Beyond Engagement Scores

Don't abandon employee engagement. Reimagine it.

Beyond Engagement Scores: A Strategic Approach to Human Capital

?In my opinion, employee engagement has become a buzzword that often masks deeper organizational challenges. While engagement surveys have their place, many companies are missing the fundamental building blocks that truly create a compelling workplace experience.

This is not a critique. Most organizations treat employee engagement as a checkbox exercise. They collect scores, create flashy Employee Value Propositions (EVPs), and use these metrics as a tool to attract external top talent. Another is because HR has to ‘’report’’ something to the board, the engagement score is a good metric to showcase ‘’happy employees’’

?But here's the hard truth: engagement scores alone do not create meaningful workplace transformation.

Why are we not asking what makes employees stay? How do we ascertain what drives evidence-based decision-making that delivers real and lasting change in our organizations?

I recall The Gallup poll that painted a revealing picture. Employees don't just leave jobs; they leave managers and environments. The top reasons for staying are rarely about ping-pong tables or free snacks, but about:

• Meaningful work
• Clear expectations
• Opportunities for growth
• Recognition
• A sense of belonging

How are we tracking poor leadership, poor management?

Instead of focusing solely on engagement scores, companies should shift to meaningful insights;

1. Go to the Gemba: Borrowed from lean manufacturing, this Japanese term means "the real place." For HR, it's about getting on the ground, observing work environments, and understanding real employee experiences. Go to trade, factory floor, walk, and work with the employees. Understand a day in their lives.
2. Implement Strategic Stay Interviews: Move beyond exit interviews. Conduct proactive conversations with high-performing employees to understand: What keeps them motivated? What are the potential barriers to their success? What are their career aspirations within the organization?
3. Link Engagement to Business Outcomes: Engagement is not a red herring or a standalone metric. It has to be a business construct that is linked to the business objectives and outcomes.

It must directly correlate with:

1. Productivity
2. Customer satisfaction
3. Innovation
4. Retention rates

More businesses should take a divergent approach to delivering great employee experience

The most progressive organizations are reversing the traditional engagement survey approach:

Trust is a major issue in most organizations. Why, your engagement result is a dip in time, and by the time your engagement score arrives, a few things might have happened in the organization. The employees who might have left responses might have exited the company etc. Still.

While this is a divergent approach to delivering employee engagement focus should be in understanding what drives satisfaction at work.

• Start with the business outcomes you want to achieve and what engagement clearly means to you.
• Design targeted questions that reveal actionable insights
• Create precise interventions based on specific findings
• Continuously iterate and adapt?

True employee engagement practice goes beyond surveys. You must seek to understand what drives work performance. Core HR Practices – Recruitment, Total rewards, Development, Technology and Resources, Clear goals, and objectives are the brilliant basics HR must have to drive true employee experiences.

High performance is directly correlated with high development. You want people to perform? Drive development and measure the outcomes.

It requires:

• Continuous dialogue with employees and as a leadership team.
• Creating personalized development plans as not one size fits all.
• Holding real conversations on transparent career pathways
• Giving real-time feedback mechanisms that deliver results to the employee and the business.

Dear Business Leader,

Do not abandon employee engagement. Reimagine it. Transform it from a compliance exercise to a strategic business driver that genuinely connects human potential with organizational goals. Play the long game instead and build the right foundations.

The future of HR isn't about measuring engagement—it's about creating environments where engagement naturally emerges and using the right metrics to drive the changes.

You wouldn’t have to sell it, it will speak through the transcendence of the key pillars of HR actions.

Reimagine it.