How to improve employee engagement: Guide + 10 tips

Employee engagement goes beyond simple job satisfaction. It encompasses how employees feel about company culture and how strongly they feel aligned with the company’s objectives. But for many businesses, figuring out how to improve employee engagement can be a challenge.

The stakes are high — in recent years, 6 out of 10 leaders reported declining engagement levels, according to research by Zoom in collaboration with Reworked. Low engagement puts businesses at risk of decreasing productivity, retention, and profit. This guide details how to improve employee engagement, why it’s important, and steps you can take to make an impact.

Employee engagement is the degree to which your employees are invested in their work and your company, both emotionally and intellectually. When an employee is highly engaged, they do more than simply show up to work each day. They bring energy, excitement, and a strong sense of ownership to their work. 

This, in turn, has an outsized impact on your business as a whole. Engagement levels shape how well teams work together, how productive employees are, and how they speak about your company to others. An engaged workforce is a long-term asset that brings better performance and a stronger company culture.

There are a few core components of employee engagement, and they often interact and reinforce one another. While you can have an engaged employee without one of these components, it can be more challenging to achieve. An effective employee engagement best practice is to address as many elements as possible. Here are the key areas to know:

• Culture: A shared set of values, behaviors, and beliefs that cultivate a sense of belonging and importance among employees
• Leadership: Managers who are trustworthy, transparent, and empathetic, and who model engagement and provide support to their direct reports
• Recognition: Ongoing, meaningful acknowledgment and celebration of work well done, individual contributions, and team achievements that let employees know their work is seen and valued
• Well-being: Support and encouragement for individuals to take care of their physical and mental health, allowing them to do their best work
• Career growth: Clear career pathways, opportunities for education, and coaching or mentorship

Employee engagement helps transform an organization of people simply clocking in for a paycheck into one where employees choose to put their best effort forward because they feel respected and valued. 

Engaged employees often feel like part of something bigger than themselves. When they see how their work contributes to a greater, shared mission, they’re motivated to perform at their best and support their colleagues. This can lead to increased productivity, ultimately resulting in business performance improvements over time. 

Let’s look at some of the specific benefits of employee engagement.

Increased productivity

Engaged employees are more invested in their work and more likely to function efficiently and communicate proactively. Because they care about the result and the success of the organization, they want to contribute to its goals and objectives.

A recent Gartner survey found that employees who reported being “energized and excited” about their work were 31% more likely to go above and beyond than less-engaged peers, and contribute 15% more.

Higher job satisfaction

When engaged employees feel their work is meaningful and impactful, and believe they are valued and supported, they’re more likely to experience overall job satisfaction.

According to a study published by Deloitte, Slack, a cloud-based communication platform, asked employees to take regular breaks throughout their workday. Breaks gave them time to care for their own well-being and cultivated a culture of caring for the whole person. During that time, productivity scores increased by 21%, and overall job satisfaction increased by 63%.

Better employee retention

Organizations that manage engagement carefully often retain employees more effectively. If an employee feels that their professional needs are being met at their current job, they may not see a need to look elsewhere.

This is especially clear when it comes to flexibility. For example, 70% of employees stated that they would consider leaving for an organization with a more flexible environment, according to a Morning Consult report commissioned by Zoom. In the same report, 84% said they would be more likely to work for a company offering flexible or fully remote work.

Stronger communication

Strong engagement and good communication often go hand in hand, as the more transparently you communicate with your team, the more engaged they’ll be. Engagement also leads to better communication, with engaged employees more likely to proactively share information and collaborate effectively. 

With this in mind, businesses may be tempted to equip their employees with as many communication outlets as possible, under the premise that greater connectivity will lead to stronger communication. However, data shows it’s important to strike a balance to avoid diminishing returns. The Zoom-commissioned Morning Consult report revealed that employees who used more than 10 work apps reported issues with communication at a higher rate (54%) than employees using fewer than five (34%).

Consider combining your essential communication and productivity tools into a single all-in-one work platform, like Zoom, to help reduce confusion and enhance team collaboration.

Improved profitability

Workplace engagement doesn’t just make employees happy — increased employee engagement can have a substantial effect on your business’s success. In fact, a Gallup survey found that organizations with higher levels of engagement saw a 23% increase in profitability. 

It makes sense: The more engaged the team is, the more they’ll put forth their best effort for the business. That, in turn, drives higher sales and better customer retention, ultimately leading to revenue and profit.

Below, we break down 10 ways to enhance employee engagement with specific examples and suggestions. Think of these as a helpful toolkit you can refer back to as your organization scales and iterates.

1. Create a great onboarding experience

Onboarding is your first chance to set the stage for strong engagement. When you onboard employees well, they feel welcomed, supported, and ready to make a meaningful contribution. 

An example is American Field Service (AFS), which used Zoom and Workvivo to host and distribute important content to its employees and volunteers. 

Because Workvivo integrates directly with Zoom and offers a single starting point for onboarding information and other company documents, it was a great fit for a company with 800+ staff and 30,000 volunteers. As new folks join, they can access all the required information upfront, get quick answers to their questions, and experience a smoother onboarding process.

Pro tip: Start new hires with a 30-60-90-day plan that includes regular check-ins to stay on top of questions or areas for improvement.

2. Develop a positive company culture

Generally, a positive culture is motivating, inclusive, transparent, and values-aligned. While it’s easy to state your culture goals at the outset, it’s more important (and trickier) to continuously cultivate a positive culture over time. 

By intentionally focusing on your values, sourcing input from your teams, and leading by example, you can reinforce your culture every day. Positive work cultures often blend strong leadership and transparency with a celebration of diversity and a focus on recognizing and caring for employees.

