run a postmortem and take notes. The message to your employees is that contribution beats perfection, and there’s always something to learn. 

What it feels like when it works 

When people see how the business works and how they can move it, the room changes. Meetings shift from stale reporting to group problem-solving. “That’s above my pay grade” turns into, “Here’s what I’m trying.” Engagement stops being a program you run on employees and becomes the way you run the business with them. 

I call this crossing the line from “hired hands” to having “partners on the payroll.” That’s economic engagement: employees deeply connected to serving customers profitably, with the information and incentives to act. It’s how you convert energy into outcomes and how you build a business that lasts.