How to Keep Employees Engaged The key to developing employees with oomph is communication.

We see it every day at the office: the I'm-in-pain-because-I'm-working-so-hard face. It may look convincing, but it's not a metric for effectiveness.

"It's an illusion that the harder and faster we work, the better our solutions will be," says Diane Fassel, founder of Boulder, Colo.-based Newmeasures, which helps companies upgrade effectiveness through something better: increased engagement. "The mindset is that more is better. They're not thinking that effectiveness is more productive than quantity," she says.

It's a focus that can lead to a major dysfunction: disengaged, burned-out employees, simply going through the motions.