Trying to improve employee engagement? Start by asking what’s really driving it.
- phoebe860
- Aug 13
- 4 min read
Better employee engagement doesn’t always start with doing more. Sometimes, it starts with looking deeper. Here’s why understanding what’s really shaping your employees’ experience matters.
Employee engagement scores are down.
The survey results are in. Leaders want to see improvement. And the natural next step is to do something.
A new wellbeing initiative. Manager training. More recognition. Another employee survey.
But what if the biggest risk is not doing too little?
What if it is taking action before you really understand the problem?
For organisations looking at how to improve employee engagement, the most useful first step may be to pause and ask a different question: What is actually shaping the way our people feel about work?
Employee engagement tells you something. But not always why.
Employee engagement is influenced by how people think, feel and behave in relation to their work. It can show up through energy, motivation, commitment and connection to their role.
An employee engagement survey can help organisations see where those experiences may be changing.
But a score alone cannot always explain the reason behind them.
Two teams could report similarly low engagement for completely different reasons. One might be experiencing poor communication from leadership. Another might feel their feedback is routinely ignored. Somewhere else, inconsistent decision-making could be creating a sense of unfairness.
Apply the same engagement initiative to all three and you may never address what is really happening. This is where diagnosis matters.
Research referenced in our Trust Diagnostic found that, among senior executives across 91 organisations over 80% agreed their organisation was poor at diagnosing problems before attempting to solve them, and believed this came at a significant cost.
So, are you solving the problem, or simply responding to the symptom?
Could trust be part of the picture?
There is no single cause of low employee engagement.
But one factor worth exploring is employee trust.
Trust is shaped through ordinary experiences at work. How decisions are communicated. Whether leaders do what they say they will do. Whether people feel able to speak openly. Whether processes seem fair. Whether managers listen when something is raised.
Individually, these moments can seem small. But together, they shape how people experience an organisation.
When trust is strong, employees may feel more confident speaking openly, contributing ideas and relying on the people around them.
When trust begins to weaken, the effects can be less obvious. People may stop raising concerns because they do not expect anything to change. Feedback becomes quieter and confidence in decisions decreases. Employees comply, but mentally disconnect. And eventually, the results on an employee engagement survey could be the result of experiences that have been building for some time.
Trust is not one question
This is where just asking employees, “Do you trust the organisation?” has its limitations.
Trust in the workplace is shaped by a collection of experiences.
At Every Wellbeing, our Trust Diagnostic explores five areas that can help organisations look beneath their overall engagement results:
Leadership
Line management
Communication and employee voice
Fairness
Team relationships
The important part is not simply knowing whether trust feels high or low. It is understanding where the experience may be breaking down and why.
For example, are leaders explaining difficult decisions clearly? Do managers follow through on commitments? Do employees believe their feedback leads somewhere? Are opportunities and expectations applied fairly?
Those questions give you something much more useful than a number. They give you somewhere to look next.
Before rebuilding trust, understand what has weakened it
When organisations identify a potential trust issue, there can be another temptation: jump straight into “trust-building”.
But trust is unlikely to be rebuilt through a one-off initiative. If employees feel their feedback has repeatedly disappeared into a black hole, another survey may not help. If commitments have been made and forgotten, a new internal communications campaign may not address the underlying issue.
The response needs to connect to the cause. That might mean looking more closely at how feedback is handled, how decisions are made, how commitments are followed through or how managers respond when someone speaks up.
Look beyond the overall score
There is another reason diagnosis matters. Employee experience is rarely consistent across an entire organisation.
A company-wide engagement score can hide significant differences between departments, locations, teams and managers.
That is why the most valuable insight may not come from calculating another average.
It may come from noticing a particular statement that consistently scores lower, seeing a pattern emerging across several teams, or having a conversation that helps explain what the data cannot.
The goal is not simply to collect more information. It is to ask better questions before making decisions.
So, what should you do next?
If you are reviewing employee engagement, planning your next survey or deciding where to invest your people budget, resist the urge to start with the solution. Start with understanding.
Our free Trust Diagnostic for Leaders has been created to help HR professionals, managers and wellbeing leads explore whether trust could be influencing employee engagement within their organisation.
Inside, you will find:
15 diagnostic statements covering five areas of trust
A simple framework you can use in surveys, focus groups or team conversations
Reflection questions to help uncover patterns
Guidance for interpreting what your findings may be telling you
Five practical actions to consider when trust needs attention
It will not give you a generic answer or tell you that every organisation needs the same solution.
It will help you ask the right questions first, because better employee engagement does not start with another initiative.