Neuroscience can offer unique insights into employee engagement

Imagine some day in the future you are sitting at your computer and suddenly it starts playing soothing music to help alleviate your stress levels. Or after a long morning, it advises you to take a break as you are starting to look tired. Although such ideas will either sound like a great approach to health and wellbeing, or rather creepy, depending on your point of view, much of the technology to transform such notions into reality already exists. For example, neuromarketers, who study the brain's responses to both marketing and advertising, have for some time been using facial coding software via webcams to read consumers' expressions to understand their emotional reactions. So it is not a huge leap to think of these systems being reapplied in the workplace to boost employee engagement, which remains a key preoccupation of many leaders.