Guest blogger Tim Wright is the principal of WrightResults, and blogs at CultureToEngage. Today he has some great information for us about the value and necessity of employee engagement in a startup.

Over 5,000 Fortune 500 employees were surveyed (2006-07) by PeopleMetrics, “a leading research firm specializing in employee engagement, customer engagement, and strategic market research.”

A key finding from the survey was this: companies in the highest quartile in profitability had twice as many “engaged employees” as those in the lowest quartile.

Startup companies usually either want to be profitable or demonstrate profitability to investing angels.

PeopleMetric’s survey determined the same was true for people performance as for company performance. The people who performed at the highest levels were 100% more engaged than those whose performance was evaluated as lowest.

I offer that any other end measure–profit, productivity, retention, customer satisfaction, error rate, or anything else–shows a positive connection to employee engagement. The startup company whose employees engage more fully in their work has higher rates of return in whatever area is measured.

If you find ways to improve the engagement by your employees, you will see internal measures improve. Employees fully involved in their function, their responsibility, their performance, generate results beneficial for the company. When that happens your absentee/tardiness rates decline, turnover drops, morale increases, customer satisfaction rises, conflict ebbs, and more.

Any reason not to want results such as those?

My hunch is that PeopleMetrics looked first at profits because they know profit motivation is at work in Fortune 500 (and more) companies. Nothing wrong with that.

However, your focus may not be on profitability. You may want your startup to demonstrate growth of product output, employee-to-service output ratios, increase in billable hours, higher scores on client satisfaction surveys, or something entirely different.

Whatever you want is the target for your first strategic plan, your goals and objectives, your managers’ action items.

One approach that will help your company fulfill its plan and achieve its goals and objectives: an Engagement Culture.

Your company’s business culture is bigger and deeper than any training program. It goes farther and lasts longer than your kickoff strategy. A culture does more than work for an organization; it lives and breathes as the organization. It becomes part of the way employees live and breathe their attachment to the company.

An Engagement Culture promotes and increases engagement among employees. Here are a few of the ways it does so:

• The organization demonstrates value to the employee.
• The organization demonstrates awareness of employee’s value to the organization.
• A manager communicates continuously with the employee.
• An employee receives clear information of her job’s, manager’s, and organization’s expectations.
• Resources are readily available for the employee’s self-initiated performance improvement.