Say you've engaged your company in a community project. In no time engagement appears among all employees. Feel good?

That's witnessing cascading business engagement. You initiate engagement in raising money for a charitable effort, and you watch the engagement flow down and (through)out the organization. Feels good.

But you don't only see cascading. Cascading starts as something you do. And it's not only something you start.

When you agree that business engagement generates employee engagement (and other) benefits, your company more readily takes one on.  That means expending time, energy and effort to cascade the engagement to and through your employee base.

The concept of C.O.R.E. engagement comes fully into play when you want to originate and then cascade commitment among all your personnel.

Communication. Present your business engagement at staff meetings. Include it in e-mail signatures. Provide frequent and enlivening progress updates. Make a big deal of announcing/celebrating successful completion. A single "this-is-what-we're-going-to-do" is not enough, not if you want the entire company to engage.

Opportunities. Make engagement easy for your people. Invite champions. Create "sponsorships". Incorporate ways employees can make it relevant to their functions and assignments. A sign-up-to-contribute-some-money invitation is not much of an opportunity to engage.

Resources. Depending on the specific engagement, ensure that tools, information, and equipment necessary to participate is readily available. If you engage in Habitat for Humanity or a local volunteer home repair effort, for example, provide tools and instruction up front to make it easy for people to say, "Yes, I'll engage!" A let's-do-it invitation with no sign of company involvement is not filled with engagement attitude.

Engagement. Be sure the leadership/management are engaged as well.  An employee learns from–and is typically eager to emulate–supervisor, manager, leader. When leadership engages, employees are more likely to also. A sure engagement-downer is for leaders to say "let's do it" and then not participate.

Here's the plus. It's so much more rewarding to watch cascading business engagement when you've cascaded your share of that engagement.