What is Employee Engagement?

Rutgers University professor Richard Beatty recently sparked a heated debate with his CFO.com article, Memo to CFOs: Don't Trust HR, where he criticized the human resources profession for being mostly unable to talk the language of business and help companies build economic value. Since then, CFO.com has published a summary of rebuttals to the original article in Memo from HR: We Do Too Create Value.
One of Beatty's most contentious points is that employee engagement and job satisfaction don't necessarily impact financial returns. Beatty admits in the follow-up article that it's difficult to measure the impact of employee engagement because we lack a uniform definition of it and a common understanding of what drives it.
This month we're discussing some of these same issues in our May roundtable meetings - specifically, how to keep employees motivated during difficult times. BOLD members, please join us at a roundtable meeting or join the discussion online at the BOLD LinkedIn Group to share your thoughts on employee engagement.