How to Improve Employee Engagement: Expert Insights for HR Leaders

Employee engagement influences whether people contribute, innovate and remain with an organisation. Gallup found that global engagement fell to 20% in 2025, costing the world economy $10 trillion in lost productivity. Deloitte found that organisations progressing human capital priorities were nearly twice as likely to achieve business and workforce outcomes.

FAQs

Why Is Employee Engagement Important?

Employee engagement affects performance, retention, wellbeing and resilience. Highly engaged workplaces report 78% lower absenteeism, 21% lower turnover in high-turnover organisations and 23% higher profitability. Gallup also found that engaged organisations achieve 18% higher sales productivity. Engagement is a commercial and people priority.

What Are the Top Expert Insights for HR Leaders?

Effective engagement strategies focus on everyday behaviour rather than occasional surveys, benefits campaigns or company-wide announcements. Managers are central, accounting for 70% of the variance in team engagement. Leaders must equip them to coach, listen, communicate clearly and model organisational values.

Speakers specialising in HR, workplace culture and inclusion support this work by providing evidence, perspectives and practical tools that encourage behavioural change.

What Are the Top Tips for Improving Employee Engagement?

This selection of leading UK employee engagement speakers is informed by data from 362 industry events, speaker evaluations and audience feedback.

1. Align People Strategy With Business Strategy
2. Design Work Around Clarity and Purpose
3. Connect Happiness With Meaningful Work
4. Change Leadership Behaviour First
5. Make Inclusion Accountable
6. Encourage Cognitive Diversity
7. Replace Unnecessary Rules With Trust
8. Build Equity Into Workplace Systems
9. Support Wellbeing Throughout the Employee Journey
10. Prioritise Collaboration Over Internal Competition
11. Hire a Keynote Speaker

1. Align People Strategy With Business Strategy

Employee engagement improves when people understand how their skills and responsibilities support the organisation’s commercial direction. HR leaders should begin by identifying the capabilities the business will need over the next three to five years, then connect recruitment, learning, progression and performance objectives to those priorities. Giving people access to relevant development also reassures them that they have a place in the organisation’s future.

Aviva Investors provides a recent example (Source: Financial News London). The company introduced a GenAI Apprenticeship Programme covering prompt engineering, AI-supported data analysis, visualisation and the management of AI projects. Following its first cohort, Aviva Investors developed a shorter four-month version to make the training accessible to more employees. The programme connects workforce development with the company’s need for stronger technology capabilities, while helping employees build confidence in an area that will influence their future careers.

2. Design Work Around Clarity and Purpose

Employees need to understand what is expected of them, how success will be measured and why their work matters. Unclear responsibilities create duplicated work, conflicting priorities and frustration, particularly within hybrid or cross-functional teams.

Managers should agree measurable objectives with employees, explain how each role supports wider business goals and discuss progress regularly. These conversations should cover current performance, development needs and the practical barriers preventing someone from doing their best work.

Adobe offers a strong example through its ‘Check-In’ performance management system (Source: Adobe). Rather than relying solely on an annual appraisal, employees take part in structured conversations covering expectations, progress and impact. Adobe describes performance as an ongoing, two-way discussion, giving managers more opportunities to coach and employees greater ownership of their development. The company has reported engagement of more than 95% during each check-in cycle, showing how a clear and consistent framework can support participation, transparency and trust.

3. Connect Happiness With Meaningful Work

Employee happiness is influenced by purpose, relationships, achievement and a belief that the organisation contributes something worthwhile. Perks may create short-term enthusiasm, but they cannot compensate for unfulfilling work, weak leadership or a culture that conflicts with employees’ values. HR leaders can strengthen purpose by showing employees how their work affects customers, communities and wider organisational goals.

Salesforce has embedded this principle through its 1-1-1 model, originally committing 1% of its equity, product and employee time to charitable activity (Source: Salesforce). The company has recorded millions of employee volunteering hours and supports thousands of charities and non-profit organisations through its technology. By making community contribution part of the operating culture, Salesforce gives employees a direct way to connect their professional lives with wider social value.

4. Change Leadership Behaviour First

An engagement strategy will struggle when senior leaders and managers behave in ways that contradict it. Employees judge organisational culture through their daily interactions, including whether managers listen, communicate honestly, recognise good work and respond fairly when problems arise.

Manager development should therefore concentrate on observable behaviours rather than broad leadership theories. Organisations can train managers to hold productive one-to-one meetings, provide useful feedback, involve employees in decisions and support career development. Engagement and retention measures should also form part of management performance reviews.

Google’s Project Oxygen provides a recognised example of using workforce data to improve leadership (Source: Google re:Work). Its research identified several behaviours associated with effective managers, including coaching employees, avoiding micromanagement, communicating clearly, supporting career development and showing concern for people’s success and wellbeing.

5. Make Inclusion Accountable

Inclusion needs to be expressed through everyday actions, including who is invited into discussions, whose ideas receive recognition and whether employees challenge inappropriate behaviour. Annual training or awareness campaigns will have limited effect when inclusive practices are absent from meetings, recruitment, development and management decisions.

Accenture has taken this approach through its Allies in Action programme (Source: Accenture). The initiative brings together learning, events and community activities across areas including ethnicity, gender equality, disability, neurodiversity, LGBTQ+ inclusion and mental wellbeing. It centres on five practical behaviours: developing awareness, being present, speaking up, showing humility and inspiring inclusion. This gives employees a clearer understanding of how allyship should appear in their everyday work rather than leaving inclusion as an abstract company value.

