Non-engaged employees essentially have “checked out,” the Journal says. They’re sleepwalking through their workday putting time – but not enough energy or passion – into their work. Actively disengaged employees are said to be not only unhappy with their work, but busy acting out their unhappiness and undermining what their engaged coworkers accomplish.

While some leaders feel this issue is related to entrenched corporate culture, we disagree. We think engagement is related directly to leadership. The reason is that in all organizations, even those with “unenlightened” cultures, there are pockets of true engagement because of the magic presence of one manager, one team leader, one department head who truly understands how to inspire and motivate people.

At Szemsted, of course, we might have expected a higher level of employee engagement because of the sophisticated level of the company’s products and the professional relationships it has with the medical people to whom it sells. But most studies show that the level of an employee’s engagement actually is related more often to that person’s relationships in the workplace and to the leadership, direction, and support he enjoys.

This means that a lack of employee engagement, and mutual trust, by the way, can be a major problem for any type of company that is in the process of change.

Even in successful companies enjoying good times, employees are reluctant to share information with others when they don't know them well enough to evaluate their trustworthiness. Toss in a merger or a similar situation involving high turnover or mass layoffs, and it becomes extremely challenging to develop the mutual trust necessary to build strong relationships. Yet too often, in the rush and confusion of a merger, employees are grouped together and told to “get to work.”

Well-placed trust grows out of experience and interaction – usually extended over time by talking and asking questions, by listening and determining how well claims and actions hold up. Effective teams have learned that the time to get to know one another and to build valuable “social capital” at the beginning of a project leads to the kinds of trusting relationships that pay off in increased productivity later on.