We live in a digital world. From entertainment to medicine, everything is personalized, user-centric, configurable and on-demand. It’s been that way for many years now and it’s only accelerating as we look to the future. Companies are moving faster than ever to deploy new technologies to become more innovative and transformative in reaction to this digital reality. But while companies are focused on transforming their products and services, improving client satisfaction, and getting ahead of their competition, the one thing they are not considering is how digital transformation – or in this case, the lack thereof, impacts the one thing that is vital to the sustainability of their organization – their people.

It’s a huge blindspot for companies and too many leaders have their heads in the sand about this challenge, which compounds the lack of focus on talent and its importance to the organization’s bottom line.

One of the most significant risks to an organization is a disengaged workforce. People are an estimated 70% of the total cost to operate a business, and yet only 16% of employees are engaged at work according to recent Gallup studies. So, where’s the disconnect?

Transformative leaders are in search of a root cause solution to improve the team’s engagement and daily productivity. The focus is no longer only on compliance, payroll and benefits, but instead focuses on the future of work and its workforce. Understanding the economics of engagement and building great business cases that bring clarity to C-Suite partners.

HR gets the people issues at a “gut level,” but a clear business case needs to be made in order to get money allocated to where it matters most: the end-user of the business – the talented team!! The fundamentals of the true business case are hiding in plain sight in the balance sheet of the business: (cost of people) X (revenue output) = return on employee. Simple, straightforward, uncomplicated.

So, how can HR leaders increase employee engagement in a digitally-driven world? Empowerment and mindset work is not enough, and today’s measurement tools are largely a fail. Success in a digital world, a world that is end-user designed and driven, demands that organization’s engage employees by about putting digital tools in the palms of EACH employee’s hands so they can navigate their daily worklife in the framework of the company’s strategy and annual operating plan.

Existing HR systems do not accomplish this end because they are built for an analog world –and that world doesn’t exist anymore. We live in a digital world where the end-user is the customer. At work, that means the employee is the end-user and so we need new systems to execute against this reality. Ensuring optimal employee engagement and productivity means that human resources needs to extend the right technology-driven approaches into employee engagement. And by investing and integrating engagement technology with the end-user in mind, organizations can invite their employees to tell them who they are and what motivates them.

And with people having their own unique motivations, implementing a fully-integrated data-driven end-user platform aims to increase engagement and performance through feedback, encouragement, learning, personalization, and recognition. Human Resources can now receive a unique 360-degree of each employee and understand: