A recent Gallop poll found that only 34 percent of employees are engaged in their jobs. Fifty-three percent of employees are not engaged, doing the bare minimum to simply remain employed. And 13 percent are actively disengaged. Those employees would rather be almost anywhere else than at work.

While there are likely many reasons for this lack of employee engagement, and they no doubt vary among employees, one of the most common is a feeling that their employer cares little to nothing about what they think or what’s important to them. The focus always seems to be on production and rarely on the people that are producing. In some workplaces even a sincere “good morning” is lacking, much less a genuine effort to solicit the employees’ concerns. There are some proven methods that employers have successfully utilized over the years to obtain employee feedback on issues of concern to them. Such feedback is critical if the company has any hope of truly being in tune with its workforce. The methods outlined here are really nothing more than common sense things all of us have heard for years. The goal is to create more engaged employees that willingly support the company’s values and mission. The question is how to get there.