2024 Employee Engagement Trends

2024 Employee Engagement Trends
Based upon one million voices from the Best Places to Work contest, this 2024 employee engagement trends report comes from our employee engagement survey experts and highlights what currently matters most to employee and organizational success.

The Top 7 2024 Employee Engagement Trends
To be effective, talent management strategies must come from a human-centered and data-driven perspective.  We know from action learning leadership development programs that when leaders invest in employee success, they are rewarded with a workplace culture that engages employees, inspires performance, and retains top talent.  Hopefully, these recent engagement trends will help talent leaders and people managers to better understand the most important components of attracting, engaging, and retaining top talent.

1. Employees Are Staying
   The good news is that employees are quitting at a slower rate than last year. The bad news is that overall employee engagement rates are also down — for the first time in a decade.  The dip signals that strategies to retain top talent should be about preventing unwanted turnover in the future.

   Why? Because the data shows that employees are looking for new jobs but having a tough time finding one that they want.

   Are you doing enough to identify and retain top talent?

2. Workplace Culture Matters
   We know from organizational culture assessment data that a healthy company culture is now the bare minimum employers need to attract and retain top talent. Employees want a culture where they feel connected to their organization and team, are recognized for their work, and get feedback that helps them grow.  We define culture as the attitudes, actions, and behaviors of how work gets done, and our organizational alignment research found that it accounts for 40% of the difference between high and low performing organizations.

   Workplace culture impacts every employee’s experience with 66 percent of employees saying their workplace culture impacts their work and behavior every day.

   Is your culture aligned and healthy enough to drive sustainable people and business performance?

3. Employees Expect Follow Through
   While 92 percent of large organizations conduct some version of an employee engagement survey, less than half of employees say their organization consistently acts on engagement survey results. They feel that organizations keep asking for feedback and not acting.  Insights without action do not improve employee engagement or retention.

   With a lack of time and resources as the top reason for the lack of follow-through, post-survey action is too inconsistent to move the needle on engagement, performance, or culture.  That is a shame.  Frequent surveying is associated with more engaged employees and employees are more engaged when they play an active part in action planning.

   Do you visibly take meaningful actions based upon employee feedback?

4. High Engagement Correlates to High Retention and Performance
   Because employee engagement is the connection employees feel to their work, team, and organization, the research shows that turnover decreases when engagement increases. It also shows that engaged employees have higher performance. In fact, 92% of executives stated that they saw an increase in performance from effective engagement initiatives.

   Is employee engagement one of your top priorities to drive performance?

5. A Clear Line of Sight Matters
   Employees are more likely to be engaged and high performers when they understand the impact of their work. That means having a clear line of sight to how their work is connected to organizational goals, being recognized for their contributions, and getting frequent feedback on how to improve.  In fact, 51% of all employees want more recognition for their work.

   The good news is that the data shows that employees are more engaged when they have individual goals that are focused on development and aligned with organizational priorities.

   Do employees know how their work contributes to the overall success of the organization?

6. Managers Need Help
   While managers play a key part in driving employee engagement and performance, they want more help with the basic new manager training skills related to coaching employees and providing actionable feedback. Managers feel unequipped to have difficult conversations due to a lack of bandwidth, motivation, and capability.

   The good news is that frequent employee feedback drives higher levels of both engagement and retention.  The research shows that 69% of employees who receive feedback twice a year or less say they would like more frequent feedback and coaching from their manager.

   Are you giving managers the time, confidence, and competence that they need to lead, manage, and coach their teams?

7. Current Change Management Practices are Not Working
   While change management consulting experts know that change is accelerating across every sector, the research found that change impacts employee flight risk and is more likely to impact tenured employees. The top challenges were reported as (1) communicating change, (2) allocating resources for change, and (3) minimizing job uncertainty during change.  Surprisingly, the amount of change doesn’t have impact on engagement. It is all about how the changes are managed.

   The good news is that employees are 79% highly engaged when organizations frequently communicate change.  Effective change leaders can increase employee engagement. This should not be a surprise.  Employees want to know about changes before they happen and want to feel like their bosses have their back.

   Can your leaders and managers successfully lead and navigate change at work with their direct reports?

The Bottom Line
As you strategize about how to attract, develop, engage, and retain the top talent required to achieve your strategic priorities, these 2024 employee engagement trends can help you zero-in on what matters most. Do you have the employee engagement data to make the right talent decisions?

To learn more about what to do with the 2024 Employee Engagement Trends data, download The Top 6 Forces Driving Employee Engagement and Strategies to Move the Engagement Needle