Pro tip: Outline your organization’s values, then regularly tie initiatives back to them and reinforce them through team communications.

3. Build a strong communication infrastructure

Effective communication requires sending the right message to the right people at the right time and through the right channel. If you miss just one of those crucial requirements, it can have a negative impact on engagement.

Effective tools for engagement are those that offer a unified communications experience, like Zoom Workplace, which includes voice, video, and chat. This supports employee communication in the way that works best for them.

Pro tip: Audit your current communication tools to identify areas for consolidation. Consider adopting an all-in-one work platform like Zoom Workplace that integrates with other essential tools.

4. Recognize and reward success

Employee recognition has a significant impact on engagement. When you celebrate and express gratitude for your employees’ hard work, they feel appreciated and valued. 

There are plenty of ways to reward and recognize employee contributions, but one innovative option is to use technology like Workvivo’s shoutouts. Rakuten Symphony implemented this in their Germany office, and in just one month, over 80% of employees had activated Workvivo and were sharing news and shoutouts to recognize colleagues.

Pro tip: Build a culture of recognition by training managers to shout out good work on their teams regularly. You can also develop peer recognition programs and encourage their use.

5. Invest in mental and physical well-being

Allowing employees to focus on their own mental and physical well-being may positively impact their engagement levels. Employees who are better able to manage their well-being may be better positioned to avoid issues that commonly lead to disengagement, like burnout, stress, or poor work-life balance. 

An example of this in action is Patagonia, which promotes a culture of self-care. They offer flexible schedules, remote work options, and generous paid time off and leave, all of which serve to accommodate employees’ individual needs and contribute to their well-being. 

Pro tip: Consider offering programs like mental health days off or providing subsidies that can be used to support well-being, like counseling or gym memberships.

6. Build team connections

People want to feel connected at work, especially on a hybrid, remote, or distributed team: the more teams bond, the more trust and engagement they’re likely to have. 

52% of leaders believe that hybrid and remote work has had a positive impact on team connectedness. However, these results don’t come automatically; they are built up over time. You can cultivate these connections with activities like virtual coffee chats, team-wide trivia games, or other fun-focused events using Zoom Meetings.

Pro tip: Pair people from different teams together on a regular rotation (such as once a month) and give them the option of an in-person sync or a virtual meeting to connect and get to know each other.

7. Provide professional growth and development opportunities

Most employees want opportunities to grow at work. In fact, 76% of employees go out of their way to seek opportunities for career expansion. Implementing training programs, learning opportunities, clear pathways to advancement, and other professional development methods can be crucial to retaining employees. When employees feel they’re not growing professionally, they’re likely to disengage or even start looking for a new opportunity. 

Support growth and retention by offering learning opportunities, mentorship programs, providing clear feedback, and offering a well-defined career path. For example, you might create a mentorship matching program so employees can learn from each other (which also fosters connection). Or, you could offer tuition reimbursement so employees can pursue relevant higher education or certification programs.

Pro tip: Create detailed career paths for key roles, then use them to create individual development plans with your direct reports.

8. Provide flexible work options

Today’s workers value flexible work options (like hybrid or remote work), and employers are adjusting. Ninety-five percent of leaders say their companies have become more flexible in recent years, and 82% report that they plan to implement more flexibility going forward, according to Zoom’s 2025 report, Navigating the Future of Work: Global Perspectives on Hybrid Models and Technology. The report also shows that hybrid employees feel the most connected with their manager, coworkers, leaders, and company. 

Of course, not every role or company can feasibly be remote, hybrid, or offer 100% flexible working hours. However, providing as much flexibility as possible may make a significant difference in engagement levels. 

With tools like Zoom Workplace, you can enable strong team connectivity, regardless of where employees are located. Because Zoom makes location-independent communication easier, it’s simpler to implement flexible work options that promote work-life balance and overall well-being.

Pro tip: Set your team’s core hours, then pilot flexibility around them: Tell the team they must be available between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. in a specific time zone, for example, and let them build their schedules around that window.

9. Implement empathetic leadership

Strong engagement often starts with empathetic leaders who take the time to listen to their employees and care about them as individuals. Transparency is also important here — while leaders may sometimes need to make unpopular business decisions, sharing information with empathy and clarity can go a long way in helping employees feel considered.

It’s easy for managers to get bogged down in day-to-day tasks, but to truly model empathetic leadership, you can hold regular check-ins to ask your teams about overall workloads, obstacles, or ideas.

Pro tip: Offer training to managers on coaching, emotional intelligence, and providing feedback.

10. Gather and implement employee feedback

Finally, it’s crucial to understand how your engagement strategies are working. If you don’t seek feedback from employees, you won’t know what is and isn’t working or where you can improve. 

A great way to do this is with Workvivo’s polls and surveys. You can send surveys to employees and review the results in a dashboard. From there, you can use these insights to determine any necessary changes to your employee engagement strategies. It’s especially important to transparently share results with employees and communicate any actions you plan to take.

Pro tip: Send employees an annual or biannual comprehensive survey to measure engagement and satisfaction, then implement shorter pulse surveys (three to five questions) every quarter.

Employee engagement can lead to better productivity, job satisfaction, retention, and even profitability, making it a critical part of nurturing and maintaining a strong workforce. Figuring out how to improve employee engagement, however, is an undertaking that requires a strategic approach and intentional effort.

Zoom’s Workvivo solution can help you enhance employee engagement with communication features, feedback and insights, and employee recognition. As you build a culture of engagement, you can survey employees to understand their feelings, then iterate along the way to create more engagement.

If you’re ready to start improving employee engagement at your organization, book a Workvivo demo today.