A noble purpose isn’t enough to create employee engagement within a company. The primary determinant of engagement is the level and quality of interpersonal collaboration. Leaders play a key role in these interactions. Their behaviors can create an environment of trust, imbue work with purpose, and generate positive energy — three conditions that nurture interpersonal collaboration and, in turn, bolster engagement.

Even though frontline employees are committed to advancing the objectives of the business, they sometimes see themselves as caught between representing the views of customers and what they think is reasonable. To preserve morale, businesses must keep employees engaged and confident that management has their backs.

NASA’s Pirates were rebel innovators who created an award-winning mission control system for the shuttle program in record time, on a shoestring budget, and in the face of political resistance. Such renegades are committed to elevating business capabilities and future proofing them for novel challenges, often despite opposition from the status quo. Organizations that want to be ambidextrous need to create a climate that fosters such renegades and nurtures them when they appear.

As machine intelligence increases in the workforce, emotional intelligence (EI) in human workers will play an increasingly important role. Managers often have a difficult time gauging EI with candidates, but there are ways to gain quick insights in the hiring process.

Feeling a sense of belonging, which is when we feel safe and valued for embracing what makes us different, makes us happier and more productive. Not belonging, on the other hand, is among the strongest predictors of turnover. This issue can be exacerbated for remote employees, who don’t benefit from the same in-person, day-to-day interactions their colleagues have.

Findings don’t have to be earth-shattering to be useful. In fact, obvious insights can help you overcome three barriers to change in your organization: resistance to new data (“But that’s not what my experience has shown”), resistance to change itself (“But that’s the way we’ve always done it”), and organizational uniqueness bias (“That will never work here”). You can also gain trust by confirming what people already believe.

Organizational change is difficult. Some 70% of change efforts fail, and awareness hasn’t improved the odds of success. But there are exceptional companies, making strides with everything from digital transformation to employee engagement to diversity and inclusion. And they have one thing in common: They are customer-obsessed. When customers are truly at the center of your business, change proceeds from one organizing principle: What’s best for them?

While anonymous feedback in teams can sometimes be less than constructive, when used the right way, digital chat tools that provide anonymity can help managers gauge employee morale and drive change.

Employee satisfaction can be a double-edged sword. Satisfied employees produce higher quality-outputs and have less turnover. But satisfaction can inhibit innovation: People who are OK with the current way of doing business are not likely to transform it. They need to be aggravated enough with their current situation that they are willing to take the risks to change it. By sowing the right kinds of dissatisfaction, leaders can drive their organizations to higher levels of innovation and value.

It was 20 years ago that the movie “Jerry Maguire” created a mantra for our time: “Show me the money!” Today’s young professionals most definitely absorbed that message, but money’s not the only way to stop them from packing. A 2015 article from MIT Sloan Management Review explores strategies for retaining talented young managers who always have an eye on the job market and one foot creeping toward the door.

A new study suggests that a surprisingly simple technique can improve employees’ compliance with organizational rules. The secret? Creating more variety in the order in which employees perform tasks — even without changing the tasks.

What’s happening this week at the intersection of management and technology.

When employees find their work meaningful, there are myriad benefits for their productivity — and for their employers. Managers who support meaningful work are more likely to attract, retain, and motivate the talent they need to ensure future growth. But can companies ensure this experience for their employees? A groundbreaking study identifies five factors that support meaningful work — and the seven management sins that can destroy it.

Developing a successful strategy for managing customer experience and creating a great experience for employees at the same time can be a big headache, especially for large companies. In this interview, Donna Morris, executive vice president of customer and employee experience at Adobe, discusses how the company’s unique approach generates value and goodwill internally and externally. She is interviewed by Gerald C. (Jerry) Kane, associate professor of information systems at the Carroll School of Management at Boston College and guest editor for MIT Sloan Management Review’s Digital Leadership Initiative.

Companies aiming to be competitive in the long term do not see safety and productivity as trade-offs. Research drawn from multiple studies conducted with the support of companies, unions, and regulators in the United States and Canada finds no evidence that protecting the workforce harms competitiveness. “Once companies understand that safety is not the enemy of efficiency,” the authors write, “they can begin to build organizational safety capabilities.”

Managers have an opportunity to interrupt a sometimes vicious cycle between trust and commitment. The relationship between workers’ trust in decision-making authorities and their commitment toward the organization is a self-perpetuating one, and organizations can achieve a higher level of workforce engagement by proactively building and maintaining trust-based relationships. The key, research finds, appears to be the continuous anticipation and management of the so-called “expectation-experience gap.”

Today’s talented young professionals have a different approach to their careers — and a very different attitude toward organizational loyalty — than earlier generations. Although they may seem engaged and committed in their jobs, they nevertheless job hunt routinely and are not averse to job hopping. Those whose companies offer development practices such as training and mentoring job hunt less, and those who are given a high-stakes job show a higher commitment to the organization as well.

Successfully incorporating today’s digital technologies requires companies to operate in new ways. However, research by MIT SMR shows that being able to effectively incorporate digital strategy is strongly associated with a company’s overall digital maturity. There’s also an important HR component to digital strategy: Respondents expressed a strong preference for working for a digitally mature company, but many were dissatisfied with how their own companies were reacting to digital trends overall.

It’s well known that employees’ attitudes toward the organization have a significant effect on how they approach their jobs and how they treat customers. But recent research suggests that high levels of employee engagement are also associated with higher rates of profitability growth. While the products and services many companies offer can appear quite similar on the surface, exceptional service can be a competitive advantage. “Although we recognize that the ultimate focus of most organizations is on customers,” write the authors, “companies can benefit from adding employee engagement to their list of priorities.”