The Gallup organization has been polling and writing about employee engagement for decades. One reason this is important is because employees who love their work and are fully invested are less likely to be seduced away by other opportunities. If that is not a compelling reason to think about your employees, then consider this. According to Gallup data, business units with engaged workers have 23% higher profit compared with business units with miserable workers.

At a time when businesses are scrambling for workers, you don’t want to be vulnerable to losing more members of your team, especially the key ones making a contribution.

I remember an illustration from very early in my career as regards how important I was to the company. One of my co-workers said, “Stick your fist into a bucket of water. When you pull it out see how big of a hole you left behind.”

In other words, on one level the company will do just fine without you. But will they?

Knowledge workers have all kinds of information in their heads that may not be anywhere else in the company. The mind is a filing cabinet of task workarounds, past history of things that did and didn’t work, relationships with customers or clients, and more. A former board director from my Chromaline days once said that companies need to build a “corporate brain.” Otherwise this information is lost when knowledge workers walk out the door.