South Africa, Nov. 10 -- One of the most compelling recent studies on employee engagement from Gallup1 found that, compared to companies with the most unengaged staff, those with highly engaged people:

Despite these compelling numbers, many businesses still resist investing formally in employee engagement. Some believe 'we can do it ourselves' and while that's true to a degree, most organisations are not specialists in employee engagement. There are often many competing forces at work that impede or oppose internally driven engagement initiatives - from cultural inertia, to competing business priorities that are more urgent (but that never really go away, they only change form), to financial resistance.

Financial resistance, while unsur...