Employee Engagement

“How do I create better experiences for employees? And how do I create better growth opportunities for those employees and their leaders to drive more value for the business?”

“I often anchor around employee engagement as a key culture metric.”

“But the real powerful part of it is we ask 3 open-ended questions. What's the single best idea you have to improve the business? What's the silliest thing we're doing as an organization? Those are pretty interesting. And...”

“Gallup put out that 14% of employees think that the performance management process as it exists today encourages them or incentivizes them to continue to do their best work. So that's a sad number.”

“Employees really enjoy that feedback that kind of tells them you're on the right path or, hey, we got to shift. Or what happens too if you're on a team that's just very agile and priorities shift so quickly, very hard to...”

“Our engagement data consistently reinforce that employee-manager relationship is just one of the most critical and strongest drivers, actually, of retention, performance, and culture.”

“I truly believe that engagement is key, helps drive so much. If engagement's good, then we're driving turnover down, driving extra effort up, satisfaction for customers, and hopefully business results.”

“We increased in all of those and really are in the top 25% of all technology companies. And if we look at our overall engagement score from December of '23 to April of '24, we increased 47%, and we achieved a, we used th...”

“Happy hours and potlucks, they have their place, but it can backfire if you just do those things, but don't get to the more foundational elements of engagement because those things in isolation can feel to employees like...”

“At the end of the day, what the team has done very well is shown a great deal of compassion and empathy. Where it does open the door for HR to be that exact partner and advocate for an employee rather than being fearful...”

“We can't promise that we'll deliver on everything that you bring to the table, but the one thing we can do is listen. And that is, and that's been a really a big win for us here.”

“You're always gonna come up with a better solution if the people that you're creating the solution for is involved. I know it's mind-blowing.”

“The Great Detachment is a term that was coined by Gallup to identify the current low levels of employee engagement in the workforce. Only about 32% of US workers are engaged at work and 17% are actively disengaged.”

“if you're gonna ask, one, you better listen, and then two, you need to follow up on what they said, not just write it down, put it in the email and file it away because they're going to say, hey, we took the time to prov...”

“people today coming into the workforce don't want to do things the same way that their parents did. They want to have more of that balance, they want to be able to have more of a holistic employee experience.”

“So there are things you can do that don't require a big budget, such as Just having recognition programs, employee feedback loops.”

“The work part of our lives, given the amount of time we all spend at work, is really significant. And anything we can do to improve that work portion of life improves the person and helps their life better as they go hom...”

“Work-life balance is really important to Gen Zs and to millennials. So we were able to put a 4-day summer workweek in place.”

“Productivity, we believe, went up. Motivation and engagement went up, and people walk across campus and thank our president for that benefit.”

“I think really the first big one is how we've had to navigate employee engagement through the time of change, right? That ever-changing nature of employee engagement has just been something that threads through every asp...”

“if I won the lottery tomorrow, I would come right back and do the same job because I like what I'm doing. And that's really what we are striving to get our employees to feel like every day.”

“Sometimes it's what kind of autonomy can you give to your people? Sometimes you, you think as a leader, right? Especially in HR, you have to do everything for people and you find out that, you know, they want to own cert...”

“People give their discretionary energy when they're committed to the people around them. ...People need purpose, people need meaning, and they need to know how what they do contributes to that purpose and connects to the...”

“Our data shows that hybrid program participants are more engaged with the company and much less likely to leave. And we all know, everybody who works in HR knows that hiring, firing, training is just extremely expensive.”

“It is so important for our people to know you matter enough that I'm going to have a really good conversation with you about your goals. I'm going to make sure we're thinking through your goals in a good way.”

“our people engaged and excited every day to make sure we can deliver for our customers. So that matters. And they feel it.”

“you won't get productivity without relationships and connection. You just won't. It's absolutely fundamental to it. It's critical to it. And everybody has to believe that.”

“If you have really happy, engaged employees, you're going to see the pull-through with really happy, engaged clients, and then the financials are just going to come for the ride.”

