Imagine your employees arrive each day, all charged up, exchanging weekend anecdotes, and jumping into their tasks with true purpose.
That’s the power of employee engagement.
In 2025, employee engagement isn’t just a “nice-to-have”—it’s your secret weapon for performance, retention, and innovation. The real win? It’s often driven by simple, human touches like recognition, growth, and empathy.
But here’s the wake-up call: Only 23% of global employees are actively engaged in their jobs. That leaves a staggering 77% who are either passively checked out—or worse, actively disengaged.
So, how do you create a workplace that people want to be a part of?
Let’s dig into the top 30 drivers of engagement in 2025 that every HR leader and team manager must know.
Employee engagement is when employees are emotionally invested in the organization and its objectives. It’s not satisfaction or happiness; it’s about participation, passion, and a strong need to make a meaningful contribution.
In essence, employee engagement is the level of emotional connection and commitment employees feel toward their work, inspiring them to go above and beyond in their roles.
Here’s how the scale of employee engagement changes:
Engagement drivers are the internal and external factors that motivate employees to invest their energy, loyalty, and creativity in their work.
In today’s hybrid and remote-first world, these drivers of employee engagement are more critical than ever to:
Here’s a breakdown of the top 30 engagement drivers in 2025:
Here are some of the most effective ways to challenge employees mentally, support their growth, and keep their minds actively invested in the work they do:
Offering paths for career advancement conveys investment in their future. 94% of workers would remain longer at organizations that invest in learning. It improves loyalty and motivation and avoids stagnation. You can:
Employees prefer to stay updated as work evolves. Upskilling future-proofs their role. It has been noted that 50% of employees will require reskilling by 2025 as technology changes. This feature offers flexibility and facilitates a forward-thinking culture
How to do it:
Mentoring enhances learning and evokes belongingness, especially in diversity-rich environments. 79% of millennials indicate mentoring as at the center of work success. Mentoring shuttles experience and establishes cross-functional relationships.
Employees seek meaningfulness in their jobs. Job alignment with company purpose fuels engagement. It boosts motivation and aligns individual and business goals.
Encouraging inclusivity builds trust. Employees get more engaged being seen and respected. Studies show that 83% of Gen Z employees feel a stronger sense of loyalty to inclusive organizations. It further empowers innovative thinking from diversity, and achieves equity and fairness.
Here are some ways to foster a deeper emotional connection between employees and the organization—through trust, support, and a sense of belonging:
Organizational leaders promote higher employee engagement than company policies. Effective managers create trust and rapport. Good leaders encourage loyalty and enhance clarity in work.
Innovation occurs when employees feel comfortable to speak openly. In the absence of psychological safety, engagement decreases and fear of failure persists.
How to use:
Sympathetic management during times of personal transition, birth, illness, death, is rewarded by employee loyalty. It strengthens emotional bond and reduces burnout in bad times.
People care about pay and 61% of employees cite pay as their number-one driver of engagement. Fair remuneration builds trust and prevents turnover.
Burnout and disengagement are the cost of working too hard. Autonomy enhances well-being and retention and boosts productivity
Check out these strategies that encourage action, ownership, and consistent participation—turning passive employees into active contributors:
Individualized recognition increases value and commitment, raises morale, and reinforces positive behavior
Peer-to-peer recognition seems more authentic and democratic as it binds the team tighter and builds respect among peers.
Annual performance reviews are outdated. Ongoing 360-degree feedback enhances performance and mood and encourages employees to remain goal-focused.
Unused feedback builds employee distrust. When companies take action on feedback, they retain 14.9% fewer turnovers. Taking action creates trust and mitigates lagging engagement before it’s too late.
Data gives visibility to what is driving results. Plans without measurement fail, while data guides smart decisions and enables active tuning.
Follow these strategies to create meaningful connections between employees and build a culture that thrives on collaboration and belonging:
Strong culture develops day by day through collaboration and shared values. A strong organizational culture can boost engagement by 25% and retention by 40%. It creates identity and belonging and encourages cross-team alignment.
