The engagement gap: Why leaders and employees see culture differently

Remember the TV show Undercover Boss? I feel like I bring it up all the time, but it really nailed the reality gap often found inside organisations.

A CEO goes undercover to work on the front line. They flip burgers, stack shelves, answer phones; just like any other employee. And what happens? Every time, they’re stunned. The tidy, filtered view from head office doesn’t come close to the messy, brilliant, and often frustrating reality their staff live every day.

The show worked because it revealed something real. It showed the gap between what leaders think is happening in their culture and what’s actually going on.

We call it the engagement gap. And you don’t need wigs or fake names to close it. You just need better visibility of what your people are experiencing.

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Leaders guess. Teams know.

At Teamgage, we speak with executives every single day and we know there's a real desire to create fantastic places for people to come and work. Not only is it the right thing to do; it also helps to reduce risk and increase high performance.

But the further you are from the day-to-day, the harder it is to stay connected to the truth. As updates move up the organisation, it’s natural for each person to put a slightly more positive spin on things when reporting to their manager.

Plus staff might not have a safe way to really share their concerns, or perhaps they're not even being prompted to in the first place. This lack of real-time, open and honest visibility is not a great spot to be in as a senior leader.

As Luke Havelberg, CIO at Flinders University puts it:

Let’s manage what the reality is versus what we want it to be or what we think it is. So when you get 150 staff giving you feedback through Teamgage, that is the reality you’re working from.

So this is the power of continuous, real-time feedback. It shifts culture from an assumption, to a measurable reality.

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Spot issues early. Act even earlier.

One of the biggest traps leaders fall into, is waiting too long to find out there’s a problem. By the time it shows up in turnover numbers, customer complaints or missed targets, the damage is already done.

Traditional surveys tend to show you how things were, not how things are. What leaders need is the ability to detect small shifts in sentiment and performance before they become bigger issues. That’s where real-time data is a game-changer.

Andreea Visanoiu, Engineering Practices Lead at SEEK, has seen this first-hand in her teams:

Teamgage takes less than 60 seconds to complete and has maintained very high response rates in our Engineering teams. I’ve found that people have openness and trust when using the platform, with comments updated in real-time and surfacing issues that might not appear in our regular retrospectives. It’s this kind of visibility that has meant that we’ve been able to identify issues early and ensure action is targeted at the right demographic and areas.

Instead of relying on a gut feeling or waiting for a manager to escalate a concern, Andreea’s team can see patterns forming right away; whether it’s declining morale, confusion about direction, or a process that's just not working.

Stephen Kowal, CEO of the ASX-listed tech company Atturra, takes it even further:

With Teamgage I can actually predict the performance of teams 6+ weeks out. It gives us the real-time data we need to understand sentiment.

That ability to forecast team performance is powerful. It shifts leadership from being reactive, to truly proactive. Instead of putting out fires, leaders can start preventing them.

Whether you're running a council, a university, or a fast-moving tech business, spotting these early warning signs can mean the difference between thriving, or struggling. And with real-time insight at your fingertips, those signs will never go unnoticed.

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Comment by comment. Person by person.

It's important to note that this real-time data doesn't need to lose a more personal touch either. If anything employee engagement should increase.

As Nicole Newton, People & Culture Manager at Mount Barker District Council explains:

With Teamgage, it’s enabling us to be very specific on feedback, where I know the staff feel like they’ve been heard, almost comment to comment.

When people feel like their exact words are being listened to, and better yet, acted on; that’s when things shift. They become more engaged. They speak up more often. They trust the process.

This builds an increasingly detailed picture within your employee feedback, that really shows what’s happening in real time across every team, department and demographic. And the patterns we’ve uncovered through this data, especially across generations, have been both fascinating and surprising.

Honestly, if you haven’t seen what’s hiding in your own demographic insights, now’s the time.

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Turning feedback into strategy

All of this points to one big truth: culture isn’t separate from business performance; it really drives it!

When leaders have the right tools to see what’s really going on, they can:

• Align team priorities with strategy
• Support the teams that need it most
• Tackle small issues before they turn into big ones

With real-time dashboards, feedback loops and team-level visibility, Teamgage makes this not only possible, but super quick and easy! You’re no longer guessing at what’s going on in your culture. You’re working with real data, from real people, in real-time.

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Here to help

You don’t need to become an undercover boss to know what’s happening in your organisation. You just need a better way to listen.

And that’s exactly why we built Teamgage from the ground up, with direct input from leaders like you.

So if you think we can help, get in touch.