Employee engagement is one of those topics that’s great to talk about, but hard to put into practice. Kris Dunn does a pretty good job discussing it here and we’ve published tips on how to measure it, but does anyone really have a handle on how to leverage engagement as a smart business practice?

Here’s one possible way: Measure and compare employee engagement around the world in three different groups of workers —baby boomers, Generation X and Millennials (also known as Gen Y). Global consulting firm BlessingWhite did this with a survey conducted between December 2007 and February 2008 (you can get pieces of it here for free, but most of it will cost you), and it is pretty interesting. Here are the top-line results:

* There were too few survey responses for baby boomers in China to include.

The research suggests that the more senior the employees, the more engaged they are, BlessingWhite CEO Christopher Rice said in a press release on the results. “Around the globe, senior executives are generally more engaged than frontline managers or individual contributors. Gen Y [Millennial] disengagement levels may reflect, to some extent, their low seniority since more baby boomers would predictably hold leadership roles. Increased engagement is an expected outcome from power and position.”

Disengaged workers can be a big problem for companies, as we’ve reported here. There are certainly some strategies out there for how to keep workers better engaged, but as the BlessingWhite survey pointed out, maybe we need to look to India for some practical tips on how to do it.

That’s because the exception to a general picture of disengagement among Gen Y employees can be seen in India, where younger employees have higher levels of engagement compared with other regions, as Rice explained in the BlessingWhite press release. “This probably reflects the expanded opportunities as well as its young, fast-paced, knowledge-based economy. In fact, all generations in India are happier than employees in other regions.”

As I’ve written before, managers and executives need to work harder to bring Millennials into the fold and understand that they bring a lot healthier approach to work and the workplace than many older workers do.

We could look at this global engagement survey as a wake-up call to all managers. We need to do more to get the best out of Millennials. And while we’re at it, we can extend that thinking to everyone else in the workplace.