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Most businesses say their employees are their most important asset. It’s written in mission statements, spoken in town halls, and printed on company websites.
But the reality inside most organizations tells a different story.
Employee disengagement is one of the biggest hidden problems in business today. It quietly undermines growth, efficiency, and customer experience. Yet, instead of addressing the root cause, companies often scramble to fix surface-level symptoms—high turnover, lackluster performance, or failing change initiatives.
At LOCAL, we believe employees are a company’s first customer. When businesses treat their people with the same strategic intent as external customers, everything changes.
Recently, our co-founder sat down with Atlanta Business Radio to talk about why employee engagement is the key to sustainable business success and how companies can shift their mindset to make it happen.
Here’s what we explored.
The idea behind LOCAL started with a challenge: trying to align thousands of employees across divisions, regions, and departments behind a single idea.
Imagine launching a major global marketing campaign—one backed by a brand as big as Coca-Cola—and struggling to get internal teams to care. That’s exactly what happened during the 2014 FIFA World Cup. The campaign was built for massive consumer engagement, but internally, employees weren’t engaged in making it successful.
The realization was clear: companies spend billions marketing to external customers but fail to market to their own people. The employees tasked with delivering the brand experience often feel disconnected from it.
That disconnect isn’t just frustrating—it’s costly.
And that’s where LOCAL was born. Our focus? Applying marketing strategies internally to drive employee engagement, adoption, and performance.
If you look at the numbers, the problem is staggering:
🔹 Over two-thirds of employees feel disengaged at work.
🔹 Companies with disengaged employees perform worse across revenue, profit, customer loyalty, and productivity.
🔹 Replacing an employee costs significantly more than retaining an engaged one.
Despite these hard facts, most companies continue to ignore their employees when rolling out strategic initiatives, launching new technologies, or driving transformation. They focus on external growth and expect employees to just keep up.
But here’s the truth:
➡️ Disengaged employees don’t deliver great customer experiences.
➡️ Unhappy teams don’t drive innovation or efficiency.
➡️ You can’t scale a business with a disengaged workforce.
If companies want to succeed, they need to stop treating employee engagement like an HR issue and start treating it as a business imperative.
Change is constant. But successful transformation isn’t.
Companies pour millions into new technologies, restructuring efforts, and strategic initiatives—yet 70% of change efforts fail.
Why?
Because they forget that change isn’t about processes—it’s about people.
A new system only works if employees actually use it. A cultural shift only sticks if employees embrace it. Yet companies often:
Spot the common symptoms of a disengaged workforceSo how do you know if your company is struggling with employee engagement? Here are some red flags
:🚩 High turnover: Employees are leaving faster than you can replace them.
🚩 Lack of adoption for new initiatives: You launch new programs, but no one uses them.
🚩 Low productivity: Teams seem disengaged, unmotivated, or unclear on priorities.
🚩 Customer dissatisfaction: Frontline employees aren’t delivering the level of service your brand promises.
🚩 Culture disconnect: Leadership says one thing, but employees experience another.If any of these resonate, it’s time to rethink how your company engages employees—not just through HR, but through strategic internal marketing.How to win at employee engagement
For companies looking to improve engagement, here’s where to start:
💡 “You have two ears and one mouth for a reason. Use them in that ratio.”
Most employees already know what’s wrong and what needs to change. But too many leaders focus on broadcasting their vision rather than listening to their workforce. Great engagement starts with understanding employees’ needs, frustrations, and ideas.
Saying “employees are our biggest asset” means nothing if every business decision prioritizes profits over people.
If employees see misalignment between words and actions, they stop trusting leadership.
When companies launch new products, they invest in:
✅ Customer research
✅ Targeted messaging
✅ Marketing campaigns
✅ Engagement trackingBut when rolling out internal initiatives, companies rarely apply the same discipline. If you want employees to buy into a new program, tool, or way of working, treat it like a product launch.
Most companies rely on emails, town halls, and corporate intranets to engage employees. But those channels often don’t reach the people who need them most. Instead, engagement happens through:
🚀 Peer-driven communication (team leaders, coworkers)
🚀 On-the-ground storytelling (videos, in-person demos, success stories)
🚀 Incentives and recognition programs (celebrating behavior change)5. Prioritize Employee Engagement as a Business StrategyThe most successful companies don’t treat engagement as an afterthought. They make it part of their core strategy—because they know:Happy, engaged employees create happy, loyal customers.
Want more insights? Listen to the full podcast episode here.
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