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Employee Engagement

Mikaela Cohen

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Employee engagement strategies have long been a talking point for companies, but might be more useless than you think.

That’s because many companies are implementing strategies to gauge employee engagement in the wrong way, according to Mark C. Crowley, author of 

The Power of Employee Well-Being: Move Beyond Engagement to Build Flourishing Teams

, which will be published in late September. In his book, Crowley suggests how HR teams can reframe their attention to improving employee well-being instead.

“It’s time to stop talking about engagement,” Crowley told HR Brew. “Like nobody’s calling it out, and we still go through the exercise of focusing on engagement, talking about engagement, and there’s just no reason to continue to do that.”

Crowley shared more insights from his book in an interview with HR Brew.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What will HR pros learn after reading your book?

Measuring engagement has always been really super complicated, because there’s 

 has always asked. So, if you get bad scores, you have to isolate one of 12 different things. So, you could say, “Well, we don’t know whether people feel that they have a friend at work, or we don’t know whether people feel that they have clarity on what the job expectations are. We don’t know that people feel valued.” So, it’s Whac-a-Mole…[Engagement] simply boils down to how people feel at work, and you don’t have to ask them 12 different questions.

You just have to ask them, “How do you feel at work this week?” And, you can ask them some specific questions, like how do you feel about your benefits, or do you feel that you work for a manager who cares about you and supports your growth? You could ask those narrow questions in pulse surveys, and you can get that feedback immediately.

Why are employee engagement strategies not working?

No one’s ever taken it sincerely. Wall Street never took it sincerely. CEOs never took it sincerely. It’s always been a check-the-box activity. You do surveys once or twice a year. By the time the feedback gets out, it’s stale. 

Employees feel that it’s insincere, so they think engagement is a joke. And on top of that, no one’s ever been held accountable for it ever. So, most managers just think, “Oh, this is just an HR activity.” So, if you’ve got a toxic manager, or somebody’s not caring about their people and supporting them and doing the things that we know are highly effective for…[representing] highly effective leaders, then what you end up with is…an act of disrespect.

You’re asking people, “Tell me how we can make things better,” and then you never do anything with the feedback, and people end up really resenting that. So with pulse surveys, you can ask people specifically, “How do you feel?” And, then management can get together and say, “Hey, is this just a rough period right now, or do we need to make some adjustments?” Because the evidence is clear that how people feel at work drives their, no pun intended, their engagement, their commitment, their loyalty, their productivity, and it’s just this enormous win-win for organizations.

When we’ve always focused on engagement, that’s only something that companies cared about. Like, I’m an employee of a company, and they’re like, “We’re trying to elevate engagement.” It’s like, “I don’t care. There’s no win for me in that.” Whereas, if you’re focusing on well-being, you’re going to have people who are thriving, and we know that when people are thriving, organizations thrive at the same time.

Should HR pros avoid using the term employee engagement and focus on terms like well-being, productivity, etc.?

To be fair to some organizations that have really taken this seriously, I’m not criticizing that. I think that’s fine. If you have high engagement in your organization and you’ve committed to it, people validate it. In other words, employees say, “This is a really great place for me to work,” nobody should be changing. I’m not advocating for that.

A lot of times what organizations do is that they blend the four and the five scores. So, for example…on a scale of one to five, how caring and supportive is your manager to you personally? 

Well, there’s a big difference between a four and a five. If you give it a five, it’s like you’ve got a fantastic manager who genuinely cares about you. If you give it a four, you have some hesitation. There’s something missing there. It’s not a perfect score, but what happens is: a lot of cases that managers or companies that are putting these surveys together, they’ll take the fours and the fives and they’ll go, “Wow. 90% of our people are engaged.” That’s not really the case.

We know that well-being is something that’s really important to employees, whereas engagement has never been important to them. There’s no reason for them to be concerned about engagement. So, if you have something that is proven to have a direct correlation to organizational success, i.e. employee well-being, why wouldn’t you just focus on that? It’s simpler, and it’s a win-win for people.

