HR’s complete guide to employee engagement

Employee engagement (sometimes called workplace engagement) isn’t just a buzzword – it represents how committed and connected your employees are. It directly reflects the actions exhibited by your organization and its leaders, providing valuable information that can inform future decision-making.

In this guide, we’ll explore the benefits of employee engagement, share employee engagement best practices, and explain what you can do with the employee engagement insights you collect.

Quick stats

• Employee engagement has a direct impact on company profitability. Forrester’s commissioned TEI shows how a modeled composite Culture Amp customer unlocked $963,000 in risk-adjusted profit over three years by improving engagement.
• Focusing on growth is key to employee engagement. Employees are 46 percentage points more engaged when they have the opportunity to develop skills relevant to their interests.
• Employees who strongly believe their company values diversity are 86% engaged, while those who strongly disagree are only 20% engaged.

What is employee engagement?

Employee engagement is a metric that represents the level of enthusiasm employees feel toward their organization. Engagement is about more than just job satisfaction or feeling happy at work – it measures how motivated people are to put in extra effort and how committed they are to staying with their organization.

At Culture Amp, we consider employee engagement a measure of these five factors:

1. Pride: How proud an employee is to work for your company.
2. Recommendation: Whether an employee would recommend your company as a great place to work.
3. Present commitment: The employee’s current feeling of commitment, often measured by how rarely they think about leaving.
4. Future commitment: The employee’s belief that they will still be at the company in the future.
5. Motivation: An employee’s drive to go above and beyond in their role.

Companies with high employee engagement have a workforce that embodies these five factors, while companies with low engagement struggle in one or more of these areas. High engagement also indicates a strong company culture. When your organization’s cultural practices align with employees' values, it contributes to better engagement.

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How is employee engagement different from employee satisfaction?

“Employee engagement” and “employee satisfaction” are often used interchangeably, but they’re distinct concepts:

• Employee satisfaction: The degree to which employees are content with their jobs and workplace experience. It’s more one-dimensional, primarily measuring their morale – their satisfaction, outlook, and feelings of wellbeing.
• Employee engagement: More multi-dimensional and complex than satisfaction. It digs deeper into the emotional connection that employees have with their work, focusing on the factors that drive employees to go above and beyond.

Satisfaction and engagement are related but distinct. Many engaged employees also report high satisfaction. However, engagement goes beyond satisfaction alone and includes other factors like motivation and commitment.

Why is employee engagement important?

Engaged employees don’t just stay – they’re more likely to be successful. It’s hard to overstate the impact of effective employee engagement programs and strategies, as evidenced by the following benefits:

• Lower employee turnover: Employee engagement and retention go hand in hand, as engaged employees are more committed to their teams and organizations, and understandably, are more likely to remain with the company. In comparison, employees who are barely engaged or disengaged often do the bare minimum and actively seek new opportunities.
• Improved collaboration: High engagement typically involves sharing a common goal and vision. This makes it easier for team members to work together meaningfully.
• More innovation: Engaged employees go beyond clocking in and meeting expectations. Research shows that engaged employees are more likely to exhibit innovative behavior and offer ideas that help push the organization forward.
• Better employee performance and productivity: Engaged employees are more dedicated to their roles and motivated to exceed expectations. Culture Amp’s people scientists have found that the highest-performing employees are also the most engaged.
• Higher company profitability: Engaged employees are motivated to do better work – and better work often means higher profits. In a study of Culture Amp customers, a modeled composite Culture Amp customer unlocked $963,000 in risk-adjusted profit over three years by improving engagement.
• Increased adaptability: Because engaged employees are more aligned with the company’s mission, they’re better able to understand the purpose behind changes. This makes it easier for them to embrace change with less resistance.

Put simply, the benefits of employee engagement touch nearly every aspect of your organization – from retention to agility to employee and company performance.

How do engaged employees compare to disengaged employees?

Noticing the behaviors your employees exhibit when they’re engaged vs. disengaged helps you build a stronger understanding of employee engagement in general.

When an employee is engaged, they are more likely to:

• Maintain positive mental wellbeing and sustain performance over time
• Do more good deeds to help their coworkers, even when it’s not a part of their responsibilities
• Work more productively and in a better state of flow
• Perform to a higher standard
• Speak more positively about their organization

When an employee is disengaged, they may:

• Become easily frustrated with leaders and colleagues
• Lack a willingness to go above and beyond, doing the bare minimum instead
• Underperform or demonstrate slower output
• Speak negatively about the organization and leaders

Who is responsible for employee engagement?

