My definition of employee engagement: Discretionary effort that you don’t have to threaten someone to get.
Threatening or even asking means the resulting effort is not discretionary – funny how that works…
Lots of things go into creating an environment that draws discretionary effort. Hiring the right people is a start. Having managers who can have a two-way conversation is a good follow up to that.
Or, you could just tell them what to do…
Read more great posts at Kris Dunn’s The HR Capitalist (an FOT contributor blog)

Kris Dunn is a Partner and CHRO at Kinetix, a national RPO firm for growth companies headquartered in Atlanta. He’s also the founder Fistful of Talent (founded in 2008) and The HR Capitalist (2007) – and has written over 70 feature columns at Workforce Management magazine. Prior to his investment at Kinetix, Kris served in HR leadership roles at DAXKO, Charter and Cingular. In his spare time, KD hits the road as a speaker and gives the world what it needs – pop culture references linked to Human Capital street smarts.