Better Employee Engagement Strategy: 6 Signs You Need to Shift

Smart Leaders Demand a Better Employee Engagement Strategy
Organizational culture assessment data finds that many organizations fall into what we call an “Engagement Funk.”  Employee surveys can start to feel like a relationship that has long since left the honeymoon phase — routine, predictable, and lacking spark.  Employees just go through the motions, checking boxes, and wondering if anything will ever change.

Employees may still be present, but their commitment, creativity, and discretionary effort are quietly eroding.

Leaders who recognize this reality know that repeating the same survey-and-report cycle won’t fix the problem. Engagement isn’t about one-off initiatives; it’s about creating experiences that inspire, challenge, and connect employees to the mission every day. It requires thoughtful strategy, targeted engagement actions, and ongoing dialogue — not just metrics that collect dust on a quarterly report.

Smart leaders don’t settle for surveys that merely report sentiment — they use engagement as a lever to shape a high performing culture, unlock potential, and build enduring employee loyalty. In short, they ensure employees  don’t just survive, but thrive.

Six Signs You Need a Better Employee Engagement Strategy

Before you give up and declare increased employee engagement a lost cause, take a step back. Many organizations fall into an “engagement funk,” but it’s fixable. Use this checklist to see if your program needs a reboot:

1. You’ve been surveying employees for 3+ years with little change.
2. Leadership and management support is fading.
3. Unwanted employee attrition has not improved.
4. Nothing meaningful happens after each survey.
5. Ratings keep declining despite repeated efforts.
6. Employees are beginning to lose faith in the process.

If these signs feel familiar, it’s time to move beyond routine surveys and build a better engagement strategy that actually energizes your people.

What To Do If You Checked Two or More of the Above Items
Whether you’re just starting with employee engagement surveys or already running advanced engagement programs, there’s always room to refresh and reinvigorate your efforts to attract, engage, and retain top talent. We can provide new ideas that spark inspiration and help you turn insights into meaningful action.

Remember—listening to your employees and acting on their feedback is never wasted effort. Every conversation is an opportunity to create real, lasting change.

1. Link Engagement to Business Priorities
   Many organizations measure employee engagement — but far fewer strategically connect it to tangible business results. Can you quantify how engagement drives performance? Can your leadership team clearly trace the impact from engagement to key objectives? Do managers and employees understand how their own engagement affects goal achievement?

   Clearly map engagement to the bottom line and strategic priorities to reignite interest and commitment across the organization. Done thoughtfully, this approach not only reinforces the value of engagement but also uncovers actionable insights that propel your business forward.

   When people see a clear connection between engagement and the results they care about, their commitment to your strategy naturally strengthens.

2. Align Metrics and Incentives
   Engagement can be linked to a wide range of metrics and incentives — at the location, department, and individual levels. Examples include turnover, sales, customer satisfaction, workplace safety, financial performance, absenteeism, R&D spend, bonuses, and product quality. Start by reviewing the metrics your organization already tracks and the data you can readily access. Don’t forget to consider industry-specific measures that may provide additional insight.

   When people see a clear connection between how their success is measured and rewarded, engagement becomes part of how work gets done.

3. Actively Involve Employees
   Once you’ve connected the dots to create a better employee engagement strategy, actively involve stakeholders to identify meaningful engagement actions that will move the needle.  When people can clearly see how engagement feedback drives change, it becomes more than a survey — it becomes a performance lever. This clarity motivates teams, energizes leaders, and inspires new ideas for building a workplace where people thrive.

How Five Organizations Tied Engagement to Business Outcomes

• University of Phoenix: Net Promoter Score and Engagement
  Serving more than 300,000 students across 112 campuses with 30,000 faculty members, University of Phoenix explored the link between employee engagement and student satisfaction. The study examined engagement survey results from student advisers alongside the Net Promoter Scores (NPS) reported by the students assigned to them.

  The analysis revealed a clear connection: advisers who scored highly on engagement items tied to manager effectiveness were more likely to have students who recommended the university. In other words, engaged employees — especially those with strong managerial support — directly influence positive outcomes for those they serve.

  This case demonstrates how employee engagement extends beyond internal metrics to tangible organizational impact. Armed with these insights, HR teams can more effectively secure leadership and managerial buy-in for initiatives that drive meaningful change.

• Regional Health System: Patient Health and Engagement
  A large regional health system struggled to get employees to embrace engagement as a strategic priority, and survey results had remained stagnant.

  To demonstrate the value, the organization analyzed patient outcomes, including falls and cases of infectious disease, alongside engagement survey data. The findings were striking: higher employee engagement correlated with fewer patient incidents.

  The organization crafted a presentation for its hospitals, translating the data into a story that resonated with staff. Because employees were deeply invested in patient well-being, linking engagement to what truly mattered to them created an emotional connection. This approach broke through stagnancy, driving real change in both attitudes and organizational performance.

• Boys and Girls Club: Engagement Impacts Revenues and Participation
  Since prioritizing employee engagement as part of their talent management strategy at the Boys and Girls Club of Dane County, CEO Michael Johnson has boosted the number of engaged employees by an astonishing 407 percent. This focus on people has fueled measurable gains in two critical areas: revenue and program participation.

  Over just three years, the organization doubled its revenues and expanded its reach, serving nearly 3,000 children — up from 1,800.

  These results provide compelling evidence to the board and donors that investing in the employee experience doesn’t just improve employee satisfaction — it drives meaningful outcomes that advance the nonprofit’s mission.

• Oil & Gas: Engagement and Turnover
  A large business services company in the oil and gas industry, with 132 branches and nearly 4,500 employees, wanted to understand how employee engagement influenced turnover. Branches were grouped into four categories based on turnover levels: no turnover, low turnover, high turnover, and highest turnover.

  The analysis revealed several key insights:

  — Branches with no turnover had an 83.5% survey response rate, nearly double the company average of 45.5%.

  — Engagement was markedly higher in the no-turnover group: 58% of employees were fully engaged, compared with just 36% at other branches.

  — Across all survey categories, the no-turnover group outperformed others by an average of 11 percentage points, with trust in senior leaders showing the largest gap.

  — Of the ten survey items with the biggest differences, five were identified as key engagement drivers.

  For this organization, employee engagement survey results now serve as a predictive indicator of turnover, giving leadership clarity on why some branches experience higher attrition than others. Armed with these insights, the leadership team can strategically focus engagement efforts where they matter most, creating a more targeted and effective approach to reducing turnover across the company.

• Educational Services: Wellness and Engagement
  A client in the educational services industry, with 4,000 employees, wanted to understand how employee engagement influences employee health. One area of focus was workplace stress levels — specifically, how often employees reported feeling stressed.

  The analysis revealed a strong correlation between higher stress and disagreement with two key engagement survey items:

The Bottom Line
These examples illustrate the power of rethinking your employee engagement strategy. By connecting engagement to key business outcomes, your efforts gain clarity, purpose, and measurable impact — benefiting both the organization and the people who drive its success.

To learn more about a better employee engagement strategy, download The Top 6 Forces Driving Employee Engagement and Strategies to Move the Engagement Needle

by Tristam Brown: CEO

Tristam Brown is an executive business consultant and organizational development expert with more than three decades of experience helping organizations accelerate performance, build high-impact teams, and turn strategy into execution. As CEO of LSA Global, he works with leaders to get and stay aligned™ through research-backed strategy, culture, and talent solutions that produce measurable, business-critical results. See full bio.