We’ve seen a tremendous shift in the world of work in recent years as people have moved from siloed environments to team-oriented ones. While this shift has allowed organizations to work with more agility, the lines are blurrier when it comes to workplace accountability.

To achieve a high-performance workplace, employees must be held accountable for their work, while leaders are accountable for strategic people and business decisions.

But who is responsible for improving things like employee engagement? Managers? Organizational leaders? The HR team? Or the employees themselves?

There are two primary approaches, each with its own advantages and disadvantages.

Managers and organizations are responsible

• Pros: Ensures that action is actually taken and keeps company culture at the center of decision-making.
• Cons: Takes all the responsibility off the individual and puts pressure on managers. Disengaged employees may feel they have no input.

Individual employees are responsible

• Pros: Encourages individuals to own their engagement, allows for a collective voice when action planning, and helps attract top talent.
• Cons: Takes the responsibility off leaders and can be weaponized against the employee as the reason for poor engagement.

Ultimately, the best approach is likely somewhere in the middle – where everybody bears at least some responsibility for engagement. Leaders need to cultivate an environment where people have the support, resources, and clarity they need to thrive, while employees are encouraged to take personal responsibility for their actions and decisions.

What drives employee engagement?

In 2024, Culture Amp’s data indicated that the top drivers of employee engagement across industries were leadership, learning and development (L&D), and company performance. These top drivers have remained stable and become even stronger predictors over time.

According to our data, the employee engagement survey questions that matter most are:

At Culture Amp, we collect millions of responses worldwide to help understand organizational culture and performance. Each year, we publish insights by industry and region, benchmarking how thousands of companies are keeping employees engaged. Here’s a closer look at those three top drivers:

• Leadership: Employees look to the actions of their leaders when making their own decisions, and engagement takes a hit if employees lose confidence in leadership. When engagement drops due to the intrinsic link between leadership and engagement, it can take a long time for those numbers to bounce back.
• Learning and development: Culture Amp’s research shows that employees are 46 percentage points more engaged when they can develop skills relevant to their interests. These employees feel they’re contributing to a larger purpose, while managers can better align the goals of individual contributors with the company’s vision.
• Company performance: Company performance significantly impacts how employees perceive the future, influencing their commitment to the company and their motivation to exceed expectations. In 2024, we found that employee engagement was strongly influenced by employees’ perceptions of whether their company effectively directs resources toward company goals.

What is the relationship between employee engagement and burnout?

Some view burnout – a state of physical, emotional, or mental exhaustion caused by prolonged stress or overwork – as the opposite of employee engagement. One study found that the core dimensions of burnout (emotional exhaustion and cynicism) are the polar opposite of engagement (vigor and dedication). However, the relationship between burnout and engagement is not always so clear-cut.

As our people scientists say, “The connection between engagement and burnout is not straightforward because highly stressed individuals can present as very engaged.”

HR professionals need to remember that high engagement does not equate to high levels of wellbeing. Somebody can be both engaged and overwhelmed at work. Ignoring red flags and failing to manage employee burnout may push your best-performing workers beyond their limits, leading to turnover.

3 employee engagement strategies to try at your company

As you figure out how to improve employee engagement, sometimes it’s best to go back to the basics. These nuts and bolts strategies will help you start increasing engagement at your organization:

1. Communicate openly and honestly: Effective communication has a significant impact on employee engagement, with survey questions about communication often ranking among the top ten engagement drivers for many organizations. Open and honest communication builds trust, creates a stronger sense of belonging, and fosters confidence in the organization’s future. In 2024, confidence in leadership was the top global driver of engagement.
2. Focus on learning and development: Learning and development is the second top driver of engagement. Employees at companies that focus on L&D exhibit engagement scores that are 14.6 percentage points higher than employees at companies that don’t.
3. Prioritize diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB): Now more than ever, companies recognize the importance of DEIB in fostering engaging, safe, and inclusive workplaces where every employee feels equipped to thrive. In fact, our 2024 DEI report found that employees who strongly believe their companies value diversity are 84% engaged, while those who strongly disagree are only 20% engaged.

How to measure employee engagement: Employee engagement surveys

The simplest and most accurate way to understand and measure workplace engagement is with an employee engagement survey. Because employee engagement is an outcome, you can use employee surveys to ask questions about various factors that affect employee engagement and identify which ones are most beneficial and detrimental to your organization.

Engagement surveys give you detailed insights into what’s driving employee engagement in your unique organization. That's because when organizations use surveys to understand the drivers of employee engagement, they can take more effective action on what’s important.

Here are three things to know before measuring employee engagement:

1. It takes more than one question to accurately measure employee engagement.
2. It’s important to strategically choose survey questions that will give you an accurate view of engagement in your company.
3. Employee engagement driver analysis gives you insight into which parts of the employee experience need action.

