Employee Engagement: A Big Issue That Requires A Small Approach

What happens when a project stalls? We recently grappled with this issue. Our project team found more roadblocks than open lanes. It struggled with motivation and ownership, and the project became disjointed and disconnected.

Some leaders see this problem and instinctually take a hard line, discharging orders and defining tasks, which often doesn’t work. So we shifted gears, transferring the project’s creative control to the team and giving it power over the process. That small shift in demonstrating trust and confidence altered the team’s energy. The team began collaborating, generating innovative ideas and solving problems faster. A newly engaged group of employees rediscovered their team and delivered a result beyond our expectations.

Engagement has been a business keyword for decades; employees demand it, companies crave it and leadership consultants craft seminars around it. The research firm Gallup has spent extensive time and resources measuring employee engagement and its impact on success.

We all agree that employee engagement is simple: make your teams feel welcome, respected and valued. So why, according to Gallup, did employee engagement in the U.S. reach a 10-year low in 2024? Perhaps because leaders often overwhelm themselves with engagement goals, metrics, surveys and manuals and forget to simply engage. Instead, leaders should consider pursuing engagement gains by starting small.

Deconstructing Employee Engagement

Effective employee engagement isn’t solely about making people happy. It’s also about unlocking their best work. Too often, we’re not doing that, and it shows. In its 2024 State of Global Workforce report, Gallup reported that low engagement costs the global economy $8.9 trillion. It found that 41 percent of global workers have “a lot of stress,” and workers under 35 are less engaged than those older than 35.

“If our collective mood hasn’t soured to historic proportions, it’s soured enough to impact our daily lives,” the report cheerfully noted.

That’s grim—but also might be slightly exaggerated. According to a Psychology Today article, companies have fallen prey to the “engagement fallacy” that suggests happy employees produce more financial success. Rather, the article concludes that employees whose talents, desires and drive match their company’s goals are a better predictor of success than engagement.

However, even perfectly fit employees can become disengaged, which overwhelms those employees and leaders. When the disconnect grows too great, people disengage from each other. As a result, companies deal with high turnover, absenteeism and carelessness that can lead to reduced productivity, faulty products or safety issues.

Yet these big-picture concerns around employee engagement cloud the act of engaging. Engagement requires connection, which can begin with the simplest act of saying, “Good morning.” Leaders engage by making these connections consistently and genuinely. They listen to employees as well as see them. They ask what excites their employees and what troubles them. They share their own stories as well.

Engagement Starts Small—and It Starts at the Beginning

Great Place to Work, an organization seeking to improve workplace culture, conducted a 2024 webinar detailing nine “high-trust” leadership behaviors that employees value. They include the basics with which every leader should be fluent: listening, sharing, caring, developing and inspiring. Interestingly, employees defined a different action as the most important to retention—one that leaders often overlook.

Employees surveyed by Gallup and Great Place to Work said that a company’s hiring and welcoming process had the most significant impact on their desire to stay. According to Great Place to Work, employees who feel welcomed into a team are four times more likely to want to stay. Yet, as Gallup research found, just 12 percent of employees viewed their companies’ onboarding processes favorably.

So, what constitutes a successful onboarding process? Great Place to Work highlighted You Need a Budget, which maintains a money-management app. According to Great Place To Work, the company rolls out the welcome mat early, with quirky job listings such as “Humbly Confident Product Manager.” In the webinar, Claire Hastwell of Great Place to Work said that YNAB further establishes the right approach by focusing on the employee.

“It’s not, ‘What can you do for us?’ It’s what we can do for prospective employees, and it sets the tone for a great start,” Hastwell said.

YNAB also conducts regular check-ins with employees to deepen this relationship, asking one question too many leaders ignore: Are we living up to your expectations as a company? As a result, according to Great Place to Work, 99 percent of YNAB employees surveyed said the company created a welcoming environment. The average U.S. company receives a grade of 73 percent.

Starting Small Can Yield Big Engagement Dividends

Employee engagement feels like a challenge because so many factors influence it, including the recent stresses about remote work, the impact of AI on employment and our well-being outside work. Leaders can’t solve this problem solely with engagement manuals or consultants. They must be consistently intentional about building and deepening relationships with and among employees.

Start small. Ask newly hired employees about their favorite restaurant and then get them a gift card. In addition to establishing check-ins with employees, make efforts to be spontaneous and casual with them. Ask employees how they’re doing, then stop for the answer. When projects stall, look for a small but meaningful way to lift and motivate them, such as transferring project ownership to the team.

Engagement is not a task. Leaders who integrate engagement into everyday interactions, even the smallest, build engagement and trust over time. They also create a culture in which employees will engage naturally.

Work is a shared experience; it’s not always fun, but it can be. Work can also be exasperating, enriching, exhausting and exhilarating. It should never be alienating. Leaders, engagement begins with you. Start by asking, “How are you?” and then by listening.