I don't know if I agree that employee engagement is a great thing to optimize. I feel like engagement is a side effect of wanting to get work done. If I focus

I don't know if I agree that employee engagement is a great thing to optimize. I feel like engagement is a side effect of wanting to get work done. If I focus and engage and double my productivity, I don't get to spend half as much time at work, instead I get twice as much work. If I double my productivity and double my amount of work, I'm still not going to double my salary or double my PTO or anything like that. Not to mention that most corporations have no problem whatsoever laying people off when it'll save them enough money. "Sorry you dedicated 80 hours a week and weekends to this project, but the economy's bad so we're canceling it and laying off your division. Oh, and BTW if you try to work on something similar after we lay you off, we'll sue you. Bye." I think many people have realized at this point that corporations have very little respect for their employees and that spending significant mental energy being super engaged and efficient has mostly negative consequences (at most companies). I bet a company could improve productivity quite a bit if they let employees take the rest of the week off once they finished the week's work. But that would require management to have an understanding of the work being done and to plan well, so it won't happen.