Below, we dive into each of these in more detail.

1. Ask a variety of questions to accurately measure employee engagement

Because of its complexity, engagement is best understood through a series of questions in a survey rather than a single question. This was recognized by Dr. Jason McPherson, Culture Amp’s Founding People Scientist, who said, “In general, statisticians agree that well-constructed, multiple-item indicators are more reliable and tend to provide better external validity than single-question metrics.”

In other words, asking a handful of questions on a specific topic will give you a more reliable and clear picture of what’s going on than asking, “How satisfied are you at work?”

2. Strategically choose survey questions that give you an accurate view of engagement in your company

Since engagement encompasses connection, motivation, and commitment, an engagement survey should ask questions that provide data on these factors.

For this reason, Culture Amp’s surveys use five main questions, which we refer to as the “Engagement index,” to measure employee engagement:

1. “I am proud to work for [Company].”
2. “I would recommend [Company] as a great place to work.”
3. “I rarely think about looking for a job at another company.”
4. “I see myself still working at [Company] in two years.”
5. “[Company] motivates me to go beyond what I would in a similar role elsewhere.”

In general, we recommend using more than five questions in your engagement survey to more accurately capture employee sentiment at your company. However, the "right" employee engagement survey questions will differ depending on your organization's specific needs and culture. To measure engagement more holistically, you can incorporate employee engagement metrics that cover the entire employee experience.

On top of picking the right questions, there are a few other important best practices to keep in mind when designing your employee engagement survey:

• Be cognizant of survey length: Surveys should take no longer than 10 minutes to complete. If they take any longer, employees may rush to complete the survey, resulting in inaccurate or incomplete answers.
• Only ask questions you feel prepared to take action on: If you want your employees to share candid feedback about the employee experience, you need to be prepared to take action on that feedback. People expect their feedback to lead to tangible changes – otherwise, what’s the point of sharing the feedback in the first place?
• Run your survey multiple times: A one-time survey won’t offer insight into how your people strategy is or isn’t working. Running surveys more than once establishes a baseline, thereby allowing you to see how employee perceptions change over time. Generally, we recommend running a full engagement survey once or twice a year, and pulse surveys in between. Keep in mind that you only want to run surveys as often as you’re able to take action on them.

3. Use driver analysis to help you understand engagement trends at your company

Companies that use an employee engagement tool like Culture Amp can see what’s influencing engagement using a technique called driver analysis.

Driver analysis shows you which factors are most related to employee engagement. Dr. Jason McPherson explains how this works in our platform: “If the top driver of engagement is a learning and development question, this means that people who respond most positively to that question are also likely to be the most engaged. If you act to improve responses to that question, then you have an improved chance of making your employees more engaged overall.”

How to improve employee engagement

Improving employee engagement is an ongoing, fluid process for many organizations. There’s no quick fix to boost engagement. This is particularly true when rebuilding employee engagement during or after times of uncertainty or significant disruption.

While some tips and tricks may help patch a temporary issue, improving engagement is best viewed as a consistent strategy – not a one-time initiative.

Implement an “employee feedback loop”

The first step to improving engagement is to address issues identified in your employee engagement survey. Step two (and the ultimate goal) is to sustain those changes to maintain consistently high levels of engagement. Accomplishing this requires organizations to regularly collect and take action on feedback.

We suggest implementing an employee feedback loop model to ensure that your changes lead to long-term, continuous improvements:

1. Collect: Design a survey with the right questions and use that survey to collect answers (or data).
2. Understand: Analyze results from your survey and pinpoint your top drivers of employee engagement.
3. Act: Share the data, build an action plan, and then implement changes. This step is critical, as employees need to know that their feedback leads to actual changes. As Didier Elzinga, our CEO, wrote, “People don’t get survey fatigue, they get lack-of-action fatigue.”

By committing to a long-term approach to employee engagement, you can easily track trends and identify whether or not your changes are leading to measurable improvements.

Use benchmarks to add context to your surveys

How do you know whether the data you’ve collected warrants taking action? By tapping into the power of benchmarking.

Employee engagement benchmarks offer critical context for the data you’ve gathered. While a score may seem low in absolute terms, comparing it to the benchmark score for your industry may reveal that it’s actually standard. In this way, benchmarks enable you to take a step back and evaluate whether a particular area of your organization truly requires action, helping to ensure that time and resources are allocated to the initiatives that will have the most significant impact.

It’s important to note that your goal isn’t to hit the benchmark score. Instead, use benchmarks to gain a competitive edge by evaluating the data (and the relationships in this data) to determine which aspects of the employee experience matter most to your people. Benchmarks should act as a check on your strategy, not dictate reactive and potentially distracting targets.

