Employee engagement

How To Improve Employee Engagement: 5 Actionable Strategies

Employee disengagement can be devastating on employee retention, team satisfaction, and company results. Here are 5 concrete strategies to engagement employees.

Fabien Pinel

24 Feb 2025 — 8 min read

Business success depends on building a culture where people love to work. But what happens when they no longer love the work or the company and begin to plug out mentally and emotionally?

The effects of this can be devastating on employee retention, team satisfaction, and company results. For this reason, employee engagement is an important topic that business leaders and employees should discuss and solve together.

If you want to create a workplace where people are passionate, creative, problem-solving and responsive, then join us as we get to the bottom of what works and what doesn’t.

Reasons for employee disengagement

The truth is workers are not that different in their needs and wants, regardless of whether they’re top performers or average performers. A recent forbes.com article delved into the reasons for disengaged employees. The top reasons were listed as:

Limited autonomy and decision-making power.
Disconnection from the bigger picture.
Inadequate recognition and performance feedback.
Lack of meaningful challenges.
Absence of growth opportunities.

These are all valid reasons for why employees disengage from their workplace, but there are also more personal reasons that Quincy Thomas reflected on in a discussion with Guusto co-founder Skai Dalziel. His list featured:

Inability to get time off to attend to personal matters.
A lack of training leaving the employee feeling they can’t do their job.
A lack of recognition leading to a disinterest in work tasks.
A lack of empathy and concern for changes in the employees' personal life.

More often than not, it’s the small things that cause a disconnection for people, but unfortunately, the cost of it is not so negligible.

The cost of employee disengagement

Engaged employees have less absenteeism, are more productive, and contribute more eagerly towards company objectives. We think it’s reasonable to assume that most employees understand they need to show up and put in enough effort to help the company thrive. But what are the effects when they don’t?

Statistics taken from leena.ai

These numbers don’t represent figures that most business leaders would be happy about, and if you’re seeing them in your workplace, it’s probably confirmation of what you already suspect - you have an employee engagement problem that you need to fix urgently.

Getting back on track involves understanding what increases employee satisfaction and then putting together an effective employee engagement strategy. Thought leaders, psychologists, and experts on this topic have narrowed the essentials down to four critical elements.

Get back on track: 4 Essentials of employee engagement

When corporations want to drill down into employee issues they usually conduct an employee engagement survey, but if you don’t have the resources to do this, you can still find answers by concentrating your efforts on these four essentials of employee engagement (EE).

4 Essential Elements of Employee Engagement
Pride	People want to be part of something meaningful and successful, that is what drives emotional energy. Examples are when employees work for a premium employer, a global business provides huge benefits, a small company is making an important contribution to solving a problem, or a small team is making big sales. Being part of something greater than themselves gives people the energy to do more than they thought possible. This also applies to individual achievements, where a workplace is structured to recognize and reward innovation, creativity, and teamwork. The motivation that comes from a sense of pride has a long-lasting effect on employees across workplaces because it taps into a strong internal motivator: belonging to something important.
Purpose	Employees need to know that the time they give to a company matters. That’s the bottom line for employee engagement. A monetary transaction where skills are exchanged for funds is no longer the primary driver of the modern-day worker. However, it becomes much more important to employees when pride, purpose, and passion are missing because then it’s all that’s left to motivate them. Knowing that their roles are important to the overall functioning of the company and that the work they produce is valuable and appreciated is the key to creating purpose for employees. Most people will put in effort when they’re convinced that the future is compelling enough to give their time and energy to create it. This element speaks to the very core of what all people want to know - why am I here?
Passion	When employees know that their work is important, that goals are being achieved and that they’re playing their part in the successes, they become more passionate about continuing this behavior. Another way of keeping employees engaged is to provide an outlet for what they’re already passionate about. If someone loves numbers and could spend all day with data but doesn’t like customer interaction, it would be a bad idea to place that person in sales, for instance. They would be better suited to finance or business intelligence, and they’ll be self-motivated to achieve results because it’s about something they already have a passion for. No one has to chase motivated employees to do their work.
Pay	Compensation is very important. There is no getting around this. Employees all over the globe desire to be compensated adequately for their inputs. Compensation strategies should be a good mix of short- and long-term rewards for reaching certain milestones.

5 Strategies for improving employee engagement

The four essential elements discussed above provide the basis for a sound employee engagement strategy that supports business outcomes and translates into five actionable steps that will give you a way forward based on employee engagement best practices.

1. Care

Employees must be convinced that you have genuine care and concern for them as people, not just workers.

While business success is a priority, companies that neglect employee well-being often suffer from high turnover rates and decreased levels of employee engagement.