“The core of it comes down to people. You have the right people doing the right work, doing the right things in the right way. And that's really what's framed my point of view around being an HR leader is, you know, there...”

“Total rewards will make people stay a while, but growth and purpose makes them go that extra mile.”

“your actions are going to speak significantly more than, than your words are in that space.”

“He defined job engagement as the cognitive, emotional, and behavioral components, all three components, um, associated with our individual role performance.”

“Job crafting was absolutely a missing link between managerial coaching and job engagement. So if we wanted to increase job engagement by doing managerial coaching, we also needed the way, the way in which that happened w...”

“definitely engagement, right? As the business looks to shift and change... it also creates uncertainty for colleagues and also creates ambiguity for colleagues. And those two things typically can breed disengagement.”

“We had what we referred to as our fail-forward culture commitment. And what that was is that if individuals found themselves in a situation where they had failed, right, how we manage that is we'd have a quick 15-minute...”

“after the pandemic, the idea is that people are going to companies for their entire life to be better, for the full scope of their human needs to be met.”

“When you stop thinking about people in their employee persona, and you start thinking about people as people that actually have lives... When you start thinking about people from that perspective, you then start to under...”

“When people don't have to spend energy pretending to fit in, they do better work.”

“What I'm telling people is have fun with your employee benefit plans. Don't just use them as checking the boxes. Use them as ways to make your employees feel valued, ways to attract and retain the top talent...”

“One of the main challenges is that total life success doesn't look the same for everybody, right?”

“9 out of 10 consider purpose to be foundational to how they think about their employers. It's very important to them.”

“I would share with this community the importance of achieving this trifecta that Gen Zs and millennials aspire to, to achieve their own happiness of money, meaning, and wellbeing.”

“We just want to make the employee experience better.”

“Culture survey or excuse me, engagement surveys are a complete waste of time.”

“People that had a mindset of, how do I reinvent myself, not just on a weekly basis, but on a daily basis, or even in a moment, like, how do I constantly reinvent myself? Those people really fit in well with the culture a...”

“The focus here at JFS, Jewish Family Service, is maximizing our reach to support the communities we serve. That in turn required our leadership to make sure that our employees are able to see the effects of their work an...”

“And then third, we found that that shift to operational excellence has had a bigger impact on engagement than these more long-form, more strategic seeming projects have over their their lifetime.”

“From that point, I decided to pursue a career where I can make a difference in someone's day. Really making sure that I can create meaningful experiences for employees while also creating value for the business.”

“When you're going through transformation, it's critical to invest in your team members. So when you do see those moments of stress in team members, you're reaching out to demonstrate that care and really looking out for...”

“Workforce engagement is one of the key barriers to AI adoption, not the technology itself.”

“not being what I call askholes, right? And getting feedback and sharing the feedback that we got and what we're doing about the feedback”

“Most companies don't have anything in place, and most employee appreciation programs are actually free, but companies don't know how to do them.”

“To create moments that matter to your organization, the first and most important step is really knowing your employees. What are their drivers? What are their motivations? And even what are their passion projects?”

“To me, the saddest thing about the workplace is that when we show up for work, more times than not, we leave some part of ourselves outside of the door.”

“Where I think the erosion is happening is between not the direct manager and the employee, but the employee and the company, like the logo almost that people are having.”

“when we can create and help create an engaged employee base and experience, We're gonna be better at customer service. We're gonna be better at innovation.”

“As human beings, our emotions are just who we are and a fundamental need to be heard, seen, understood that applies whether we're at work or we're outside of work. We should want to and need to bring our authentic selves...”

“My goal has been how do we help all of our employees at eXp feel that sense of purpose? What do we all do? How do we power people with what is meaningful to them?”

“The best thing you can do is listen to employees and invite their voices.”

“no matter where you go or what you do, people want to feel valued and heard all the way from the executive level to the individual contributor level. Regardless of whatever industry you're in, employees, you know, they t...”

“Truth be told, people were too busy to appreciate this space and everything that it offered. And so it really just kept people there longer and then hopefully to work harder.”