Two hands holding on opened book with text highlighted

An interview with Mark C. Crowley, author of ‘The Power of Employee Well-Being’

“If you’re focusing on well-being, you’re going to have people who are thriving, and we know that when people are thriving, organizations thrive at the same time.”

Why HR should ditch employee engagement strategies

Telling employees that they matter can feel stuffy.

But it’s become a crucial talent strategy to train leaders and managers on the skills that help employees feel like they matter, according to Zach Mercurio, leadership researcher and author of 

The Power of Mattering: How Leaders Can Create a Culture of Significance

Mercurio chatted with HR Brew about his book and why a mattering strategy 

 last year. What new ideas did you bring into this book?

My first book was about the power of purpose, which is our contribution and knowing our use and usefulness, but it’s very difficult for someone to see their contribution if they don’t first believe they’re worthy of contributing, so I almost see this book, 

This is a book about how do you create an environment where the people around you actually feel worthy of contributing, and making sure that people feel valued, and then know how they add value, that they feel seen, and that they feel heard, and that they feel needed…In psychology, that name of that feeling…is called mattering, and it’s a distinct concept that can only be generated through interpersonal interactions.

There are several things that are happening that all point to a mattering deficit. One of those things is this idea of disengagement. As 

 in January of this year, engagement is at its lowest rate in a decade, and that’s despite millions of dollars being spent on engagement over the last decade….Almost 40% of people in that sample from Gallup indicated they didn’t think anybody at work cared for them as a person.

Another symptom of this mattering deficit is workplace loneliness. Almost eight out of 10 people indicate that they feel 

, but this is, again, despite connecting more...We’re actually communicating more than ever, but we’re still lonely. One of the things that we’re missing is that, when you look at the research on loneliness, it’s not the quantity of interaction that matters, it’s the quality…It’s feeling seen, and heard, valued, and needed, feeling that we matter.

What we’re seeing is not a disengagement crisis, not a loneliness epidemic, it’s really at its core a mattering deficit. People feel insignificant in their daily interactions, and you can’t solve that through more programs, perks, or platforms. You can only solve that through equipping people and leaders with the skills to show the person across from them how they’re significant to them.

What I would encourage HR leaders to do first is actually to do an audit of the skills that leaders are developing and being evaluated on that create the daily experience of feeling valued…For example, to pay attention and see a person, to conduct a meaningful check in, to actually create an environment where people feel that they can speak up, to listen deeply. Are [leaders] evaluated on and prepared to affirm people and show them the difference that they make and spot their strengths and cultivate those strengths?

These skills have been labeled as “soft”…When we see something as soft or simple, we tend to approach it with less rigor. So, if you think in an HR function, the rigor at which you approach compliance to certain policies and procedures, are you approaching the human skills and scaling the human skills so leaders can see, hear, value, and show people how they’re needed with the same rigor as you’re approaching compliance?

An interview Zach Mercurio, author of ‘The Power of Mattering’

Why a mattering strategy matters to HR.

Do I matter? Your manager should make you feel like it

Millennials might’ve been promised a more stable future and workplace than will exist for them.

Gen Xers and Baby Boomers likely remember a time when a one-company tenure was the norm. Gen Z workers shudder at the thought of that. Older generations also know what it’s like to buy a house for a fraction of its current market value, while many younger professionals probably don’t put home ownership on their vision boards anymore. So, where does that leave millennials? Perhaps, stuck somewhere between the promise of what their parents had and the reality that their kids are born into.

This pressure could be causing higher rates of burnout, as 66% of millennials say they feel “moderate” or “high” levels of burnout compared to 60% of Gen Xers, 56% of Gen Zers, and 39% of Baby Boomers, according to a recent 

Millennials are going through “a perfect storm of professional and personal stress,” said Leah Phifer Buck, an employee engagement consultant and founder of consulting firm WhyWork. These employees, those roughly between 29 and 44 years old, are commonly slammed with caregiving responsibilities for kids and/or aging parents while navigating the growing demands of their careers, Buck told HR Brew, which can exacerbate stress and increase their likelihood of burnout.

