Employee Engagement

I saw this and it made me remind of something I had presented on one of the conferences in India. It was about Employee Engagement and what would be really critical for managing this aspect in future.
Lets look at the definition in the article and why it is rated as best in the blog.

WHEN THEY ARE THERE,THEY ARE THERE.

This is because Employee Engagement is a measure of a critical metric, retention. Studies done by Cedar Crestone, Tower Perrin have proved beyond doubt that higher the engagement level, less likely is the employee to leave the organization.

Even more interesting is the fact that this study points to the fact that over 62 % employees globally are only moderately engaged. This is alarming, may be this is also the answer to the attrition problems organizations are faced with. But what this certainly points to a big way is that ENGAGEMENT is an area which HR Organizations globally have not focussed so much. Now, Engagement itself could have many meanings and interpretation and i find this one good.

"A heightened emotional connection that an employee feels for his or her organization, that influences him or her to exert greater discretionary effort to his or her work".

I think this definition above (taken from an unquoted source) puts it in clear terms how positive engagement can be for the organization.
However, how can organization use engagement ? Are there tools that can engage employees productively. Organizations globally have embarked upon different initiatives including KM, Collaboration for engaging employees. However the technology on offering has not been supportive of such initiatives.
However, Web 2.0 holds a promise to address some of these. Why ? Simply put its participatory web and the way it would be able to connect and leverage the connections is beyond comprehension.
How well Organizations are able to leverage the capabilities of participatory web to tackle attrition and bring about a heightened state of engagement remains to be seen..