Employee engagement is a term that’s used all the time, but it’s often misunderstood. Many people think of employee engagement as just being nice to your employees, or having good benefits, or paying them well. But that’s not what it really means.
Employee engagement refers to the set of structured practices, programs, and management behaviors that increase an employee’s investment in their work, their teams, and the company’s direction. When you engage your employees, they become more productive, less likely to be absent from work, more likely to collaborate with others on their team, and more likely to deliver better customer outcomes. They’re also more likely to stay at your company long-term, meaning lower voluntary turnover rates.
Despite the fact that many organizations broadly recognize the value of employee engagement, they often fail to capture its returns. Most executives acknowledge that engaged employees perform better than disengaged ones, but only about half report positive ROI from their engagement initiatives. And just 37% of executives treat employee engagement as a high priority.
Why? Because engagement is hard to measure, and it’s easy to get distracted by flashy initiatives like free snacks or ping-pong tables. The real drivers of engagement are much more basic — things like feeling connected to your work, feeling valued for your strengths, and being supported by great managers. A good paycheck alone isn’t enough to sustain your investment in your work. If you don’t feel emotionally or mentally connected to your job, you won’t show up for work, and your productivity, profit, retention, and recruitment will suffer.
The role of managers and leaders
And one of the biggest factors affecting whether you feel connected to your work is who your manager is. Gallup found that the manager or team leader accounts for 70% of variance in team engagement levels. So if you want to improve your own engagement, you need to find a great manager. Good measurement helps managers structure their coaching conversations and performance reviews, so they can track clarity, resources, recognition, and individual strengths. It drives follow-up action, not just data collection.
But even if you have a great manager, there’s one more thing you need: executive leadership buy-in. Effective engagement strategies start at the top. Highly engaged workplaces have executives who buy into, communicate, and model engagement. Senior leaders must:
Model desired behaviors
Set vision and strategy
Support initiatives
Communicate thoughtfully
Creating conditions for managers and employees to adopt an engagement mindset.
Specific strategies that improve engagement
There are lots of specific strategies that can help boost engagement. Career development is probably the most important — 94% of employees would stay longer if their company invested in their development. Other key strategies include acting on business values, starting a workplace giving program, getting to know your employees’ skills and personalities, using SMART expectations (specific, measurable, actionable, results-driven, time-limited), communicating clearly and openly, holding leaders accountable, and creating a positive and supportive work environment.
Engagement and retention are directly linked. A reduced rate of voluntary turnover is a specific benefit of an engaged workforce. Engaged employees are more likely to stay at a company long-term.
Engagement in hybrid and remote teams
The same core engagement drivers apply to hybrid and remote teams. Clarity of expectations, recognition, career development, and quality of management are just as important for distributed teams as they are for co-located ones. But regular video check-ins matter more when you aren’t co-located. Asynchronous recognition tools can also help. And explicit goal-setting is more critical for distributed teams than it is for co-located ones.