How to improve employee engagement

If you're looking for ways to improve employee engagement, it's worth starting with a simple question: what actually drives engagement in the first place?

Many organisations focus on improving survey scores, increasing participation rates or comparing themselves against external benchmarks. While these things can provide useful information, they're rarely the reason that real, tangible employee engagement improves.

Engagement grows when employees feel heard, trust their leaders and can see that their feedback leads to meaningful conversations and action.

That's why some teams with only average survey scores continue to achieve high levels of engagement, action and performance, while others with near-perfect scores and extensive engagement programs struggle to point to meaningful examples of change driven by employee feedback.

Genuine engagement is less about everyone agreeing that things are great and more about people feeling safe to speak honestly about what could be better.

Stop chasing benchmarks and start listening to your people

One of the most common mistakes organisations make is becoming too focused on external benchmarks.

Benchmarking can be useful for understanding how your results compare to similar organisations, but it shouldn't determine what matters most to your people. Every organisation has different challenges, goals, priorities and cultural expectations. A question that is highly relevant to one workforce may have little value to another.

The organisations that get the most value from employee feedback typically focus less on generic industry comparisons and more on understanding what's happening inside their own teams. They ask questions that align with their strategy, culture and the outcomes they're trying to achieve.

This also tends to create a better experience for employees. Questions written in familiar language and connected to real workplace priorities often feel far more relevant and engaging than generic survey questions designed primarily for benchmarking purposes.

The goal should never be to achieve the same results as another organisation. The goal should be to create a workplace where your people can perform at their best.

Employee engagement isn't built through measurement alone

Annual engagement surveys have their place. They provide a broad snapshot of the organisation and can help establish an overall view of employee sentiment. However, they can also feel disconnected from employees' day-to-day experience. The questions are often broad, the analysis can take time, and employees may wait months to see any meaningful top-down response.

So engagement isn't created by measuring it once a year.

It grows when employees can raise issues at a time that's right for them, share their ideas in a safe way and see action being taken while those conversations are still relevant.

That's why organisations increasingly complement their annual engagement surveys with regular pulse surveys. Rather than treating feedback as a yearly event, they create an ongoing dialogue that allows teams to continuously identify opportunities, remove frustrations and improve performance.

When employees can see their feedback leading to conversations and action in real time, participation becomes more meaningful and engagement often follows.

Employees want to know their feedback matters

When organisations talk about engagement drivers, the conversation often turns to remuneration, benefits or career development opportunities.

While these factors can certainly play a role, one of the strongest drivers of engagement is far simpler.

People want to know that speaking up is worthwhile.

That doesn't mean acting on every suggestion or solving every problem. Some feedback won't be practical to address immediately, and some suggestions may not align with organisational priorities.

What matters is acknowledging feedback and communicating honestly about what happens next.

Employees are generally far more understanding than organisations assume. They don't expect every idea to be implemented, but they do expect it to be considered. Even when no action can be taken, explaining why helps build trust and demonstrates respect.

In many cases, communication itself is action.

A simple acknowledgement, a transparent explanation or an update on progress can make employees feel significantly more connected to the process than silence ever will. People often say employees want to be heard, but what they really want is confidence that their feedback has been received, considered and taken seriously.

Trust and psychological safety take time to build

Another important factor in employee engagement is psychological safety.

Employees need to feel confident that they can speak honestly about their experiences without creating problems for themselves. If people believe feedback could result in embarrassment, conflict or negative consequences, they're far less likely to raise issues that leaders genuinely need to hear.

This is where anonymity can play an important role. Anonymous feedback through a trusted third party like Teamgage creates a safe starting point for honest conversations, particularly in organisations that are still building trust around employee feedback.

Over time, however, the most successful organisations move beyond simply collecting anonymous feedback. They demonstrate through their actions that speaking up is safe, worthwhile and valued.

We often see engagement grow as organisations become more consistent in how they respond to feedback.

As Bec Nitschke, Hub Operations Manager, South Australia at Stone & Chalk, explains:

"As we've gone on, the trust and engagement have really grown. Team members are speaking up more, owning their anonymous responses, and putting their hand up to add further context to the insights we're all seeing."

