It’s Time to Move Past Employee Engagement

For over two decades, organizations have chased the holy grail of employee engagement. Billions of dollars have been poured into surveys and consultant-driven initiatives that promised to transform workplaces and inspire greater organizational performance.

But somewhere along the way, we lost sight of the mission. We celebrated percentages instead of people, treated marginal improvement as wins, and ignored all the warning signs around us: soaring burnout, rising stress, overwhelmed managers, and employees quietly losing faith that their voices mattered.

The truth is that most organizations never truly commit to improving engagement at its source—by strengthening the leadership practices that shape the daily employee experience. Instead, they reduced the effort to a box-ticking exercise, with no one ever being held accountable for making meaningful change.

As proof of this, global engagement remains stuck at roughly the same level it was over a decade ago—just 21 percent. In America, engagement has fallen to 31 percent, its lowest point in a decade. At the same time, burnout and stress are at all-time highs, and the term “quiet cracking” has suddenly entered the vernacular to describe workers who haven’t yet quit but are slowly buckling under the weight of impossible expectations.

The verdict is clear: It’s time for organizations to stop spending valuable time and energy on antiquated employee engagement metrics and focus instead on worker well-being.

The Human Cost of a Broken Model

From a business perspective, the idea of engagement itself was never flawed; it’s reasonable for organizations to want their employees to be fully committed and loyal—to go above and beyond in their jobs. But the way we approached it was flawed. We measured, but we didn’t lead. We collected data but failed to build in accountability. We chased incremental score improvement without realizing that stagnant engagement scores—along with rising stress and burnout—were clear signs of a broken model. Today, Gallup reports that 44 percent of employees feel significant stress during every workday. Managers, the very people responsible for improving the employee experience, are among the least engaged themselves.

The result is a workforce that feels overlooked—disconnected not just from their organizations but from their own potential to thrive.

From Engagement Scores to Employee Well-Being

Workers have grown cynical about surveys and initiatives that promise improvement but bring little change. They’ve learned that their input disappears into the void; their constructive feedback routinely falls on deaf ears. And the truth is, engagement as we’ve defined and measured it cannot fix this. What organizations need now is a new model that prioritizes human well-being as the foundation for performance, trust, and sustainable success—and one where leaders have a genuine responsibility to make it happen.

As employees have clearly noticed the failure of traditional engagement efforts, a new global study from McKinsey Health Institute underscores this, declaring, “employee well-being is no longer a side initiative; it’s a core leadership priority.” Annual or bi-annual engagement surveys are relics of a different age. They provide a snapshot long after reality has moved on, reducing the employee experience to static numbers that often feel irrelevant by the time leaders review them. What the engagement survey process has long ignored is that workplaces literally shift week-to-week—and so do employee stress levels, their sense of support, and their capacity to thrive. New challenges appear constantly.

To truly understand and improve employee well-being, organizations must begin to survey more narrowly, more frequently, and with sharper attention to how people feel in the flow of their work. This way, workplace managers can spot emerging problems early and respond in ways that truly matter.

Enter Pulse Surveys

Pulse surveys offer this needed shift. Instead of long, multi-question surveys performed once or twice a year, they are short, focused, and frequent—giving leaders real-time insight into how employees are actually experiencing work.

When designed well, they do more than gather data: They signal attentiveness. They show employees their voices matter and create the opportunity to address problems before they harden into disengagement, burnout, or turnover. And just a few targeted prompts can reveal whether people feel supported and able to thrive:

• How manageable was your workload this week?
• Has your manager coached you in a way that helped you grow in the past week?
• Did your manager provide clear guidance on priorities this week?

Technology now makes it possible to gather, summarize, and act on this feedback almost immediately. Modern tools—increasingly powered by AI—can flag emerging patterns and even suggest ways managers might respond, turning feedback into immediate action rather than another ignored report.

Workplace Dynamics Essential Reads

Who’s Really in Charge of Workplace Culture Change?

Ghost Growth Is Silently Killing Workplace Engagement

From Data to Accountability

Deeper listening alone isn’t enough—the feedback leaders hear must be shared with employees and acted upon. Otherwise—as we’ve seen with engagement—surveys risk becoming just another weak ritual of collecting opinions without ever integrating them into the reality of work.

For pulse surveys to be effective, workers need to see that their input drives visible change. A simple routine practice of sharing, “Here’s what we heard” and “Here’s what we’re doing about it” assures people their organization is committed to supporting them in ways that produce high well-being and, concurrently, optimal performance.

Unlike traditional engagement surveys, pulse survey results today can also be tracked down to the individual team manager level. With senior leadership oversight, this creates powerful accountability: Managers who rely on fear, intimidation, or other toxic ways of driving performance can be identified, coached, and—if they fail to change—removed. And because managers exert the greatest influence on employee well-being, organizations that embrace this level of accountability can finally ensure that every employee has a supportive, caring, and adaptive leader.

A Better Way Forward

Quiet cracking is more than a trendy phrase—it’s a signal that the way we manage work is no longer sustainable. The way forward requires a cultural shift: putting employee well-being at the center and holding leaders accountable for helping people thrive. When organizations do this, engagement follows naturally—the outcome of workplaces where people aren’t just surviving but growing stronger because of their work.

The future of work belongs to organizations that make well-being their true measure of success. Because when people flourish, organizations do too.