“The key ingredient here is making sure that people know what winning looks like, and then how does their role impact that winning?”

“before they're any of those titles that they're given, or we end up getting ourselves, like spouse or husband or father or friend, we're human beings first.”

“The term gamification really is defined by AI as the use of game mechanics such as leaderboards, points, badges, levels. People often do that when they play games.”

“I actually think that we get more engagement from those type of programs than you do from the very small salary increase you might get. During a merit time because they're inspiring people to want to do more, do things d...”

“So I literally go out of my way to show them that I am approachable. I am rational. I am caring, empathetic, and really making that extra effort to be available and approachable to them.”

“We can roll out all these amazing programs and really competitive comp packages, but they're not going to be really beneficial to anyone unless that's actually what they want.”

“Don't go out and spend a bunch of money on all these really cool, shiny projects and programs that are out there unless it really is impactful to your employees. So listening to them first and then building upon what you...”

“I think the key is thinking about moments that matter for your employees, recognizing the small things in addition to the big things.”

“I think it's so important to recognize everyone, not only for their successes and the wins, but when they try and they don't necessarily succeed, but then they continue and they have the resiliency to try again.”

“your people are truly your number one asset. And when you operate your business believing so, your employees are more and more willing to constantly go above and beyond for the organization.”

“I think we need to treat people the way they need to be treated. Because if you have an employee that's just starting out in their career journey, their needs and the leadership that they need from you is going to be ver...”

“it really comes down to, do they value the employee? Is this a place where the employee can be taken care of and can be effective and really enhance their broader goals even outside of the 9 to 5, right?”

“I can tell how engaged our employees are, and I can tell, especially afterwards, if they're going to their managers and asking questions and getting clarity, you know, then I feel like we're on the right track of communi...”

“we're in the business of humanity, and there's no greater privilege or opportunity, uh, to make an impact.”

“Oftentimes people are in volunteer roles when they're doing that, so they aren't thinking about it from a super strategic or this is how I would do this in a systematic way. And so helping those ERGs really connect what...”

“We spend a lot of time at work. Most of us spend more time at work than we do with our families. And so if I have a hand in making that experience better for Autodeskers, for employees, for anybody on my team, I will fee...”

“When we were ignoring the results [of employee engagement surveys] and not really paying attention to them, the culture, I would say, just kind of drifted. And then when we got more intentional about it, we made improvem...”

“give people what they want, not what we think they need.”

“I think our engagement score went up by roughly 150%, just under, probably 146 or 147 if you're doing the exact math. But that's a pretty big jump in our eNPS score.”

“Some of those relationships still exist even to this day, and that's 15 years on.”

“you have to be able to meet employees where they are.”

“Progression within a career may not always be progression within a company. So being able to have honest and open conversations have established that sense of trust, with people that are on your team or in your organizat...”

“One of my mentors always said, you can't lead people you don't know.”

“But what I wanted to do was take some of that savings and reinvest it in employee engagement, employee experience initiatives.”

“What I really loved were the employees. You can't build a company without a team of people that believe, and I kept thinking of how can I give back to the employees everywhere?”

“This feels like magic. How are you making money? You must be selling my data.”

“Another thing I like to consider is we are doing really important work and we're not saving lives, and so let's have a good time.”

“But most importantly, Dave, you can't ask for people's opinions and feedback unless you plan to act on it. So we have a real commitment to action planning to ensure that employees know that their voice didn't go unheard.”

“Ask for forgiveness rather than permission because time is of the essence. So we have this thing where we say, okay, Use a little acronym, D.U.E.R., unless otherwise directed, and say, okay, D.U.E.R., if I don't hear in...”

“I never go into a meeting and say, this is the company line and there's no flexibility on that. We try and approach every meeting with the employee saying, here's our policy. What do we need? How do we make sure this wor...”

“That difference between those three parental figures in my life truly got me interested in this field of total rewards. I think intuitively when I was younger, I knew there must be a field out there where you sort of man...”

