How to develop and sustain employee engagement in the workplace

Employee engagement is the degree to which employees are emotionally invested in their work and their organization. It is distinct from job satisfaction, which reflects how content someone is with pay, benefits, or working conditions. Engagement goes deeper, describing whether employees care about business outcomes, not just whether they’re comfortable at work.

Researchers and workplace analysts generally describe three categories of employees:

According to Gallup, only about 21% of employees worldwide fall into the engaged category, which means most organizations have significant room to improve.

Engagement grows from specific workplace conditions that shape employees’ everyday experiences. These are the foundational elements that determine whether employees feel connected to their work or disconnected from it.

These strategies focus on building engagement early, starting before an employee's first day and carrying through their following years at the company.

Engagement begins before day one. Clear job expectations, a transparent hiring process, and timely communication all signal that you respect your candidates' time. A fast, fair background screening process contributes to a positive first impression: Candidates who experience confusion or long delays during screening may begin their role with frustration or reduced confidence in the organization.

Structured onboarding builds connection early through clear information about the role, mentorship opportunities, and cultural integration. The first year is a critical window for retention. Milestones, regular check-ins, and peer support during this period help new employees feel oriented and valued.

Managers shape their employees’ daily experience more than almost any other factor. Research from Gallup shows that managers account for 70% of the variance in team-level engagement. Training managers in coaching, feedback, and recognition gives them the tools to build engagement consistently across their teams.

Recognition works best when it is timely and tied to a specific action or outcome. Consistent recognition practices include:

A growth path defines how an employee’s skills and responsibilities can expand over time. Employees engage more when they can see a realistic future inside the organization. This includes access to training, mentorship, internal mobility, and conversations about long-term goals. Flexibility is also important when employees may want to try a different role in a completely different department.

Two-way communication creates channels for employees to share feedback, ask questions, and raise concerns. Examples include pulse surveys, listening sessions, anonymous feedback forms, and open-door policies. It’s important that employee feedback visibly leads to action; employees will look for evidence that what they say changes something.

Building engagement is only part of the challenge for your leadership team. Sustaining it requires ongoing effort, consistent practices, and visible follow-through over time.

Continuous feedback loops replace once-a-year reviews with regular check-ins and short pulse surveys, which are brief, focused questionnaires used to monitor employee sentiment between longer annual surveys. Examples include bimonthly one-on-ones, monthly surveys with three to five questions, and quarterly or biannual goal reviews that are documented in writing. These rhythms keep engagement visible in real time rather than highlighting issues only once a year.

Collecting feedback without any follow-through erodes trust within your team. When employees share their concerns but see no change, their response rates drop and they become more skeptical of leadership. Acting transparently means that leadership shares what they learned, what will change, who owns that work, and when updates will follow.

Remote, hybrid, and frontline workers have different communication, scheduling, and recognition needs. A one-size approach rarely works across all groups:

Engagement often dips during periods of change, such as mergers, rapid hiring, restructuring, or leadership transitions. Clear, frequent communication during these periods reduces the uncertainty your employees may feel. Practical ways to keep your team in the loop include briefings from leadership about key decisions, re-onboarding during reorganizations, and preserving core team rituals that give employees a sense of stability.

To measure your employees’ engagement, establish a baseline and track whether engagement is improving, declining, or staying flat over time. Common methods include surveys, a simple index metric, workforce data, and structured conversations.

Employee engagement starts earlier than most organizations realize, often during the hiring and screening process. Checkr helps teams run fast, fair, and transparent background checks that help you respect candidates' time and reflect well on your organization from the very first interaction.

Our platform supports fair chance hiring through tools like job-relevant record filtering, candidate storytelling features, and expungement support, helping organizations build inclusive workforces from the ground up. Get started with Checkr to see how fair, efficient screening supports a stronger employee experience from day one.

Employee satisfaction describes how content employees are with their pay, benefits, and working conditions. Employee engagement describes their emotional commitment to the organization's goals and their enthusiasm about their specific role.

Many larger organizations run a comprehensive engagement survey once per year and use shorter pulse surveys quarterly or monthly to monitor trends between the annual cycles.

Meaningful improvement in engagement scores typically takes several months to a year, depending on the root causes that are identified, how clearly actions are taken, and the consistency of follow-through from leadership and managers.

Benchmarks vary depending on the survey provider and the measurement scale you use, but scores that exceed industry averages or show consistent year-over-year improvement generally indicate a healthy level of engagement within an organization.

Frontline and hourly workers often respond well to mobile-friendly communication tools, simple and frequent recognition programs, and managers trained in coaching and fair scheduling. It’s generally best to take an approach that fits the pace and structure of shift-based work environments.

About the author

Checkr is the data platform that powers safe and fair decisions. We’re a technology company that helps our customers assess risk, modernize hiring, and cultivate trusted relationships in their workplaces and communities.