6. Encourage Cognitive Diversity

Cognitive diversity means bringing together people who approach problems from different professional, cultural and personal perspectives. It can improve decision-making by reducing groupthink and helping teams identify assumptions that may otherwise go unchallenged.

Diverse teams still require careful leadership. Managers need to create enough psychological safety for employees to disagree, ask questions and suggest alternative solutions.

UK production company Untold Fable provides a practical example. The company integrates diversity data into recruitment and uses that information when forming teams for particular clients and audiences (Source: Untold Fable). This allows it to create production crews whose backgrounds and perspectives more closely reflect the people a campaign needs to reach. Its approach demonstrates how diversity can influence the composition of working teams and the quality of the final work, rather than being treated solely as a representation target.

7. Replace Unnecessary Rules With Trust

Excessive processes can prevent employees from using initiative, responding quickly and taking responsibility for their decisions. HR leaders should regularly review policies and approval stages to identify where control is creating delay without meaningfully reducing risk.

Trust still requires clear expectations. Employees need access to relevant information, an understanding of the organisation’s priorities and honest feedback when their judgement falls short. Autonomy works best when people understand both the freedom they have and the outcomes for which they are accountable.

Netflix is widely associated with this approach through its emphasis on employee judgement and responsibility (Source: Variety). Its culture framework has historically encouraged employees to make decisions with less reliance on rigid procedures, while maintaining demanding performance expectations. The company has continued to review and revise its culture principles as it has grown, demonstrating that autonomy must evolve alongside commercial pressures, organisational size and accountability.

8. Build Equity Into Workplace Systems

Equity depends on the systems used to determine pay, promotion, development and access to influential opportunities. Treating employees fairly requires organisations to examine whether apparently neutral processes create different outcomes for different groups.

HR teams should review pay data, progression rates, recruitment outcomes and participation in leadership programmes.

PwC UK provides an example through its voluntary publication of ethnicity pay gap data, which it began in 2017, before ethnicity reporting became a legal requirement (Source: PwC). Publishing this information helps concentrate attention on differences in representation and seniority, while creating a public basis for accountability. PwC has also continued to research the relationship between workplace equality, economic participation and productivity, reinforcing the commercial importance of addressing unequal outcomes.

9. Support Wellbeing Throughout the Employee Journey

Workplace wellbeing should influence job design, management, flexibility, development and career transitions. Employee assistance programmes are valuable, but they cannot resolve persistent overwork, poor management or roles that give people little control over their working lives.

Managers should discuss workload and energy during regular check-ins, while HR teams examine whether flexibility and wellbeing support are accessible across different roles. Organisations should also help employees adapt when their personal circumstances or career priorities change.

Unilever has tested several approaches to flexible employment and development (Source: Unilever). Its UK-based U-Work model was designed to give people greater flexibility over when they worked while maintaining a degree of employment security. The company also experimented with U-Renew, allowing employees to undertake education or a sabbatical while receiving financial support.

10. Prioritise Collaboration Over Internal Competition

Individual targets can motivate performance, but poorly designed ranking and reward systems may encourage employees to compete against colleagues, protect information or avoid working with other high performers. Engagement suffers when people believe a colleague’s success could reduce their own rating or reward.

Organisations should assess whether performance systems recognise teamwork, knowledge sharing and contributions to shared objectives. Managers can reward employees who support colleagues, improve cross-functional processes and help the wider organisation succeed.

Microsoft offers a useful example of changing a system that had encouraged internal competition (Source: Harvard Business Review). The company abandoned its controversial stack-ranking process, which had required employees to be placed into performance categories relative to their colleagues. Under Satya Nadella, Microsoft placed greater emphasis on a growth mindset and leadership principles based around modelling, coaching and caring.

11. Hire a Keynote Speaker

A keynote speaker can create a shared starting point for conversations about employee engagement, leadership and inclusion. External experts bring independent evidence, lived experience and practical frameworks that can help audiences see familiar workplace challenges differently.

Recommended employee engagement speakers include:

• Janina Kugel – Former Chief Human Resources Officer and Member of the Managing Board at Siemens.
• Jean Tomlin – Former Director of HR, Workforce and Accreditation for the London 2012 Olympic Games.
• Jenn Lim – CEO of Delivering Happiness and bestselling author of ‘Beyond Happiness’.
• John Amaechi OBE – Organisational psychologist, leadership transformation expert and bestselling author.
• Leila McKenzie-Delis – Founder and CEO of DIAL Global and The McKenzie-Delis Foundation.
• Matthew Syed – Bestselling author and expert on growth mindset, cognitive diversity and high performance.
• Patty McCord – Former Chief Talent Officer at Netflix and author of ‘Powerful’.
• Pauline Miller – Senior equity, culture and inclusion leader with experience at dentsu and Lloyd’s of London.
• Samantha Clarke – Workplace happiness expert, positive psychologist and author of ‘Love It Or Leave It’.
• Silvia Garcia – Former Global Director of Happiness at Coca-Cola and workplace culture consultant.

Book an Employee Engagement Speaker Today

Employee engagement affects how people perform, collaborate and respond to change. Organisations that invest in inclusive leadership, meaningful work, capable managers and employee wellbeing are better placed to retain talent and achieve sustainable growth.

Keynote speakers support this work by making research accessible, challenging established behaviours and giving audiences practical actions to apply. Continued learning also helps organisations maintain momentum after an initial campaign or event. To find an expert suited to your objectives, explore a variety of speakers covering employee engagement, leadership, diversity and workplace culture.

If you are interested in learning more or booking a keynote speaker, call a booking agent today on 0203 9816 297 or by completing our online contact form.