“What we’ve got here is…. failure to communicate.”

That iconic line – first uttered by the prison warden in the 1967 Paul Newman movie Cool Hand Luke – is the fundamental reason corporations across the nation fail to engage employees.

Communication is the most important element of employee engagement – and the most overlooked. People want their work to mean something. They want to know what they contribute really matters. And to know that, they need context – the context that comes from communication of how their work fits into the company’s bigger picture.

Research from Hay Group, the global management consulting firm, shows that highly engaged employees can improve business performance by up to 30 percent and that fully engaged employees are 2.5 times more likely to exceed performance expectations than their “disengaged” colleagues.

Many things contribute to employee engagement – decision making authority, the opportunity to learn and advance, variety, and respect. But nothing engages employees more than a clear line of sight between their individual performance goals and the strategic priorities of the organization. And that line of sight is best crafted through face-to-face communication between employees and their supervisors.

But too often the process stops here and short shrift is given to developing solid metrics that determine how well those goals are being met.

In a classic comic strip, Charlie Brown is shooting arrows into a fence. After each snap of the bow, he runs to the fence and draws a target around the arrow.

Lucy, of course, becomes hysterical.

“That’s not the way to practice, you blockhead,” she shouts. “You’re supposed to draw the target and then shoot at it.”

With typical round-headed logic, Charlie Brown responds, “If you do it my way, you never miss.”

If only measurement were that easy.

As usual, Lucy is the voice of reason. A key step to achieving employee engagement is collaboratively setting goals that are SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timely). And frequent communication about progress toward those goals conveys to employees that their work really does matter.

In today’s competitive marketplace, engaging employees means unlocking the discretionary effort every employee possesses but chooses to give or withhold.

And communication is the key.