In the age of remote and hybrid work, it’s easy for leaders to hear of trends like ‘quiet quitting’ and blame it on the increased flexibility or decreased supervision that these arrangements provide. But that is exactly the type of attitude that contributes to these trends in the first place.
‘Quiet quitting’ and the widespread disengagement that we see today are a reflection of a paradigm shift in public attitudes toward the meaning and value of work. A paycheck alone is no longer a viable pathway to sustained employee engagement. Instead, employees are increasingly in search of workplaces that offer a sense of purpose, connection, and belonging. Employees want to feel known, seen, and heard by their peers and leaders. They want to feel valued for their individual contributions to their team and organization. Above all, they want to feel involved—to be part of something bigger than them.
How do leaders expect to foster employee engagement without providing that sense of involvement?
Finding innovative ways for leaders to really mobilize today’s globalized workforce was a key focus of Workplace Options’ Leading With Purpose summit held in October. During the session, “Igniting Employee Engagement: Leadership and Governance Strategies for a Thriving Workforce,” host Jackie Ferguson, Co-founder and VP of Content and Programming at The Diversity Movement, a Workplace Options Company, spoke with Joe Davis, Managing Director and Senior Partner at Boston Consulting Group and Chair of the BCG Center for Inclusion and Equity, and Sunaina Sinha Haldea, Global Head of Private Capital Advisory at Raymond James, about what leaders can do to establish genuine connections with their people—even when they don’t know them personally—and ultimately drive engagement.
Read below for a sneak peek into their insightful conversation:
Jackie Ferguson: Employee engagement has been part of leadership vocabulary for more than three decades. Research Center organizations have shared studies confirming that lack of employee engagement has severe effects on the bottom line of your business. We’re hearing terms like quiet quitting quiet, vacationing and we’re aware of the struggle in retaining talented employees. But it’s been less clear how employee engagement is defined exactly, and what it takes to grow engagement within organizations. So I’ll start with this question for both of you. How would you each define employee engagement and why do you believe it plays such a crucial role in driving organizational success?
Joe Davis: We could define that a lot of ways, all day long. I guess for me, what I would say is if people are engaged, they are truly feeling connected to the organization both personally and deeply, not just like a job and a paycheck—but they feel connected to the purpose. And what I mean by that is—I was on a college campus recently and talking to somebody about a summer job and the kid said, “I really like the company’s purpose.” We always see that line in research, but I actually had a kid say it to me—I thought that’s impressive. So it’s feeling connected to the organization’s goals and then, of course, its values. And then, I think, importantly, it’s about feeling connected to leadership. If you just see leadership as this distant thing and not as a human person who’s trying to connect to you and your humanity, I think it’s tough.
The other thing I’ll just say quickly is you have to be connected to your colleagues. You can’t just be a cog in an organization wheel, you know? And then finally, I think people feel most connected when they are noticing people ask questions of them and really listen to them. Google did a study recently: They looked at about 80,000 managers, and they said the top thing that best managers do is they coached well. How did they coach well? Well, they engaged with their people. How did they do that? They asked questions and they listened. So, I think that’s quite an important part of really being engaged.
Jackie Ferguson: Great information, Joe. Thank you.
Sunaina Sinha Haldea: I agree with all of that. I think that there is this movement that’s been happening, especially amongst younger generations just now entering the workforce, where people are placing greater emphasis on connection and empathy. It’s no longer good enough to say, “I get a paycheck here, and then I’ll leave, and that’s all I get.” It truly matters to have meaning, to feel connection, and people are striving for that—not just in other parts of their lives, but in the workplace. And companies that can show empathy, build connection, and talk about the human things that matter to people are the ones that end up winning in this new generation; in this new paradigm.
So I think, for me, engagement is all about authentic connections and, in a very real way, making your employees feel that they are being heard—that there is a connection between the employer and employee—but within the guardrails of the limitations of how much you can adopt of what you’re hearing. But at least you’re being heard and you’re being seen. You’re no longer just a number.
There’s no such thing as lifetime employment anymore, right? Despite the increase in interest rates, you still have a very tight labor market, which means companies have to do whatever they can to retain talent, but especially their top talent.
