Contributed by Verne Harnish, founder of EO and founder and CEO of Gazelles, a global executive education and coaching company with over 150 coaching partners on six continents. Together with Daniel Marcos (EO Austin), Verne is co-founder of Growth Institute, which provides online executive education based on the Scaling Up methodology.

To build a thriving company, successful business leaders know they need to balance the needs of employees, customers and shareholders. 

Many firms excel at consistently tracking KPIs like profits and customer feedback. But they fall flat when it comes to monitoring employees’ morale—and it shows.

A reported 52% of American workers are not engaged in their work and, as a growing body of research has found, employees’ happiness has a direct impact on your company’s performance.

You could keep an eye on morale with annual employee surveys, but that’s like driving your car by only looking in the rearview mirror.

By the time you get the results, most of the “accidents” have already happened. Disillusioned employees have alienated good customers, incompetent managers have killed productivity, and the best talent has left for the competition.