Millennials might be asking themselves the same question. This generation has gone through multiple economic recessions before even reaching a mid-life crisis. From the dot-com bubble bust in 2001, the Great Recession in 2008, the Covid-19 pandemic, and now the current administration’s foreign tariff policies, millennials could be wrapped into yet another chilling economic downturn.

“We might never achieve the level of economic stability that the Baby Boomer generation, our parents, did, but I think that a lot of millennials are starting to reconcile with that,” Buck said. “As they make peace with the economic reality that they face, they’re starting to lean into, ‘How can I still do what I love? How can I still do things that light me up and find joy in my job?’

Matthew Owenby, chief strategy officer and corporate services executive at Aflac, agrees that millennials have gone through many unstable times, and it could have taken away the workplace they had hoped to be working in. But he told HR Brew that another big contributor to their higher rates of burnout is the lack of work-life balance exhibited by many company executives.

“Leaders need to be aware that they’re controlling the pace of the work for their workforce,” he said. “A lot of this burnout [and] a lot of the experience that employees are having, millennial and otherwise, are directly related to leadership or the lack thereof.”

 As a millennial herself, Buck said there’s a desire among her generation to “improve the system,” which increases pressure to do better and be better workers, leaders, parents, etc. Sometimes millennials “beat our heads against a wall,” she said, trying to help everyone else so much that they’ve burned themselves out. She suggests a solution lies somewhere between companies making structural changes and employees taking on responsibility.

Starting with mental healthcare coverage, Buck noted, it’s important for HR to effectively communicate available benefits and resources for tackling burnout, but it then becomes incumbent on employees to utilize them.

“I work with clients all the time who say, ‘We don’t know why our employees are so stressed or burned out, because we offer this great mental healthcare coverage.’ But then when I dig deeper and I ask them, ‘Well, how are you communicating the coverage to employees?’” Buck said. “That’s often where the disconnect lies. It’s not that the employers aren’t offering these things, it’s that maybe employees don’t know about it or aren’t taking advantage of it.”

Helping millennial employees tackle burnout boils down to basic communications, expectation setting, and leadership modeling work-life balance, Owenby said.

“It’s fun to talk about work-life balance. It’s another thing to achieve it, and then it’s another thing to encourage it, and encourage leaders to encourage that,” he said. “There has to be a higher standard when it comes to educating leaders, and I think there has to be specific programs in place within corporations to deal with the nuances that the millennial generation is experiencing.”

Buck said she has hope that Gen Z and younger generations will be better about avoiding burnout and mitigating its symptoms when they arise.

“While they may not have all the answers, the fact that they’re surfacing these conversations, and a lot of these discussions are being led by millennials and really pushed by Gen Z, I see as a really promising step forward in this discussion,” she said.

Man resting his head on his work desk, stressed and tired

Millennials are the most likely generation to experience burnout

What’s going on with the ’80s and ’90s kids, and how can HR help?

What you wear in the office matters…to a certain extent.

Workplace cultures have become more flexible with how employees dress in the office, but there’s still an important distinction HR can make between performative and functional professionalism which affects how employees show up to work, said Bree Groff, author of 

Today Was Fun: A Book About Work (Seriously)

Groff shared more about her book with HR Brew—read on for what she had to say for a lesson in performance.

Some of the topics that I dive into, one is about debunking the notion of professionalism. When we think about “performative professionalism,” that’s the suits, and the ties, and the fancy decks, and the business jargon. It’s all these ways in which we need to show up in our “business masks” that often get in the way of what we know makes for a productive and happy culture, so things like psychological safety or just simply camaraderie, like having a work best friend…How we can prioritize people feeling like they don’t have to exhale at the end of the day because they’ve been keeping it professional all day long?

