Award Winning Employee Engagement Strategies
Each year, we recognize organizations nationwide that excel in gathering, analyzing, and acting on employee engagement insights. Our organizational culture assessment data shows that the most successful clients consistently demonstrate award-winning strategies in two distinct categories:
- Raising Engagement: for organizations achieving the largest year-over-year increase in employee engagement.
- Highest Level of Engagement: for organizations with the highest overall composite engagement scores.
These awards celebrate organizations that put people first — those that genuinely listen to their employees, act on feedback, and create meaningful improvements in the workplace. When employers invest in their workforce and drive positive change, they earn recognition for strategies that truly make a difference.
What Sets These Award-Winning Employee Engagement Strategies Apart?
How do these organizations leverage frequent employee feedback to improve their workplaces and achieve recognition for exceptional engagement?
Their success isn’t a matter of luck or coincidence. It comes from systematically gathering the right data, committing to the hard work required to act on it, and implementing employee engagement strategies that truly make a measurable impact. These organizations turn insights into action — and action into results that both employees and the business can feel.
Three Recommendations for Collecting Employee Feedback
If you want to see the same outstanding employee engagement results in your organization, follow the advice from award winning employee engagement strategies from our winners:
- The Basics: Collect Employee Feedback Annually
What mattered last year may not reflect current experiences or challenges. Establishing a consistent annual survey process ensures you capture fresh insights and track trends over time. More importantly, maintaining a reliable schedule builds employee trust, signals that employee voices are valued, and reinforces confidence that the organization acts on the engagement feedback it receives.
- Run Pulse Checks
Employee engagement isn’t static — it fluctuates with organizational changes, leadership decisions, and workplace culture shifts. That’s why regular pulse checks are critical. Unlike annual surveys that capture a single moment in time, pulse checks provide frequent, targeted insights that allow organizations to respond quickly to emerging issues and opportunities.
Pulse checks help leaders identify trends in real time, uncover areas of disengagement before they escalate, and measure the effectiveness of engagement initiatives. They also signal to employees that their voices matter continuously — not just during an annual survey — building trust and reinforcing a culture of open communication.
- Ask for Feedback About Your Survey Initiative
Ask these for questions to monitor and improve the effectiveness of your employee engagement initiatives:
- Is senior leadership committed to responding to the results of this survey?
- Did your manager share the results of the last survey with your team?
- Did your team develop action plans to address issues raised by the last survey’s results?
- Have you noticed positive change as a result of the last survey?
Three Best Practices for Sharing Survey Results with Your Organization
- Utilize Communication Tools
Choose the communication method that works best for each team. On-site employees may benefit from in-person meetings on the manufacturing floor, while remote teams may respond better to webinars, emails, or virtual discussion forums. How you communicate is just as important as what you communicate — clarity, relevance, and consistency matter.
- Focus on the Critical Few
When sharing results, prioritize personal, face-to-face communication whenever possible. Managers and senior leaders should deliver key messages directly, making the results tangible, relevant, and actionable for employees.
- Use a Tiered Approach to Sharing Results
This approach ensures that engagement insights move from high-level awareness to concrete actions, creating alignment, accountability, and meaningful change throughout the organization. A structured, multi-level communication strategy ensures engagement insights are widely understood and acted upon:
- Have the CEO deliver a high-level summary during an all-company briefing.
- Host town halls to discuss employee engagement results in more depth.
- Facilitate team discussions about engagement strengths and areas for improvement.
- Encourage employees to lead “action committees” focused on key opportunities.
- Include representatives from across the organization to ensure diverse perspectives.
- Equip senior leaders with the information they need to cascade results and action plans specific to their teams.
Two Ways to Hold Leaders Accountable for Sustaining an Engaged Workforce
- Empower Management and Create Accountability
Give managers the authority and responsibility to lead the engagement survey initiative within their teams. Encourage them to develop actionable solutions to address issues and drive meaningful improvements. Make employee engagement a core success metric for all people managers and hold managers accountable for following through on their engagement plans.
- Set Clear Expectations
Provide managers and their directors with detailed results on leadership effectiveness, highlighting specific areas for improvement. Establish expectations for directors to actively coach their managers, guiding them on strategies to enhance employee engagement, retention, and overall team performance.
The Bottom Line
Employee engagement is more than a survey — it’s a continuous commitment that must be integrated into the daily work of every team member. Success depends on transparency, meaningful employee involvement, and consistent follow-through on engagement initiatives. When organizations prioritize these actions, they not only strengthen engagement but also drive higher retention and a more motivated, productive workforce.
To learn more about award winning employee engagement strategies, download The Top 10 Most Powerful Ways to Boost Employee Engagement.
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