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While companies today manage (some might even say “micromanage”) most aspects of their business -- from supply chains to accounting trends to inventory to sales cycles -- with a fine-tooth comb (and often an application of analytics), many of the same organizations are still under the impression that great employees are born and not made. While it’s certainly true that some workers simply seem more capable and devoted than others, cloning these people isn’t a possibility. Not yet, anyway.

The truth is that achieving the Holy Grail of employee engagement, which is critical to success in business today (as multiple studies have proved), takes effort, and is often the result of great managers. Why? Because while each employee in your organization may be part of a team, workers are motivated by factors that begin at a very personal level.

“Without employees succeeding on an individual level, the business as a whole can’t succeed either,” wrote David Brennan for the Web site About Money. “It’s one thing to acknowledge the importance of employee success and quite another thing to enable it.”

Clearly, a lot of organizations are failing to enable employee success, which is why record numbers of North American workers are fully disengaged from their jobs, which is bad news for a company hoping for the kind of synergy it takes to stand out in the marketplace. For starters, today’s workers need to be compensated fairly – something that isn’t always happening in this age of economic stagnation and “right-sizing.” Once a company has that taken care of, it needs to help employees attain a little of what psychologist Abraham Maslow would have called “self-actualization.”

“Employees need recognition, direction, inspiration, and purpose,” wrote Brennan. “They also need the “3 M’s” of Mastery, Membership, and Meaning” [as described by author Rosabeth Moss Kanter in an interview with Ivey Business Journal].

“Mastery” is helping employees attain the right skills to do their jobs. “Membership” is the feeling of belonging to a functional team as well as a community where needs are met, including factors such as sufficient vacation and sick time, and access to family services such as childcare. “Meaning,” perhaps the most difficult of the “three Ms” to attain, is the critical element in which employees feel that they are actually making a difference in their jobs by helping people or providing a critical service.

Delivering the “Three Ms” to employees requires a combination of factors. For starters, companies need to build their workforces on foundations of work-life balance and employee-focused programs. Next, they need good (not “autocratic”) managers who understand the importance of motivating employees at the personal level. Finally, they need an accountability program that helps ensure that workers are being addressed at the level of individual achievement and have opportunities to succeed (and the right tools to get there).

It’s a long road, but years of evidence have shown that it’s the only way to get to true employee engagement: there simply are no shortcuts. The benefits that engaged employees bring to the workplace, however, are too valuable to make the process optional.