We should like the people that we’re spending our days with, and so how can we create a feeling not just of being collegial, but of real camaraderie in teams? And I use the term “cozy teams” in the book…What I’m trying to do with the book is to help re-humanize the workplace from cultures that can sometimes feel very 

I have to show up in a certain way in order to succeed

I’m having a good time at work because I’m doing it among friends. I’m doing my most brilliant work because I feel welcome to share my ideas.

How can HR help employees take off those business masks?

Starting to recognize and distinguish between what is performative professionalism and what is functional professionalism. So, performative professionalism are things like you look the part, you sound the part, and this is where all the biases come into play…As opposed to functional professionalism: Do you do high-quality work? Do you do it on time?...None of that has anything to do with the fabric that you happen to be wearing.

There’s an exercise in the book that leads people, and certainly HR teams or people teams, through that exercise of, what about our current culture, our current norms, are a little bit performative, that might make people feel like there’s only one right way of being a leader? And then how do we start to detach from some of that?

Start modeling that behavior. A CHRO, or somebody who is on that executive team, if they can show up once in a while in their exercise pants, because they’re going to go run to the gym right after work, and they don’t want to sacrifice their health for having nice slacks on. That’s amazing, and it starts to model what it is to be a human at work. A CHRO, or somebody who is on that executive team, if they can show up once in a while in their exercise pants...That's amazing, and it starts to model what it is to be a human at work. I think [small, minute things] have an oversized impact. Even the way you're sitting around a conference table, if you want to sit with your legs folded...create a sort of subtext that we are humans. We have bodies.

Why is this important for HR to prioritize now?

Having fun is a rebellion in and of itself…It’s very easy, and totally understandable, to feel distraught, and down, and like it’s hard to get out of bed, and do your little piece of work in the world when so many bigger things are happening…Some days won’t be fun and some days will be overwhelming, but I really I think if people want to create their version of a kinder, more successful, more equitable world, I think that first starts by fueling yourself with a sense of sustainability, with a sense of, 

In a society, especially in the US, and certainly in New York where I am, people come to feel like their worth is equated with their economic output. And in a time where the economic uncertainty of the world is feeling very unstable…I feel like reclaiming, even in your own community, or even smaller, even in your own five-person team, a sense of joy, of fun, of levity, of autonomy, that we can make the world better right here right now…I think that’s really a very powerful way to move through bigger systemic issues. To me, it’s not flippant. To me, notions of fun and joy, it’s actually really galvanizing and makes meaning out of what we do every day.

An interview with Bree Groff, author of ‘Today Was Fun’

Employees wearing “business masks” could be harming productivity and engagement, Bree Groff, author of Today Was Fun, tells HR Brew.

How to spot the difference between performative and functional professionalism

In the 1940s, psychologist Abraham Maslow theorized human behavior was rooted in a hierarchy of needs, starting with self-actualization (personal growth and fulfillment), then self-esteem (achievement and respect from others), next social needs (family, love, and belonging), safety (job security and healthcare), and, lastly, physical needs (food, water, and shelter).

But fast-forwarding to today, HR pros shouldn’t expect every employee to prioritize the same order of needs, said Kelly Mackin, co-founder and CEO of the workplace well-being assessment platform Motives Met and author of 

Work Life Well-Lived: The Motives Met Pathway to No-B.S. Well-Being at Work

. In her book, Mackin highlights the research behind motivation and what drives employees.

Mackin spoke with HR Brew about how people pros can approach employee motivation in a variety of ways.

What would an HR pro learn from your book?

We conducted a lot of research to really get to the heart of what thriving at work is all about, because there is so much noise out there to navigate through…and research can’t really seem to make up its mind either about what employees want most. Research will claim that employees walk out the door because of a lack of growth, but other data says, “No, it’s a bad boss or a lack of appreciation,” so there’s a lot of contradictory advice that’s well-intentioned, but it’s overwhelming.

There are actually 28 psychological, emotional, and social human needs, what we call motives, that drive our ability to be well and perform well at work. And, we’ve developed a framework that I’ve added into the book that makes it really easy to grasp what these 28 different motives are.

