By Mark Ambrogi

Long-time friends Todd Richardson and Santiago Jaramillo have similar thoughts on employee engagement.

That made the task of co-authored “Agile Engagement” easier. Jaramillo is the founder and CEO of Fishers-based Bluebridge, a mobile app engagement platform. Richardson serves as Bluebridge’s Chief People Officer. They are co-founders of Emplify, a Bluebridge subsidiary focusing on employee engagement.

“There are certain areas where he would have more input and certain areas I would have more,” Richardson said. “We feel like we have produced something that is a strong piece, and we’re still friends. So it’s a success all the way around.”

The book is available for purchase Dec. 5, but is available for preorder now through Amazon.com. The book’s subtitle is “How to Drive Lasting Results by Cultivating a Flexible, Responsive, and Collaborative Culture.”

“We were approached by Wiley Publishing (in December 2015) as thought leaders in the employee engagement and workplace culture space, and they recognized that topic was getting a lot of attention in the business world,” Richardson said. “They had seen us speak and seen some of our other writings, journals and publications and thought we would be the right people to write this book.

Richardson, a Westfield resident, said he was able to examine his experiences over the last 20 years and put them into a more succinct format.

“We spend two months researching the book, three months writing and another three months editing,” Richardson said. “We continually talk to business leaders that understand the importance of employee engagement but don’t understand how best to formulate a strategy to improve employee engagement or to put a strategy eve in place to execute a strategy. The book focuses on how to develop an engagement strategy and the best practices in executing employee engagement strategies.”

Richardson said employee engagement impacts businesses of all sizes and from all industries.

“I think the book will be beneficial for all managers, leaders and business owners,” Richardson said.

The book helps business leaders tackle challenges such as how to build a future-proof strategy for employee engagement; how to use data to improve employee engagement strategy; and how to drive engagement within your organization.