That comment highlights something important. Trust isn't built when a survey is launched. It's built over time as employees repeatedly see their feedback acknowledged, discussed and acted upon. The more employees see evidence that speaking up leads to constructive outcomes, the more willing they become to contribute openly and honestly in the future.

Small actions often have the biggest impact

One of the biggest misconceptions about employee engagement is that improving it requires large-scale programs, major investment or organisation-wide transformation initiatives.

In reality, some of the most meaningful improvements come from addressing everyday frustrations that prevent people from doing their best work.

Often, the answers are already sitting within employee feedback.

A great example comes from Mount Barker District Council. After receiving 66 comments identifying IT systems as a barrier to performance, the organisation focused its efforts on addressing those concerns. Just three months later, the number of IT-related comments had dropped to six.

What makes this example powerful isn't simply the reduction in comments. It's the fact that employees could see their feedback had been taken seriously and acted upon. Even where frustrations hadn't disappeared entirely, people recognised that progress was being made.

That visibility matters because employees are far more likely to remain engaged when they can see leaders responding to the issues that affect their day-to-day experience. Often it's not the large strategic initiatives that make the biggest difference, but the removal of small frustrations that have been slowing people down for months or years.

Engagement is a shared responsibility

It's common for organisations to look to HR when engagement declines, but engagement is rarely something that can be solved by HR alone.

HR can provide the framework, process and support, but the actions that improve engagement generally happen much closer to the work itself. Leaders shape the day-to-day employee experience, executives influence priorities and culture, and employees often have the clearest understanding of what's helping or hindering performance.

The organisations that achieve the greatest success recognise that everyone has a role to play. Rather than waiting for HR to provide all the answers, they create an environment where leaders and employees work together to identify issues, discuss feedback and implement improvements.

The best solutions are often found closest to the work. When employees are involved in shaping those solutions, they're far more likely to support them, contribute to them and help make them successful. This creates a stronger sense of ownership while ensuring improvements are grounded in the practical realities of the workplace. When organisations tap into those insights and encourage shared ownership of improvement, engagement tends to grow alongside it.

Engagement and performance go hand in hand

Employee engagement is often discussed as though it exists separately from performance, but in reality the two are closely connected.

High-performing teams often have stronger engagement because employees experience progress, achievement and trust. They understand what success looks like, can see the impact of their work and feel connected to their team and organisation.

At the same time, engaged employees are more likely to contribute ideas, collaborate effectively and invest extra effort in improving outcomes.

This relationship is reflected in how many organisations use employee feedback.

As Julia Merten, Chief People Officer at Atturra, explains:

"The Teamgage platform prompts Atturra employees to share their thoughts at least once a month. This helps ensure our values aren't just words on a wall; they're brought to life, monitored and measured. We want everyone to take accountability and act if we see those values starting to slip."

Strong engagement and strong performance rarely happen in isolation. They reinforce one another. Teams that perform well tend to build confidence and trust, while engaged teams are more likely to identify opportunities, solve problems and continuously improve.

Focus less on collecting feedback and more on responding to it

If there's one lesson that consistently emerges from organisations improving engagement, it's that feedback only creates value when people can see what happens next.

Employees want to know their feedback has been received, considered and acted upon. They want visibility into what happens after they click submit and confidence that speaking up was worthwhile.

Organisations that consistently close the loop build trust, encourage participation and create a culture where employees feel their voices matter. Those that fail to communicate decisions, avoid difficult conversations or hide negative feedback often achieve the opposite.

As Warren Fenn, Chief Operating Officer at Fragile to Agile, put it:

"If every bit of feedback is treated as a gift and handled accordingly, it will increase the chances you get value from a solution like Teamgage."

Ultimately, improving employee engagement isn't about chasing benchmark scores or running more surveys. It's about creating a workplace where employees feel safe to speak honestly, leaders respond openly, and feedback leads to meaningful action. When employees can see that speaking up is worthwhile, engagement tends to improve naturally.