But, what the data also showed is that what you need most to thrive is going to be really different than what I need most. So, there is no universal hierarchy of needs. It’s discovering what each person’s hierarchy is. So, we kind of have to cut through the noise out there, and the BS and go, “What is true for me? What is true for my team and my work culture?”

What’s an example of a company that’s done this well?

One company that’s really adopted it very well we did a big workshop with…One, they worked on giving managers a communication tool where they could ask really good questions related to each of these 28 needs. […] Asking employees, “Hey, is that company picnic we do every year, really fun, or is it not so fun? What would be something really fun that our team could do to connect this year? Or, what’s one change we could make in the way we work on our team that would give us greater work-life harmony?”

Second is they got everybody involved in the goal to create a culture where these motives are met. So, culture really belongs to everyone, it isn’t just on leaders. And, when you bring your teams and your employees into this idea that there are 28 different needs that are sometimes going to hold friction with each other, everybody has different ones that are important, some they don’t care about.

Third, they also did a manifesto statement around embracing motive diversity. Certain motives can be treated with favoritism, they can be put on a pedestal, and then other motives can be overlooked or judged, and we don’t even realize we’re doing it oftentimes. But, if you want to create inclusive workplaces, it’s really important to have everybody embrace and respect motive diversity. That even if I don’t think something is very important…I can still respect that motive and really make sure I’m not the one that’s harming it on that team.

How can HR pros create a motivation-based culture?

I created a five-step roadmap. It’s the Motives Pathway, that I call it, that really is a roadmap that’s meant to be walked yourself, as an HR leader, with your employees, with your teams, with your other managers. Because again, if everybody walks this five-step pathway, that’s really going to get us to where we want to be, to have that people-first culture, where people’s needs actually come first.

The five steps are to understand, be mindful of, evaluate, communicate, and then, ultimately, be able to meet these motives [and] developing an action plan. So, when you take those five steps, that’s really going to help create that deeper organizational change that’s going to have that lasting impact.

An interview with Kelly Mackin, author of Work Life Well-Lived

Many companies may have a misguided approach when it comes to motivating their employees, says Kelly Mackin, author of Work Life Well-Lived: The Motives Met Pathway to No-B.S. Well-Being at Work.

Efforts to improve company culture might be failing if employee motivations aren’t met

What if there was a simple way for HR to help employees derive meaning from work? It sounds easier said than done.

But there are three key ways leaders can help employees feel more connected to their work, according to Wes Adams, CEO of consulting firm SV Consulting Group, and Tamara Myles, a business consultant, speaker, and Boston College professor.

In their graduate psychology program, Adams and Myles connected over a passion for helping company leaders create meaning for employees, which led them to co-author, 

Meaningful Work: How to Ignite Passion and Performance in Every Employee

. The duo highlights how community, contribution, and being challenged helps employees find meaning and purpose on a daily basis.

“Community is that belief that you matter, that you can show up authentically, you belong in your organization. Contribution is understanding how your work impacts other people in a positive way,” Adams told HR Brew. “And finally, challenge is the opportunity that we have to learn and grow and improve our capabilities.”

HR Brew spoke with Adams and Myles about what people pros can learn from their book.

How did you both end up writing this book?

: I worked in hospitality the first 10 years of my career, opening nightclubs, event spaces, restaurants, and then transitioned into social enterprise and did some consulting. And so, really was a part of launching and growing a number of businesses and ventures over 20 years, and some of those places were really great places to work, and some of those places were not such great places to work. And, some of the ones that I thought were going to be really great places to work, like the mission-driven organizations, didn’t always end up that way, and I wanted to understand why.

: Prior to graduate school, I had spent 15 years consulting with leaders on productivity systems. I had published my first book on a productivity model. The book is called 

…and in doing that work closely with leaders over 15 years, I noticed that there was a virtuous cycle in place…[People who] focus on being productive actually had more time to spend on things that really mattered, and when people were spending time on things that matter most, they were energized, engaged and more productive. And, so, I really wanted to understand the science behind the cycle and how to create this intentionally across organizations.

