Set in an extremely competitive industry, this case study shows the impact and return on investment of an employee engagement system with a significant bonus attached.

Because of a lack of engagement, National Crushed Stone, a large construction aggregates company, decided to pilot a program of revised employee engagement coupled with gainsharing. The company was able to develop credible data to show the contribution of the new program and the effects that it had on operations.

As employees become more engaged, they are rewarded through a gainsharing bonus that shared half of the cost savings. The system design is shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. System Design

The results are very impressive, exceeding the expectations of all involved. The total monetary benefits of this program was $1,385,336, and the total cost was $129,886. The ROI was calculated to be 967 percent, which means that for every dollar invested in this program, another $9.67 was returned after the dollar was recovered.

This brief case study attempts to take some of the mystery out of measuring the success of engagement, particularly when pushing measurement to the impact and ROI levels. This is the ultimate level of evaluation for executives, where they can clearly see the return on their investments in this important area.

More details on the background, methodology, and case study examples are in ATD’s new book, Measuring the Success of Employee Engagement: A Step-by-Step Guide for Measuring the Impact and Calculating the ROI.