Editorial
Since William Kahn first introduced the term into the corporate lexicon in 1990, employee engagement has been a kind of holy grail for organizations. Gradually, leaders were convinced of its importance and value. They brought in speakers, trainers, coaches, surveys, foosball tables and espresso machines in hopes of increasing it, even though they weren’t sure what it was.
Technology vendors smelled blood in the water when the quest for engagement heated up in recent years. They flooded the market with survey technology to help measure it, software to manage it and “engagement ecosystems” that promise to improve it. Organizational leaders bought these “solutions” at record levels, but they still didn’t know what employee engagement is.
The field of “employee experience” arose at the same time, providing new opportunities for technology vendors to sell project management platforms, scheduling systems, intranets, collaboration tools and countless other purported solutions to improve employees’ experiences in modern workplaces.
With all of that activity, surely, we’ve solved the problem by now, right?
Well, that’s not what the data says.
The Employee Engagement Data Isn’t Pretty
Gallup is considered the authority on employee engagement data. The research and advisory organization has tracked engagement in the U.S. since about 2000, and globally since 2009, so it arguably has the largest longitudinal data set for employee engagement, and it shares the data widely.
Sometimes the data is displayed like this. This is the percentage of employees globally who, in Gallup’s definition, are engaged at work.
Aside from a sharp downturn last year, the overall upward global trend since 2009 looks impressive.
Sometimes it appears like the chart below, which shows the percentage of global employees who are actively disengaged. These are folks for whom the employer-employee relationship is destructive.
The story isn’t as clear, but it still looks like an overall decline in a negative outcome. Good news, right?
The headlines, press releases and charts leave out the largest percentage of employees around the world — almost as much as “engaged” and “actively disengaged” combined. They are our fellow humans whom Gallup labels as simply “not engaged.”
Aside from a blip of attention in 2022 when “quiet quitting” became a meme, this middle segment is mostly overlooked. And that’s strange because, as you can see in the chart below, it’s highly likely that some of us reading this article are in that category.
Is this a story of progress or decline? It’s hard to say, but everyone who’s seen this tells me it looks more or less unchanged over 15 years.
I confess that I’ve manipulated the data visualization a bit to make a point. I’ve changed the scale on each of these images, and you probably already noticed that I removed the data labels from the Y axis.
To give you the full picture, here’s all that data on a single, labeled chart.
If you had to sum up the history of global employee engagement based on this chart, what would you say?
More Money, More Problems
For additional context, in 2012, HR research expert Josh Bersin estimated the total global spending related to employee engagement was about $720 million. That included surveys, technology, consulting, internal projects and initiatives — everything.
Thirteen years later, the only global spending numbers I can find are for employee engagement software and technology. This should tell us something about what’s going on. In a victory for the employee engagement industry, the complex challenge of helping our fellow humans flourish at work has been reduced to a tech issue.
Putting that problematic development aside for now, let’s look at the dollars.
Several global spending estimates from 2024 agree on a figure around $1 billion just for the technological aspects of employee engagement. We should probably add at least a few million dollars to account for all the non-technology-related efforts to improve employee engagement — the workshops, training, focus groups, experiential programs, perks and incentives. That brings our global estimate for 2024 to nearly a billion and a half. In other words, global spending on employee engagement has doubled in the past 12 years.
In that same period — 2012 to 2024 — the percentage of employees who are not engaged at work decreased by just two percentage points (or about three percent), from 64% to 62%.
What’s more, the percentage of employees in the U.S. who are engaged at work recently hit its lowest point in over 10 years, and the percentage of employees not engaged in the U.S. was higher in 2024 than it had been since before COVID.
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Now scroll back up to that chart. Assuming we want the yellow and red lines to trend down and the green line to trend up, would you say that our billion-plus dollar spend is working? Would any other key performance indicator in business continue to receive that level of increased funding for such poor returns?
Redefining Employee Engagement for Better Results
With my tongue tucked firmly in my cheek, I call this “the failure of the employee engagement industrial complex.”
Some might suggest I’m overstating it. I presented this to a group of leaders a few years ago, and one of them said: “Maybe that level of investment is what’s necessary to keep the number from going down.”
It’s a fair point. However, if he’s right, it supports rather than refutes my assertion: whatever we’re doing isn’t increasing employee engagement.
With all this grim news, you might think employee engagement is a lost cause. I’m hopeful. The data isn’t telling us that pursuing employee engagement is futile; it just says we’re doing it wrong. The communication campaigns, training classes, pizza parties, gamification, slides and surveys we’ve been spending all that money on aren’t working.
A more effective approach starts with getting clearer about what the heck employee engagement is. Some leaders think engagement is about compliance, while others think it’s about happiness. Some equate it with enthusiasm, and others with productivity.
Since “employee engagement” as a concept can get a little intellectual and squishy, it’s helpful to return to the individual unit of change in the organization: the human being. Instead of defining “employee engagement,” let’s define an engaged employee. This will remind us that we’re focused on humans, not numbers.
With that in mind, I offer you my definition of an engaged employee:
An engaged employee is so connected and committed to their work that they willingly and proactively go above and beyond their job description to help the organization attain its vision, fulfill its mission and achieve its goals, in return for the promise of greater satisfaction, fulfillment, self-actualization and flourishing.
That’s 49 words, which is a lot to remember. And those last 12 words aren’t something you’ll see in typical leadership or management advice. But it comes down to this: an engaged employee is connected and committed.
Employee Engagement Is a Leadership Opportunity
We’re not saying an engaged employee does what they’re told, gets excited about every corporate initiative, is having fun, or even that they’re happy.
They’re connected and committed.
Connection and commitment are conditions we develop as individuals — like love or plantar fasciitis. No one can “connect” us or “commit” us, so it’s impossible to “engage” our fellow humans. From my experience and research, we can’t make someone be “engaged” any more than we can make someone fall in love with us. In fact, I wouldn’t recommend trying either of those.
We develop the condition of engagement when the circumstances in which we work inspire connection and commitment. When we feel valued, included, involved, enabled, empowered and appreciated — when we feel like we can make our greatest contributions and become the best versions of ourselves — we’re more likely to develop connection and commitment.
As leaders, we can’t “engage” employees, but we can value, include, involve, enable, empower and appreciate them. We can help them make their greatest contributions and become the best versions of themselves at work. We can cultivate the circumstances in which engagement is more likely.
With this perspective, employee engagement is no longer a problem with employees; it’s an opportunity for leaders.
In the second part of this article, we’ll explore what leaders can do to take on this challenge and fix the failures of the employee engagement industrial complex.
Editor's Note: Read more thoughts on the state of employee engagement below:
- The New Playbook of Employee Experience — Organizations that treat engagement as an outcome of good design, not a program to fix, will build meaningful employee connections.
- The Real Workplace Crisis Isn't Loyalty — It's Lack of Psychological Safety — AT&T CEO John Stankey's memo suggests loyalty is dead. Loyalty isn't dead, it’s earned by leaders who foster trust, fairness and psychological safety.
- The Key to Employee Engagement Is ... Better Processes? — New research finds employees want efficient systems that help them do their jobs well. Experts share how to get your processes right — and keep employees happy.
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