: What we found is that these three sources of meaning [community, contribution, and challenge] hold across industries. We studied thousands of people from 25 different industries, and these things are important no matter what business you work in, and the same things that we teach to folks at Microsoft and at Black Rock work at businesses like Chick-fil-A, Zaxby’s, or Marriott. These are things that we all care about and are important, and it’s important for each of those three Cs to be present in our work.

You mentioned the hospitality industry, which reminds me of the TV show 

, a show that takes place in a highly stressful workplace. How can HR pros create meaning for employees, specifically in high-stress environments?

, Season Two, called “Forks” that really exemplifies contribution C of meaningful work…They’re polishing forks, and all they have to do is clean those forks, and polish them, and they’re kind of bored. They’re like, “Oh my God, come on. Like, I’m just going to do this all day?” And, then the manager of that restaurant is having [a] huddle with the team before going into the specials…and he says, “Every day here is like the Super Bowl. People wait months to get a reservation, and they come, and it’s our job to create the best experience.”

[This] really highlights that, in that moment, or in that speech, what their work really means [is] it’s not about polishing forks. It’s not about serving the right dish to the right customer, but it’s about creating this magical experience that people have waited months for, and giving the customer the best experience possible. And, so I think that was such a beautiful example of contribution in hospitality, in [a] high-stress environment where it’s a moment that really mattered. It really brought to life what their work means.

: One of the things that hospitality businesses do really well is the community piece of it. I’ve found that when I work in that environment, it’s like a big family, sometimes a messy family, like in The Bear, but it’s that idea that we’re all here together. 

We’re in it together, even if we’re fighting, and I can show up and be me, and that kind of friendship, camaraderie is a huge source of meaning when you feel like you’re a part of something bigger, when you’re a part of that community.

An interview with Wes Adams and Tamara Myles, co-authors of ‘Meaningful Work’

“These things are important no matter what business you work in, and the same things that we teach to folks at Microsoft and at BlackRock work at businesses like Chick-fil-A, Zaxby’s, or Marriott.”

Creating meaning for employees sounds easier said than done—but every HR leader can do it

Kristen Parisi

Bare minimum Mondays. Tired Tuesdays. Weak Wednesdays. Employees may show up and get their work done, but a growing number aren’t going above and beyond.

 Japan has historically had such a profound 

 that residents struggle with being overworked, depressed, and not having enough time for their personal lives. However, some (mainly younger) workers in the country are actively pushing back against this cultural norm, and turning to quiet quitting. Roughly 45% of workers in Japan engage in quiet quitting, according to a survey from Mynavi, a recruitment agency. The term,officially coined in 2022, is not a new trend, but workers increasingly adopted it during the strong post-Covid job market, HR Brew previously 

Respondents said they were “satisfied” with the quiet-quitting approach and plan to continue the practice. Workers said they do the basics required for their jobs for various reasons, but cite wanting a better work-life balance or feeling indifferent about their career path as prime reasons for losing motivation at work.

“We can see that ‘quiet quitting’ is becoming the new norm,” Akari Asahina, a researcher at the Mynavi Career Research Lab, 

 Japan Times. “As values are becoming more diverse, it’s important for companies to accept the diverse values of individuals and offer flexible work styles that fit them.”

Typically, workplace culture in Japan focuses heavily on teamwork success over individual success, so 32% of respondents said they believe that quiet quitting hurts the organization.

 While employers in the US may benefit from 

, workers (65%) feel “stuck” in their current jobs, according to 

. Those feelings can fuel resentment, leading to more quiet quitting as an act of resistance. For now, employee engagement in the US is at a 10-year low, as workers and employers alike grapple with an uncertain economy.

“I think [satisfaction] will start to stabilize when organizations start realizing that they’ve got to adjust how they manage people so that they’re in touch with them more often, so they build more predictability into their environment,” Jim Harter, chief scientist for workplace management and well-being at Gallup, 

If you do the bare minimum for long enough, the bar may get lowered to Barely-out-of-bed Mondays.