The Relationship Between Engagement at Work and Organisational Studies, a report published by Gallup in April 2016 is a sophisticated analysis of 339 research studies across 230 organisations in 49 industries with employees in 73 countries. It covers 82,248 business units and 1,882,131 employees.

The results show that employee engagement is related positively to profitability and eight other measures of business performance, regardless of business size, sector and nationality. Business units in the top half of employee engagement double their chances of success and those at the 99th percentile have four times the success rate of those at the first percentile.

The message is simple. People really are the key to business success.

And the so-called ‘Gallup 12’ offers a simple set of measures for managers to rate staff engagement.

Difficult as it may be to hear what your staff think about you, your fellow leaders and your workplace really need to know. And more importantly, you need to act on your knowledge.

Such a simple message deserves a simple question. Do you check and react to the temperature of your workforce on a regular basis?