I've written before taking the counterpoint position to those who argue that investing in your workplace to create a robust workplace culture of employee engagement is a waste of time and money.  I think it's important for people who share my view – that it's just as good if not better for businesses as it is for employees – to speak up about it, given the economy and companies' resultant tendency to reduce spending on initiatives designed to keep employees engaged in favor of those that seem to translate more readily to bottom-line returns.

One small business advisor who shares my view is Lonnie Sciambi.  On his Entrepreneur's Yoda blog yesterday, he wrote about how employee engagement, when done well, can lead to better, longer-term results from key stakeholders including:

• Employees – keeping them in the loop of how the business is doing and their role in that increases productivity.
• Customers or clients – "The more you know, engage and motivate your prospect ... the more comfortable that prospect will feel [sic] about your company and the more successful you will be."
• Suppliers – Sciambi touches upon a small business trend: connecting with a supplier's leadership like never before to incentivize both parties' markets and reap collective returns.  How well each company's workforce is engaged quickly becomes a factor for success.

Read his full post here.

Related: Sciambi writes from the point of view of leadership engaging employees, which echoes Winning Workplaces' advice that the most effective engagement is shaped by the "tone at the top."  This post from Wally Bock, warning of a middle-management crisis when it comes to supervision of current employees and promotion from within to management posts, underscores even more why engagement should start with the CEO.