Book excerpt: Engaging employees is an enormous challenge for companies and their leaders, costing employers hundreds of billions of dollars annually in lost productivity and crippling innovation. Often CEOs and business owners are aware of the problem yet can’t seem to increase the engagement levels of their employees. The Engaged Employee Blueprint offers an actionable framework that can be used by companies of any size to create the kind of workplace where employees can’t wait to come to work every day. The book includes six extended case studies from award-winning companies that solved common problems related to employee engagement and gained a competitive advantage by making workplace culture a top priority. Employee engagement is one of the most important strategic challenges that companies must overcome to remain competitive in the twenty-first century marketplace. The Engaged Employee Blueprint is the playbook that companies, business owners, and managers have been waiting for to help them build a thriving workplace culture.