A balanced approach to a care strategy ensures that employees feel supported at work and personally while maintaining company profitability. Tried-and-tested initiatives include:

Mental health initiatives: Provide access to mental health resources such as counseling services and stress management programs.
Work-life balance: Implement flexible work schedules, work-from-home drives, and shifts for workers who need more flexibility.
Physical health: Offer wellness days, free gym memberships, and on-site health services if possible.
Daycare services: An increasingly popular benefit provided by larger companies is on-site daycare services for parents who want to return to work and know their children are looked after. Employees feel much more productive when the workplace culture is understanding of parenting duties.

You won’t know what matters to your staff members unless you can ask them directly, and you might be surprised by the answers. For instance, research by Deloitte Human Capital showed that employees value culture over compensation!

By connecting a survey app, like Pulsy to Slack, you can find answers quickly and hit the target every time by only implementing initiatives your staff care about.

2. Connect

Another way to foster employee engagement and make employees feel valued is by building strong relationships with employees through fostering open communication. Employees who feel connected to their team members and company objectives are far more self-driven.

Enhancing connection doesn’t have to be about making grand gestures; it’s just about being seen, heard, and appreciated. You can help employees feel connected by:

Mission statement: Sharing your company mission with all your employees and explaining how each role is vital for achieving company goals.
Team building activities: These are opportunities for connection beyond work tasks and are a great way for employees to get to know one another on a personal level, which is essential for good working relationships.
Create moments of connection: If your employees work remotely, one innovative way of creating connection is through engagement apps that can be added to popular software such as Slack.

BuddiesHR has created Slack add-ons that allow you to connect employees for a virtual coffee chat (Alfy Matching), give a birthday shout-out (Billy Birthday), and recognize good work (Clappy Kudos). These apps are installed within minutes as stand alones, giving you the ability to implement your connection strategy immediately.

3. Coach

Maintaining employee engagement is also about providing guidance and support to help employees develop their skills, reach their potential and attain job satisfaction. It is also in the best interest of organizational success that employees are able to translate their skills into actionable results, and this is where coaching shines.

One-on-one feedback sessions: Employees appreciate personal feedback about where they can improve and the development opportunities available to them. This small gesture makes a significant difference to employees feeling included and valued.
Training and development programs: Specific programs that target gaps in the employees' skills and help your staff members translate those skills into their tasks are more effective than broad-based programs. They must see an improvement in their abilities almost immediately to stay engaged in their work.
Mentorship opportunities: Experienced staff who have worked hard to get where they are often enjoy sharing their knowledge with others. This takes the pressure off managers to provide all training and boosts your employee recognition initiatives.

4. Contribute

Empowering employees by giving them ownership of tasks and projects fosters a sense of purpose and passion. Employees who see their work as meaningful are more engaged and motivated to excel.

Provide opportunities for autonomy: Support employee engagement by providing clear guidelines for autonomous work. Employees experience a sense of empowerment when you do this and appreciate that they are allowed to make decisions within their area of responsibility.
Fair and competitive compensation: Getting to the bottom of what employees feel is adequate versus the management team can be tricky, but a compensation system that includes various earning streams usually works best. Here, you’ll be looking at a combination of basic pay rates, commissions and incentives, bonuses, and company-paid benefits.

5. Congratulate

Engagement initiatives are not complete without a way to recognize and celebrate employee achievements, both big and small.

Employee engagement software: Using an employee engagement platform to recognize employee efforts shouldn’t be dismissed as too simple. By setting up a way for managers and team members to give shout-outs for good work, you encourage a culture of excellence driven by appreciation for one another’s efforts.

You don’t need complicated software or a big budget to implement this engagement initiative. With the BuddiesHR Slack add-on (Clappy Kudos), you can increase employee engagement by providing immediate feedback to highly engaged employees, thereby fostering a culture of employee recognition.

Implementing these five actionable strategies takes care of the essential elements of what drives employee engagement. By concentrating on initiatives that you can implement immediately, such as using an employee engagement platform, you will begin making a difference in how your employees feel. At the same time, you tackle more tricky issues, such as compensation.

Also, these five strategies provide you with a way to develop the culture in your organization organically, so aim to implement an initiative from each strategy to make a meaningful impact.

Improved employee engagement is worth it

The signs of disengaged employees may take a while to show up and by the time it does, it may be a significant problem impacting your company’s goals.

Proactively implementing initiatives that keep employees plugged into one another and your company, is key for building a sustainable future. Furthermore, with improved employee engagement, you can expect up to an 18% productivity gain and a reduction in churn of up to 40%! [1]

These metrics prove that employee engagement isn’t just a soft, fuzzy concept but something that tangibly impacts the growth and success of a company, and this makes it worth concentrating on.

By following the strategies suggested here, you can make huge strides toward creating a workplace where people are passionate, creative, problem-solving, responsive, and excited to be there.

Build an amazing company culture right now!