Flawed Metrics: Why Employee Engagement Surveys Miss the Point

Despite decades of focus on employee engagement, Gallup consistently reports that approximately 77% of employees remain disengaged at work.*  Why have our efforts made so little impact?

The problem lies not in our intentions but in our fundamental understanding of engagement. We've approached it as a technical problem to be solved through surveys, programs, and initiatives when it's an energy issue that requires a completely different approach.

Traditional engagement measures treat people as objects (“things,” like chess pieces to be moved around the board) to be motivated rather than sources of natural energy. They assume engagement can be mandated from above rather than emerging organically from meaningful work and authentic connections.

A more effective approach recognizes that organizational energy, like physical energy, follows natural laws. It cannot be commanded but only enabled through conditions that support its natural flow. It moves most powerfully through authentic relationships and meaningful contribution.

Instead of asking "How can we make our employees more engaged?" try asking "What conditions allow natural energy and engagement to flourish?" This shift moves us from attempting to manipulate engagement to creating environments where engagement emerges naturally.

The organizations seeing breakthrough results aren't running more sophisticated engagement programs: they're creating fundamentally different relationships with their people, viewing them as sources of energy and wisdom rather than resources to be optimized.

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*Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace, 2023.