1. Have Senior Management Buy-In: Senior leadership understands that creating engaged employees, sustaining high engagement levels, and measuring employee engagement is just as important as measuring and sustaining other key performance metrics such as customer and financial measures. They know that creating an engaging environment is part of their competitive advantage.

2. Measure Employee Engagement on an Ongoing Basis: It's a Part of Their Culture: Good years or bad, high performing companies continue to ask, listen, and act on customer and employee feedback. They know how important this information is to developing current and future leaders and teams.

3. Drive for Accountability: Whether it's through standard reporting mechanisms or through performance standards, they hold managers and teams accountable for the results and for follow-up actions. Getting the data is important, but what is really important is the follow-up process and they manage accountability for follow-up like other organizational processes and programs.

4. Have Methods of Getting People Involved: Once teams are in place, management supports them, provides resources, and follows up to support their actions. There is a standard work and standard monitoring of the process in place.

5. Have a Strong Organizational Development Presence: Through this, they commit to measuring employee and customer engagement on a regular basis. Employees and managers expect to receive data so they can continually manage and monitor their progress.