I recommend the following rules to organizations that are hoping to maintain or maximize employee engagement. I may have missed a few. 1. Do not lie to new hir

I recommend the following rules to organizations that are hoping to maintain or maximize employee engagement. I may have missed a few. 1. Do not lie to new hires during the hiring process. I know this is a hard one because you want to sell the company, but it is important to set expectations appropriately. Unmet expectations (created by the company) will ultimately be paid by the company in full. 2. Do not antagonize new hires during the sign on and orientation process. Choose the employees that manage or take part in the sign on/orientation process very carefully. 3. Do not move employees down the organizational hierarchy as a consequence of a re-organization. This is so common that I think most managers don't even register that it's happening. Breaking this rule is more likely to diminish the engagement and foster the exodus of long-term employees. While that may be the entire point of the reorg currently disengaged employees have less engagement to diminish so the reorg is more likely to have a negative impact on highly engaged employees. 4. Don't measure employee engagement by how often the employee comes and talks to you. If you're making decisions based on what you are hearing from the employees that are always at your door, then may God help you (especially if those employees are above you in the management chain, because in that case you are not actually making any decisions). 5. Equally enforce the professional standards of conduct set by the organization. Every company has fuck-ups. Stories of how the company deals with those fuck-ups will be passed down to future generations. In some cases those stories will literally define the company. An organization that is not equally enforcing professional standards of conduct is not meeting employee expectations.