At 4:57 pm, the HR mail landed.
Subject: Employee Engagement Activity – Mandatory Fun Friday
There was a quiz.
A virtual tambola.
And a promise of “exciting goodies”.
By 5:03 pm, cameras were off.
By Monday, nothing had changed.
The same manager who didn’t listen. The same workload. The same silence in meetings.
Later that evening, one employee said quietly,
“They want us to feel engaged, but they never ask what exhausts us.”
That sentence stays with us.
Because most organizations don’t suffer from low engagement. They suffer from unheard people.
The Core Problem: Employee engagement has become an event, not an experience.
Most companies equate engagement with:
- Activities
- Celebrations
- Pulse surveys
- Once-a-year offsites
All well-intentioned. All incomplete.
What employees actually crave is simpler:
- Being listened to
- Being trusted
- Being treated fairly
- Having clarity on why their work matters
When engagement is reduced to:
- Games without psychological safety
- Rewards without recognition
- Surveys without action
Employees disengage emotionally long before they resign.
This is why engagement scores look “okay” on paper, but energy on the floor feels flat. Engagement doesn’t drop suddenly.
It erodes quietly.
Why it fails / what’s broken?
Most engagement initiatives fail because they are top-down.
Leadership decides:
- What will be fun
- What will motivate
- What should matter
Employees are expected to “participate”. But real engagement doesn’t come from participation. It comes from ownership.
Common breakdowns we see:
- Managers not trained to have human conversations
- Feedback collected but never closed
- Rewards tied to outcomes, not effort or growth
- Leaders confusing visibility with care
Employees don’t disengage because of work. They disengage because of how work feels.
No amount of quizzes can fix:
- Poor manager behaviour
- Unclear expectations
- Unequal workload
- Silent burnout
What actually works:
Organizations that see sustained engagement do three things differently.
1. They fix managers before fixing morale
Engagement lives and dies with the immediate manager.
Train managers to:
- Listen without interrupting
- Give feedback without fear
- Recognize effort, not just results
2. They act on small signals
– A delayed response.
– A withdrawn team member.
– A repeated concern.
Engagement isn’t built by grand gestures. It’s built by daily micro-actions.
3. They design work, not just culture
– Clear roles.
– Fair processes.
– Transparent decisions.
When work makes sense, engagement follows.
At Excellential, we’ve seen engagement improve not after events, but after:
- Role clarity workshops
- Manager capability building
- Feedback systems that actually close the loop
Employees don’t ask for more fun. They ask for more respect.
Engagement isn’t about keeping employees happy. It’s about helping them feel seen, safe, and supported.
If your engagement initiatives feel busy but ineffective, it may be time to pause and redesign, not add more activities.
Explore how organizations have improved engagement by fixing people systems, manager capability, and everyday work experience. Discover our Employee Experience & Leadership interventions on Our Edge.
