Improving employee engagement starts with how people are treated at work. When employees are trusted with responsibility, supported in their development, recognized for their contributions, and included in decisions, motivation and commitment naturally increase. This deeper level of engagement strengthens commitment, performance, and long-term retention.
7 Proven Ways to Improve Employee Engagement
- Involve employees in problem-solving
- Learn about their individual needs
- Provide skills development opportunities
- Create clear career paths
- Support workplace well-being
- Include staff in business planning
- Organize social connection activities
Gallup’s research gives a useful indication of the business impact of engagement. In its Q12 analysis, the most highly engaged business units recorded 23% higher profitability and 78% lower absenteeism than the least engaged units.
Yet employee engagement remains relatively low worldwide. Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace: 2026 puts global employee engagement at just 20% for 2025.
This article on employee engagement is part of the employee experience management hub, which focuses on guides related to the employee journey (including staff motivation, retention, and well-being).
Why Does Employee Engagement Matter?
Employee engagement matters because it directly affects productivity, retention, and organizational performance.
Engaged employees are more committed, more likely to demonstrate discretionary effort, and less likely to leave the organization.
Over time, strong engagement contributes to a healthier company culture and improved business outcomes.
What Is Employee Engagement in the Workplace?
Employee Engagement is the way in which we work to ensure that our employees feel valued and happy in their work, such that they enjoy their work, are productive, and are a positive force for the company as a whole.
Dr Valeria Lo Iacono
While motivation refers to the drive to complete tasks, employee engagement reflects a deeper emotional commitment to the company and its goals. An employee may be motivated by a deadline, but engagement influences long-term loyalty, discretionary effort, and alignment with company values.
Engagement is shaped by the overall employee experience (EX), including leadership, communication, and growth opportunities.
If you’re responsible for improving engagement across teams, having structured materials ensures managers apply these principles consistently.
The framework below illustrates how employee experience shapes engagement drivers, which in turn influence measurable business outcomes.
The employee engagement framework below shows how workplace experience influences company performance.
Managers can use this model to identify which areas of the employee experience require attention in order to strengthen engagement drivers.
Who Is Responsible for Improving Employee Engagement?
Employee engagement is a shared responsibility, but managers have the most direct impact on how employees experience their working day. HR and senior leaders support this by shaping the policies, resources, and culture that make good management possible.
As a manager, your role is to ensure that your team feels motivated, valued, included, and listened to, and that they can approach you at any time.
Managers also need to build an environment of psychological safety, where employees feel comfortable contributing ideas and raising concerns.
You may find our psychological safety activities helpful for building this kind of culture within teams.
What Are 7 Effective Ways to Improve Employee Engagement?
Here are seven key tips to improve employee engagement that you can fairly easily integrate into your business.
1. Involve Employees in Problem-Solving
Involving employees in problem-solving improves engagement because it gives them ownership, influence, and a greater sense of contribution within the team and company.
Engaged employees are also more likely to show discretionary effort, often going beyond basic job requirements to do more for the team and company.
Drawing on their knowledge, experience, and ideas is not only great for finding solutions, but it simultaneously empowers the employees.
Far too often, I see companies failing to involve their staff and failing to draw on the incredible talent that often exists in-house.
Why would you not want to draw on such creative ideas, especially when being listened to and heard tends to make staff feel more motivated and valued?
Start listening to employees’ comments and proactively seek to include them.
You might want to include a completely open brainstorming session once a month so that employees can discuss absolutely anything, from ideas for the business to ideas for workplace wellness, and anything they wish to share.
2. Understand Individual Employee Needs
Taking time to understand employees’ personal motivations, strengths, and circumstances helps managers build trust and increase engagement.
You might have already noticed that people love nothing more than talking about themselves, given half a chance, and this is no different for our employees.
It is human nature to feel more comfortable around people who take an interest in who we are, what our interests are, and who show empathy and understanding for any issues we may have.
There are various ways to get to know colleagues and to bring out their interests and passions, including:
- As a manager, you can allocate time in regular one-to-one meetings to discuss their interests and to learn more about the people you manage.
- Have a board, such as in the staff room, dedicated to sharing activities and hobbies.
- Encourage staff to discuss and share their interests and hobbies from outside of work, such as by introducing a hobbies club at work. You could provide a small budget and even work time for this. The rewards for a company or manager are that you end up with a more engaged workforce, i.e., a workforce that becomes a closer-knit unit as a result of learning from each other.
It can be quite surprising, once you get to know your own employees, what a wide range of fascinating activities and interests they are involved with.
Don’t be surprised, for example, if one of your colleagues is:
- a belly dancer (as I am)
- someone involved with cat rescue (and maybe in such a scenario, colleagues might want to fundraise to help out)
- a professional standard photographer (skills you might need in the workplace too)
- a skilled musician
- speaks several languages
- is a published author
Get to know your employees! Engage with your employees.
3. Provide Skills Development Opportunities
Offering development opportunities signals to employees that you are willing to invest in their future and that you value them. This, in turn, increases employee motivation and commitment.
Another great way to improve employee engagement is to set up a seminar series to provide employees with the chance to talk about and share their various work-related skills and expertise
Likewise, another way to engage employees is to bring out their expertise and allow them to be appreciated for the otherwise unknown skills they have.
The presentations ideally will be work-related, but this concept can, if you wish, be extended to hobbies and interests from outside of work.
Employees, in essence, are provided with the opportunity to discuss their skills and/or interests with colleagues, and the format of the seminar can be chosen by the employee.
Some employees might be shy and introverted; thus, you can allow them the chance to do the seminar in a flexible format, i.e., as a workshop (as opposed to the traditional seminar, which is based on presenting only).
