The Top 5 Employee Engagement Trends this year

Do you know what the key to employee success is?

It’s about the whole picture and there are three elements you need to consider:

1. Experience – Creating an overall encouraging and engaging workplace
2. Impact – Including the employees in the success of the business 
3. Magnetism – Becoming a place where employees want to stay and talent wants to join. 

When these three main factors are combined together, you will see a successful workplace. 

In this article, we want to dive even deeper and share the top 5 employee engagement trends for 2023. This information will allow your company to grow and evolve with your employees. 

Paying attention to these trends will help you understand the most important components of attracting, engaging, and retaining employees.

Trend #1: Rebuilding trust in leadership. 

One of the most important things within a workplace is trust in the leadership and company. Since 2020, this trust has plummeted according to the 2023 Employee Engagement Trends Report. 

And it’s a two way street, as employees look upward and feel unsure that their senior leadership is leading the company toward success, leaders are concerned with decreasing employee productivity levels.

If you commit to the other 4 trends, you will be able to rebuild the lost trust.

Trend #2: Investing in employee engagement.

While the economy changes and evolves, we’ve noticed how important it is for employee engagement to remain at the top of workplace initiatives. One of the biggest mistakes is when leaders move away from employee initiatives in turbulent times. 

This shows employees that they don’t matter as much as they thought they did. It also is not as healthy of a workplace because employees may feel run into the ground and more like “zombie or robot” workers instead of people who matter. 

No matter what happens in and out of your office, keep your employees happy by showing them that they matter.

Trend #3: Focus more on impact than performance. 

If there’s something we’ve learned in the last several years is that impact means so much more than performance. People can make mistakes and work tasks can go sideways. 

A really great thing to begin doing is focusing on an employee’s impact to the company over performance on specific tasks. 

While some companies believe that productivity levels are decreasing, they feel the pressure to micro manage and monitor the employee’s performance closely. But so many employers use outdated data and assumptions and it never ends well. 

If you want to improve performance, consider these things as an employee: 

1. If I contribute to the organization’s success, I know I will be recognized.
2. My performance at work is evaluated fairly.
3. My manager regularly provides me with effective feedback that helps improve my performance.
4. My performance goals are aligned to our organizational goals.
5. I am empowered to decide how my work gets done.

Trend #4: Build a thriving and adaptable culture.

We’ve seen a dramatic shift in workplace culture over the years. Most employees say that the culture at their office has changed and some note it’s been drastic. While 42% of employees say their culture has improved, 21% of those surveyed said their culture has declined. That’s nearly 1 out of 4 employees.

So, what can you do about it?

Build trust, focus on strategies for engagement, be intentional with how you offer work (remote/hybrid options) and get everyone involved in creating a thriving and adaptable culture. This will help employees feel needed and wanted. 

Trend #5: Creating organizational magnetism.

The final trend is to create organizational magnetism. 

Only 77% of employees say it would take a lot to get them to leave their organization, leaving another one in four employees at a high retention risk. To help with retention, we’ve seen that employee engagement and success initiatives have had a massive impact. 

To do this, fuel your retention plan with reportable and scalable feedback. When you really understand your employee and what they bring to the table, you’ll be one step closer to keeping them around for longer. And, when someone leaves… analyze why that is and work towards fixing it. 

Let data be your guide.

We love to share information on topics like this because having the data gives you a guide to a better workplace for your employees. If you liked this article, be sure to check out our other ones like it! 

And if you have any questions, please reach out to us and we’d be happy to help whether it comes to employee retention, HR consulting, employee benefit packages or more.