Employee engagement: why the survey is only the starting point

For Jessica, engagement describes how connected people feel to their work and their organisation. Engaged employees feel they belong, have energy, go the extra mile for customers, help their colleagues, and see their workplace as somewhere they can use their talents and grow.

Kerstin added one distinction that separates highly engaged people from the rest: full immersion. Engaged employees bring their whole attention, mind, and energy to their work. They experience flow more often, enjoy their work more, and perform better. Research consistently links engaged workforces to stronger results.

Jessica sees engagement as a leading business indicator. In her experience, engagement levels tell you how well your people are serving customers and how satisfied those customers are likely to be.

What has changed is the environment. When everyone shared an office, managers could see who seemed happy and talk to people far more often than twice a year. Remote work, increasing use of AI, more flexible work rhythms, and shorter tenures have all reduced the connection people feel to their teammates, their managers, and their organisation.

Kerstin's conclusion is that check-ins matter more than ever, and they no longer happen by accident. Line managers need dedicated time, and organisations need a framework that creates regular moments to ask people how they feel about their work. Jessica added meaningful work as a core driver: people need to see how they contribute to organisational goals, customers, and colleagues.

On the return-to-office debate, Kerstin noted that research supports both camps. She leans towards regular office presence, not necessarily five days a week. The key is that colleagues are on site on the same days, so they actually meet. For fully virtual teams, she recommends face-to-face contact at least every year or two, because connection to others is one of the strongest drivers of engagement.

Jessica sees physical presence as a necessity for young professionals in particular. They learn by watching others, asking questions, and building relationships, and informal conversations at the coffee machine teach them how the organisation really works. Experienced employees benefit too, because empathy and genuine attention to other people are what distinguish human work from AI.

Onboarding has changed as much as daily work. Jessica recommends that HR and managers agree explicitly on who owns which part of the experience. That covers how new starters are welcomed, who checks in with them, and whether each person has a senior buddy to ask about how things work.

Kerstin pointed to a practice she sees in many virtual teams: bring new starters together physically for their first days, even if they work from different locations afterwards. Research shows that meeting face to face just once creates a sense of belonging and a stronger identification with the team.

Popular commentary often suggests that engagement is in decline. Jessica's reading of the research is that engagement levels have stayed broadly the same for the past 20 to 25 years, and Kerstin sees no strong evidence of a downward trend either.

That has implications for how organisations set goals. Jessica warned against targets such as raising the share of highly engaged employees from 25% to 50%, because engagement doesn't respond to targets that way. The more useful question is how to maintain and stimulate engagement.

The survey still matters because it shows what employees value and what is missing. Kerstin's advice is to look beneath the scores and build a foundation strong enough that people stay committed regardless of the next result.

Jessica places responsibility with every team's manager. HR can run the survey and share a polished summary, but nothing changes unless managers discuss the results with their teams and invite ideas. HR's role is to work with management on what the organisation needs and translate that into policies, culture, and leadership development.

Kerstin has seen the difference top management makes. In organisations that take engagement seriously, the C-suite commits time and resources, with CEO roadshows, workshops, and seminars where leaders explain and listen. In others, the results go into a drawer until next year's survey. Many organisations also underestimate how much time employees need to discuss results properly.

Both experts stressed the individual's role. Jessica explained engagement as a balance between what gives you energy at work and what drains it. Because needs differ from person to person, employees need to understand their own needs and be able to talk about them with colleagues and managers. Engagement works best when top-down and bottom-up efforts meet.

Kerstin encourages people to stop waiting for their line manager to start the conversation. Tell people when you notice yourself disengaging or see a better route forward, and don't wait for the next survey to raise it. Organisation-wide workshops may never address your specific reason for disengagement. Jessica pointed to her research on job crafting, which shows how employees can reshape parts of their own work to stay engaged.

Asked for best practice with remote teams, Kerstin started with the leader's mindset. Leaders tend to feel closest to the people who sit in the same office or time zone.

Her practical advice:

• Give everyone equal time: spend comparable time with every team member, wherever they are based.
• Share the inconvenience: rotate meeting times so the same part of the team doesn't always join early or late.
• Avoid half-remote meetings: when part of the team shares a room and the rest dial in, speaking time and attention become unequal.

Jessica added that fully remote teams need deliberate fun, beyond formal meetings. Regular online challenges, virtual escape rooms, or shared evenings help people connect as people rather than only through the agenda. Kerstin noted that many of these tools emerged during the pandemic and still work well.

Emma's closing reflection captured the session: employee engagement depends on how connected people feel to their colleagues, their leader, their work, and their organisation. Make connection an explicit priority by creating time for it, building it into onboarding, and giving managers the support to act on every survey.