Jackie Ferguson: Absolutely. And I think that’s one of the issues, right? One of the challenges is that for so many of us Gen Xers, that’s not how we learned to work—because that’s not what we saw modeled as leadership. So this is new for us; we’re going to have to make those shifts as leaders. And so, from your experiences leading at BCG and Raymond James, what are the most effective strategies leaders can implement to foster a highly motivated and engaged workforce and retain top talent?
Sunaina Sinha Haldea: For me, the strategy that has been the most effective is to identify the values in your culture that you want to hold people by—that you are happy to live with—and code that into how the business is measured and how people are measured. I have a 2×2 graph that I put up as many times a year as I can—and its certainly put up for year-end reviews—where the Y axis measures people by their performance, KPIs, and outcomes that we care about, but the X axis is culture. It measures how well people are living by the set of values that we’ve established. So, you’ll be plotted on this 2×2 either low or high on performance, low or high on culture and values, and that’s how top talent will be identified and remunerated.
And it’s important to live by those values yourself as a leader and as a business, but also to expect that of your people and ensure that you’re selecting a group of people who believe in those values—and ensuring that they have input into what those values are and how the organization can best practice them. That has been a very salient way for attracting and retaining top talent: You’ve got to talk the talk, walk the walk, and live by those values and those commitments day by day. You can’t simply say, “Oh, I’ll do a town hall once a quarter and that’ll check that engagement box, thank you very much.” This has to be a part of your daily routine—showing up for people in your workplace.
Jackie Ferguson: Thank you, Sunaina. That’s so true. One of the things that you mentioned was checking a box, and I think that employees can feel when those leaders are simply checking a box versus fostering those authentic connections. It’s important to have relationships with your employees that feel real, that feel valuable to you and to them. It’s also important to check in with them, not only on how they’re doing in their job, but how they’re doing personally, because it all interplays in how engaged they are and how well they’re doing—how productive they are. Joe, what would you add?
Joe Davis: [Laughs]. “Add” is just going to be “embellish” because Sunaina said it all. You know, while I was listening to you talk about that 2×2 I was thinking about what BCG does. Our top performing officers—or best officers—are those with the highest upward feedback. If you don’t have good upward feedback three years in a row, it’s a little rocky for you, which brings me to your point about metrics. I mean, we can all say engagement and all these cultural competencies matter but putting them where it matters—and measuring your leadership by them—can make a big difference.
I think the other thing that’s important to talk about is being able to connect in a way that they hear you. And I’ll tell a little story: Joaquin Duato, CEO of Johnson & Johnson likes to use this thing called ‘friend testing’ and ‘group testing.’ If he’s going to do a town hall, as you said, he wants to make sure they understand the words he’s saying, not just that he’s saying the words. He said when he first got the job, he asked a friend, “Hey, what are people saying I’m saying out there?” The friend said, “Well, sir, that you want to cut costs?” And Duato went, “No, I never said that. I said I want to simplify this complicated matrix so we can all be more effective.” The friend replies, “Oh yeah, that’s what you said—you want to cut costs!” [Laughs] so it was stunning to him. So, it’s not just speaking in a town hall, but also making sure your messages are landing in ways that your employees actually hear them the way you think you’re saying them.
Jackie Ferguson: Joe, that is such an important point. Communication is integral to successful business in any part of that business. I really like that point of, “What are people saying that I’m saying?” That’s such an amazing question because it’s not always necessarily what you think you’re communicating. “How is that being received?” I think that is so important and such a valuable takeaway for us as leaders. Thank you for sharing that.
I want to ask you another question, Joe. As BCG has a focus on understanding the future of work, what trends do you foresee shaping employee engagement strategies for the next five to ten years?
Joe Davis: [Laughs] Okay, now for this one I did actually cheat and talked to some BCG experts on this topic, and it’s actually interesting…
Want to hear the rest of their insightful conversation? Replay the full session at https://www.workplaceoptions.com/info/leading-with-purpose-employee-engagement-strategies-to-inspire-and-win/.
