With new research showing just how widespread lack of engagement among U.S. employees is, learn more about fighting this issue from the Harvard Business Review blog post “Disengaged Employees? Do Something About It.” Recent data from Gallup shows that an astounding seven of ten U.S. workers are either “checked out” or actively hostile towards their employers. And there’s a mountain of research showing how important engagement is for profitability, customer satisfaction, turnover, and more. Engagement is very personal and not straightforward to address, but there are some general steps that should be taken in order to improve:

Understand the basics of positive psychology and engagement research. As alluded to previously, there’s plenty of research on employee engagement, and significant influences such as social support and feedback have been identified. Another important factor on engagement is autonomy. Self-determination theory, a well-established psychological phenomena, states that people do better when they’re empowered to make choices and decisions for themselves. There’s tons more information out there – use it!

Find out what engages your employees, not someone else’s. Knowing the research is a start, but you also need to identify what works best with your specific employees. One thing to consider is that most employments look at engagement from the negative perspective – what’s going wrong and why workers aren’t properly engaged. Instead, try to figure out what is working and replicate it. Look at your most engaged employees and help others model what they do.

Encourage grassroots engagement. The difficult thing about engagement is that it’s not something that you can simply demand – it has to be natural. But what you can do is ignite it. Once you figure out what keeps your employees engaged, spread it far and wide. Engagement is contagious and easier to spread to other employees from peers than from the boss.

Recognize engagement as a moving target, and check back often. Engagement fluctuates daily and can vary greatly through changing circumstances. To keep up with the variations, you’ll first need to keep yourself engaged and in touch with the pulse of the business so you can react accordingly.

Click here to read the blog post from Harvard Business Review.