First and last impressions create an employee’s first and last year. Ensure formal transitions to create transparency and trust.
Employees love working for organizations that follow CSR, which closes the action gap. It instills values higher than profit and inspires pride among employees.
New generations need flexibility, mental health care, and personalization. Offering perks and benefits reflects the values of the present day and recruits and retains future employees.
Employees perform better when they understand how their daily work is helping. It gives them meaning and creates long-term commitment.
How to make it happen:
Here are some effective ways to use technology to connect, empower, and engage your workforce in 2025:
Miscommunication leads to confusion. Employees are looking for effortless, up-to-the-second access to resources and information. 77.3% of employees feel a sense of more connection when utilizing effective, latest technology communication tools. Effective communication tools eliminate silos, particularly in hybrid structures.
Bonus Tip: Send company news, videos, and alerts directly to frontline and deskless workers from one secure mobile app with The EMPLOYEE App.
Technology is supposed to make work easier, not harder. When HR and IT work together, employees enjoy the benefit of improved tools. It further reduces tech frustration and enhances platform adoption.
Silos between systems slow things down. Integrated platforms cut manual effort and digital fatigue. This makes the integration process more efficient and allows smoother collaboration.
More effective engagement decisions need to be based on real-time analytics. Companies that transitioned to fact-based decision-making experience an increase in productivity.
Field personnel need remote access to documentation, updates, and tools. Offer remote access to employees and close the communication gap
New technology is a failure unless employees know how to use it. Digital literacy guarantees greater adoption and innovation. 76% of employees think technical skills are required, but only 40% think they’ve been trained.
Personalized learning paths, alerts, and tools do more than one-size-fits-all messaging. This offers a better user experience and makes employees more resonant.
Here’s a breakdown of how to support the whole person—not just the employee—to drive deeper engagement in 2025:
Employees want to work for environmentally friendly businesses. Sustainability initiatives build long-term trust and get people involved in a higher cause. They further increase employer brands and encourage employees to make a positive contribution to the world.
Listening starts engagement. Workers feel more engaged when they believe their voice matters in decision-making.
Flexibility is no longer a benefit—it’s a requirement. Employees want to own when, where, and how they work based on what makes them most effective in their roles. Flexible work increases well-being, reduces burnout, and increases retention.
Employee engagement is a business driver. Today, hybrid work, AI, and heightened employee expectations are the norm of modern organizations. These drivers of employee engagement lead to resilience, innovation, and long-term success.
Employees yearn to be connected, cared about, and valued.
As Ken Blanchard wisely said:
None of us is as smart as all of us.
That kind of collective brilliance only emerges when people are genuinely engaged.
If you want to bring teams together, create a robust culture, and maintain open communication—particularly in remote or frontline settings—this is the right time to reconsider your employee engagement strategy.
Head over to The EMPLOYEE App—a mobile-first platform that helps organizations connect, align, and empower employees in real time. Whether you’re managing corporate teams or deskless employees, our solutions are built to meet people where they are and bring everyone into the conversation.
Book a demo now to learn more!
Some of the mistakes leaders make are soliciting feedback, not following through, and creating a one-size-fits-all solution. They should leverage manager involvement and regard cultural and generational needs.
Modern organizations help leaders with modern tools, train emotional intelligence, and hold them accountable for engagement KPIs. Managers require one-on-ones regularly, and they, too, need recognition, direction, and support.
Be transparent. Make survey results visible to the team, co-author action plans, and report regularly on progress to show employees that their voices make real change.
Implement strong, mobile-first solutions that combine communication, enable self-service access to information, and provide real-time analytics.
Prioritize frequent communication, recognition, flexible work arrangements, mobile access, and purpose-driven leadership. Utilize tools that combine messaging and resources for on-site, remote, and frontline workers.
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