Employee engagement is linked to retention, productivity, safety, absenteeism, company culture, and even customer engagement, as many organizational leaders appreciate. What C-suite leaders may not fully recognize is that employee engagement also influences profitability and sales. Employee engagement directly impacts the bottom line, since engaged employees sell more than disengaged employees. Therefore, companies who hope to find a sustainable competitive edge should set up a Voice of the Employee program to understand how to increase employee engagement among their staffers.

If we step back and think about what employee engagement means, it makes logical sense that engaged employees should be able to sell more. Although each firm defines employee engagement a little differently, according to its own Voice of the Employee program, certain characteristics of employee engagement are universal:

Deep Positive Emotions. Engaged employees feel happiness and other positive emotions while at work.

Enthusiasm. Engaged employees are passionate about what they do. That doorman with a blazing smile and a kind word for everyone who passes through his portico is certainly engaged.

Sense of Meaning. Engaged employees feel that their work is important and meaningful. A hospital contains many different types of workers; the janitor who zealously maintains a hygienic environment because he appreciates that his work is saving lives may actually be more engaged than the surgeon who mechanically carries out his duties without appreciating the impact that his work has on the world.

Extra Effort. Engaged employees consistently go "above and beyond" customer and employer expectations because they are willing to spend extra effort on their jobs.

Overall, employee engagement can be thought of as a worker's negative or positive attachment to his or her job.

That engaged employees should be able to sell more than their disengaged counterparts is a natural conclusion. If we step into the role of the consumer, an upbeat, passionate salesperson is clearly more attractive than a sullen, apathetic one. This is because, as Daniel Goleman and others have shown, human emotions are contagious. The human brain actually contains special mirror neurons that reflect the emotions of those around us. In this way, the emotional state of the salesperson impacts the emotions of the customer. Happy, enthusiastic employees rub off on their customers, making a sale more likely.

Various studies have uncovered a connection between employee engagement and higher sales. Here is a smattering of a few of them:

1. Teams of Engaged Employees Sell 20% More.

A 2009 Economic Intelligence Unit report titled "Re-engaging with Engagement" found that teams with high levels of engagement sell 20% more than teams with low engagement.

2. Employee Engagement Correlates with Daily Financial Return.

As Simon L. Albrecht writes in The Handbook of Employee Engagement, a 2009 study by Xanthopoulou et al found that higher levels of employee engagement predicted higher levels of daily financial return by respective employees.

3. Company Case Studies Uncover Higher Sales from Engaged Employees.

In her book The Essential Guide to Employee Engagement, Sarah Cook references the work undertaken by Sears in the mid-90s around the Service-Profit-Chain. She reminds us that they found a 10% increase in employee satisfaction to be linked to a 1% increase in sales. Cook also explores how Taco Bell stores with the highest employee engagement scores enjoyed nearly double the sales and 55% higher profits than company stores with the lowest engagement levels.

These are only a few examples of how a higher employee engagement is directly linked to higher company sales. Clearly, engaged salespeople will sell more than disengaged salespeople. A passionate, ebullient employee will move more product than a listless, flat staffer.

But what about the rest of your employees? Should you be worried about increasing engagement among your non-sales staff? The answer is a resounding yes. To understand why, consider the story of Campbell's Soup. In 2001, Douglas Conant stepped into the CEO role for the soup company. At that time, Campbell's was performing so poorly that it was thought a competitor might buy it outright. Thanks to Conant's application of a company-wide Voice of the Employee campaign, the organization dramatically saw a dramatic performance turn around - by 2009 Campbell's was leading the industry, and enjoying 30% returns on company stock.

Although soup sales did increase for Campbell's during this time, the universal application of a Voice of the Employee program was a crucial ingredient in this story of success. The Voice of the Employee strategy turned around the company by creating a new positive culture among all Campbell's employees. No sales staff is an island - they are influenced by the engagement of other company employees. And customers are also influenced by more than just their sales person. Boosting engagement among all employees is an effective method of boosting sales and overall profit levels.

An effective and reliable Voice of the Employee program can be difficult to find. PeopleMetrics provides quality strategies and software for both customer and employee engagement. To learn more, visit their website at www.PeopleMetrics.com.