4. Create Clear Career Paths
Employees tend to be more motivated and engaged when they can see a clear future within the company.
One of the most powerful ways to really build employee engagement is to give each employee a clear career path that they can follow and work toward.
Without an opportunity to develop, the vast majority of staff will stagnate, begin to feel demotivated, and feel less connected with the company as a whole.
I cannot emphasize enough just how important it is to have a system in place whereby managers make sure that the career path options are laid out and worked on with employees.
I recommend including the following in the career path framework that you develop for each person you manage.
The first key step is to understand exactly what the person’s motivation and long-term goals are.
You can then look at matching these goals with opportunities such as:
- Internal training courses they can go on or opportunities for mentoring
- A career route they can take to rise through the company
- Training and development that they can benefit from, that you as a company support, i.e., subsidize for external or 3rd party training.
Structured performance reviews also play an important role in career progression, ensuring employees receive feedback, development guidance, and clear next steps.
Create a clear plan with the employee and include timeframes.
You can review how the plan is going every so often (i.e., annually) and adjust the plan accordingly.
Working with your staff to develop a career path, you will find that they engage far better in the workplace, and you will find that staff are more motivated, and furthermore, you end up with a better-qualified and knowledgeable workforce.
Clear development pathways are also one of the most effective employee retention strategies, helping companies reduce turnover while strengthening long-term engagement.
Job crafting can also give employees an opportunity to shape parts of their existing role around their interests, strengths, and longer-term goals.
Run Your Own Employee Engagement Workshop
- Fully editable PowerPoint slides
- Trainer notes & facilitation guidance
- Interactive engagement exercises and activities
- Customizable for your organization
5. Support Workplace Well-being
Workplace well-being initiatives reduce burnout and help employees maintain the energy and focus needed to stay engaged.
If burnout is already affecting morale in your company, structured burnout prevention training materials can help managers address the issue proactively.
There are some very simple and inexpensive things I have seen introduced in some companies that aid wellness and well-being and that bring a feel-good factor to the workplace.
In one company I worked for in Ireland, for example, they organized for a large box of bananas and apples to be delivered to the company’s staff kitchen every morning, paid for by the company.
The expense was really very small for the company, and yet the excitement that such a provision generated for their staff was quite stunning.
It was a perk that staff didn’t want to lose by leaving the company, and one they loved, and yet it also aided health and wellness and was incredibly easy to organize.
Offering wellness training workshops is certainly one option, and these workshops can be especially useful for teaching:
- Digital wellness in the workplace
- Stress Management at work
- Menopause Awareness for Managers
- Full list of wellness-related teaching kits here
You might also want to read our post on 10 ways to improve employee wellness here.
In essence, you want to be seen to value and care about the well-being of your staff and not just their work productivity.
The effect of better workplace wellness, though, does lend itself to improved productivity and reduced staff turnover.
6. Include Staff in Business Planning
When employees are included in planning and strategic discussions, they tend to feel more valued and connected to the company’s goals.
Some of the very best ideas, as I mentioned earlier, come from the employees themselves, i.e., the staff who very often know the intricacies and issues with their own role better than anyone.
Involving employees very often helps you to elicit some really quite useful ideas, and this time can be extremely productive.
It goes without saying that ultimately you, as a manager, can choose the final business plan and strategy, but why not make colleagues also feel a part of the process?
Likewise, why not encourage and/or reward diversity of thought, innovative ideas, and problem-solving?
Utilize the skills, knowledge, and expertise of your staff, while simultaneously enabling them to feel empowered and valued within the company.
Hold sessions to tackle organizational issues, emphasizing innovation and creating energy among employees. Other departments are invited to join, and any employee can be a facilitator.
Furthermore, you might want to let the team participate in the hiring of new employees.
If you are hiring a new manager, for example, why not have each candidate do a 10-minute presentation in front of the team and ask each employee for feedback on the candidates?
Over time, this approach contributes to a stronger company culture built on inclusion, trust, and shared purpose.
7. Encourage Social Connection at Work
Creating opportunities for social interaction strengthens team cohesion and builds a more engaged workplace culture.
You might also find that some employees who are quite introverted at work come out of their shells in these social activities.
Other employees might also work alone or in small teams, and inviting these staff to mix with the bigger team can be great for creating a more unified and dynamic team.
Social activities and social time do not need to be expensive in terms of time and financial cost.
Even an early finish on a Friday afternoon once a month, with a 3 pm to 5 pm type cake and tea social event, can suffice.
Do be careful, though, to vary the times and days every so often so that staff who work only part-time and on other days can sometimes also be included.
Another option, such as if you have a hybrid team of employees based in different locations worldwide, is to run some virtual team-building activities to improve employee engagement and interaction.
For more ideas, see our guide to encouraging staff creativity in the workplace can be helpful.
What Common Mistakes Reduce Employee Engagement?
Many companies try to improve employee engagement but unintentionally undermine their efforts. The following common mistakes can weaken engagement strategies and reduce long-term impact:
- Focusing only on perks
- Ignoring managers’ behavior
- Running surveys without follow-up
- Treating engagement as a one-off initiative
What Are the 7 C’s of Employee Engagement?
The 7 C’s of employee engagement typically refer to clarity, confidence, contribution, credibility, communication, connection, and career development.
While different models use slightly varied terminology, the core idea remains consistent: employees engage more deeply when they feel informed, valued, supported, and able to grow.
FAQs
Improving employee engagement requires consistent leadership and managers who understand how to apply engagement principles in practice. Our ready-to-use training materials make it easier to implement these strategies across departments and create measurable improvements in retention and performance.
What are the three principles for increasing staff engagement?
The key to staff engagement is to make staff feel valued and included, to make them feel that they have a future direction, and to create clear communication and an open environment for them to work in.