Prioritize taking strategic, data-informed actions

Once you’ve collected your survey results, checked them against the benchmark, and determined the most important initiatives for your organization, it’s time to take action. At this stage, you want to understand how to extract actionable insights from your data and utilize those insights to identify the top drivers of engagement within your company. As explored earlier, driver analysis can be a valuable tool for achieving this goal.

You can maximize the impact of your engagement initiatives by focusing on one or two key drivers to address first. If you select more, it’ll be harder to ensure you’re actually improving in any one focus area. Start small, be specific, and build an action plan one driver at a time.

While building an action plan requires time and investment, avoid lingering in the planning stage. Increasing employee engagement requires pushing through and bringing the planning to life. Don’t be afraid to test ideas immediately. Once you get started, you can communicate progress on your action plan, gather feedback along the way, and adjust as needed. In general, it's crucial to communicate the results of any employee engagement surveys you conduct.

Tap into managers to drive engagement

Another significant way to improve employee engagement is through managers, as they arguably have the biggest impact on an employee's day-to-day engagement. For this reason, your managers can significantly improve your organization's overall engagement and employee experience.

In particular, managers can learn to conduct more effective 1-on-1 meetings. When done right, these regular check-ins enable employees to communicate their successes and concerns, receive the direction they need to advance their projects, and foster the connections necessary to meet and exceed the company's expectations. A well-executed meeting incorporates the right balance of coaching, guidance, and camaraderie.

1-on-1 conversations that incorporate the following topics generally drive greater engagement:

• Professional development: Discussing professional development demonstrates to employees that their manager is invested in their goals and committed to helping them advance in their careers.
• Personhood: Showing genuine interest in a direct report's personal life demonstrates empathy and fosters trust. Personal connections matter. They increase not only engagement but also a direct report's sense of belonging.
• Performance: Weekly or bi-weekly check-ins make it easy for employees to ask for help and for managers to understand their employees' struggles. They're also a good opportunity for employees to know how they are performing and how well they are tracking toward their personal, team, and organizational goals.
• Roadblocks: 1-on-1s allow managers to address issues as they arise, so progress isn’t stalled on significant projects, and employees don't feel alone in their struggles.

Employee engagement begins with understanding your employees

The benefits of employee engagement are undeniable, so it makes sense that nearly every organization is aiming to improve it.

However, even if you do everything “right,” it’s normal for engagement to ebb and flow. But, when you understand your employees – their motivators, emotions, feelings, and more – you put yourself in a better position to enact true change.

With those powerful employee engagement insights and a thoughtful approach, you can take action on the most meaningful engagement drivers and foster an environment where your employees aren’t just eager to work – they’re eager to stay.

FAQs about employee engagement

What is employee engagement?

Employee engagement measures how motivated, committed, and connected employees feel to their organization and its goals.

What are the benefits of employee engagement?

Engaged employees are more productive, innovative, and loyal – leading to higher retention, stronger culture, and better business results.

What is the best way to measure employee engagement?

Use employee engagement surveys to gather feedback on motivation, satisfaction, and connection to company goals. Analyzing this data helps you identify what drives engagement in your organization.

What are the top drivers of employee engagement?

According to Culture Amp data, leadership, learning and development, and company performance are the biggest factors influencing engagement.

How can I improve employee engagement?

Start by listening to employees through surveys, invest in growth and development, communicate openly, and empower managers to build stronger connections with their teams.

Key takeaways

• Employee engagement drives measurable business results. Companies using engagement strategies see significant financial returns. In a Culture Amp total economic impact study, a modeled composite Culture Amp customer unlocked $963,000 in risk-adjusted profit over three years by improving engagement.
• Leadership, learning & development, and company performance are the top three engagement drivers. Employees are 46 percentage points more engaged when they can develop skills relevant to their interests, while confidence in leadership and the company’s future directly influences employee commitment and retention.
• Measure engagement strategically, then act on the data. Use multi-question surveys to capture the full picture of engagement, benchmark your results against industry standards, and focus on one or two key drivers at a time for maximum impact.
• Managers are your engagement multipliers. Regular 1-on-1 meetings that address professional development, performance, and roadblocks give managers the power to significantly improve day-to-day employee experience and overall organizational engagement.
• Create a continuous feedback loop. Employee engagement isn't a one-time initiative. Collect feedback regularly through surveys, analyze the results, communicate transparently, and implement changes consistently to maintain long-term engagement.

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This piece was originally published on April 4, 2023, and has been updated on November 22, 2025.