“If you think about Maslow's hierarchy of needs, benefits compensation, they all kind of tie into that base level of need. And if you're not delivering that, the person is going to feel this breach of trust between them a...”

“Our role is really about contributing to the bottom line of an organization, but at the same time, keeping that people-centric focus, because that's what our role is. Our role as HR is people.”

“From that, I learned the power of a job and the dignity it gives when you could earn your own way. So that's kind of how my career started. We didn't call it HR at the time, but it was very transferable to HR.”

“The first is that the law of conservation of mass energy exists in sociology, meaning people, employees, including me and you, most of us in most incidents will default to the conservation of energy.”

“If you care, you remember.”

“If you have good relationships with those around you, it is easier to get things done. There's a synergy, there's a productivity piece that is very real.”

“the lesson that I learned about regaining people's confidence that there wouldn't be kind of turmoil was it takes a lot of time and it takes every day. It takes transparency, it takes repetition.”

“42% of employees who are actually paid above market believe that they're paid below market. So you're, you have companies that are just wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars paying these employees above market and the...”

“The worst thing HR can do is be paternalistic and provide things that we think people want versus actually providing things that people actually want.”

“Engagement's got to be outcome-based. It's got to be behavior-based. It can't just be on feelings, right?”

“I don't view them as mutually exclusive. Employee satisfaction is not a trade-off. It's also, it's a driver of business outcomes.”

“If we establish safety, a psychologically safe environment for associates to ask any and all questions without judgment, then they will more often than not ensure that they are comfortable asking those intellectually cur...”

“And pay is no exception. I mean, again, it's a big part. You're looking at your pay stub every week or every other week or whatever it is for you. And really trying to understand why it is. When you see things on the new...”

“What do you need? What do you want? What are the things that we as an employer can do or provide to you to possibly fill some gaps and support you not only as an employee, but as an individual, a family member, and so fo...”

“It sends the message that, you know, leadership cares about their employees, and I believe in turn, employees will care about the business in that regard as well.”

“there may be a disconnect between what our employees need and what our employers perceive the need to be... So it's important to get that right.”

“Systems and automation are great, but they don't provide that human touch that you still do need to have those conversations.”

“I want to be given autonomy. I want the tools and resources I need to succeed and then let me do my job. And so I, you know, just having a kind of like a brain trust with different people, I thought really the idea is to...”

“I'm a really strong proponent of looking at the relationship with our employees and you're really using one of my core barometers is what I call reciprocal value, reciprocal value creation.”

“I'm contemplating just canceling them all and, you know, freeing up time and concentrating on connecting with people in other ways.”

“It's very important to me that people understand that there are leaders out there that want to invest in them, that they want to help them get to a better place, whether it be helping them through a challenge or a questi...”

“You ask 99% of our organization why they want to work for Trinity, It is because of the work that Trinity does, the lives that Trinity changes with the services that they provide, with the grants that they provide.”

“if you have a good experience with a benefit, share that. Share that with your peers. Let them know how you used it. So it's not just dependent upon the benefits team to communicate that.”

“Don't lose sight of the fact that nothing is more effective in the hospitality industry than making human connection.”

“people won't remember what you said, but they will always remember how you made them feel.”

“I truly believe in this principle that someone coined called invisible HR. It's where the best work of the HR professional, our role is to create the systems, the products, and the programs that improve how people work w...”

“The best part about my job is just being able to connect with people on a very personal level. And, and just making sure that everybody feels like they have a voice and is seen within the organization.”

“One thing I've learned from working around the world is that fundamentally people want the same thing from their work...They want to be treated with respect. They want meaningful work, they want to learn, develop, and gr...”

“Employee centricity is a must. If you don't have your employees' support and engagement, then you can't really deliver to your clients or deliver on your mission and purpose.”

“Well, I would say, you know, be flexible. You know, there's no one-size-fits-all for reward structures. Try to listen. To your population. A lot of people talk a lot, but they don't listen. So try and figure out what you...”