Employee Culture and Engagement
What’s Broken and How to Fix It in 2025/26
Only 23% of employees are engaged, trust is eroding, and leaders aren’t sure what to do.
Create a workplace culture where people are energized, engaged, and able to do their best work.
If your people feel disconnected, tired, or “just doing the job,” it’s not a motivation problem. It’s a culture problem. And culture is changeable—when you know what to fix.
What Most Leaders Still Get Wrong About Employee Culture & Engagement
If engagement feels hard to fix, it’s not because the problem is complex — it’s because the solutions being used are outdated, reactive, or aimed at the wrong target.
The biggest blocker to improving engagement isn’t effort — it’s outdated assumptions.
❌ MYTH
Engagement is about perks and benefits.
If people aren’t engaged, it means they’re not motivated.
We'll fix culture once we’re past this busy season.
Engagement surveys will tell us what’s wrong.
Burnout and disengagement are separate problems.
Culture is HR’s job.
✅ TRUTH
Engagement is driven by purpose, trust, and fairness
People disengage when the system blocks effort, not because they lack work ethic.
Culture is always forming — the only question is whether it's intentional or accidental.
Surveys measure temperature, not causes. Most orgs collect data, but don’t fix what creates the scores.
Burnout is often the last stage of disengagement — not a different issue.
Culture is a leadership behavior system, not a department. HR can support it, but they can’t manufacture it.
If the myths were true, engagement would already be solved.
The real drivers of culture — the ones that predict performance, retention, and well-being — look very different.
The Real Drivers of Engagement Aren’t Perks They’re Human Systems That Work
When employees feel energized, supported, and committed, it’s not because someone added a new benefit or themed office day. Engagement rises when five core conditions are present — and falls when even one is missing.
1 . Trust
People need to believe leadership is competent, fair, and acting in their best interest. Without trust, engagement collapses — even in high-pay, high-perk environments.
Work must feel meaningful — not just productive. When people understand why their work matters, discretionary effort increases 4–6x.
2. Purpose
3. Agency
Employees need autonomy over time, decisions, and methods — not surveillance or control. Micromanagement is one of the fastest ways to convert talent into turnover.
4. Relationships
Culture is built in the spaces *between* people — belonging, care, and psychological safety. Teams with strong relational trust outperform low-trust teams by 286% (HBR).
5. Well-Being
Healthy people work better. Exhausted people disengage — even if they stay. Burnout isn’t a personal failure. It’s a signal that the system is demanding more than it’s restoring.*
Download a Free Chapter from *Why Are We Here? Creating A Culture We All Want
A preview from Jennifer Moss’s Latest book on building healthier, high-performing workplace cultures.
Is Your Culture Supporting Engagement — or Silently Killing It?
Before you fix engagement, you need to know where it’s breaking down. These 10 signals reveal whether your culture is helping people thrive — or pushing them toward burnout, disengagement, and quiet quitting.
✅ People speak up honestly — even when it’s uncomfortable
✅ High performers feel energized, not just productive
✅ New hires feel belonging within their first 30 days
✅ Workload feels fair and predictable, not chaotic
✅ Leaders model the behavior they expect from others
✅ Teams collaborate without fear of blame or politics
❌ Trust drops the moment there’s pressure or change
❌ Employees are physically present but emotionally checked out
❌ Meetings create confusion instead of clarity
❌ People say they’re “fine,” but their energy says “finished”
If more than three of the ❌ signals feel familiar, engagement isn’t a motivation issue — it’s a culture system issue.
So what actually moves engagement beyond surveys, perks, and surface fixes? The next section breaks down the pathways that work.
For her Book The Burnout Epidemic, Jennifer Moss earned the prestigious Thinkers 50 “Radar” designation, Spotlighting Thinkers With The Ideas Most Likely To Shape The Future.”
Her latest burnout book, The Burnout Epidemic, was included on the Best New Management Booklist in 2022 by Thinkers 50, making it one of the Best Books on Burnout available to leaders.
FAQ’s About Employee Engagement and Culture
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A. Employee engagement refers to how committed, energized and connected people feel to their work and their organization. Workplace culture describes the shared values, behaviors, norms and environment that shape how an organization works. When engagement is low and culture is weak: turnover rises, productivity drops, innovation slows, and external brand suffers. As Jennifer argues, culture isn’t just a “nice to have” — it’s the performance engine of today’s organizations.
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A. Because the workforce is changing fast. Hybrid/remote work, generational shifts, rapid technology and global uncertainty mean that “good enough” culture is no longer enough. According to Jennifer’s research, many organizations are living in an engagement gap: employees show up, but they’re not thriving, and that costs far more than you think (in hidden attrition, quiet quitting, innovation loss). Investing now gives you a competitive edge.
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A. Here are three common ones:
Myth 1: “We’ll fix engagement with perks.” Reality: Perks (free snacks, foosball) don’t replace trust, meaningful work, autonomy and alignment.
Myth 2: “Culture is created from the top down only.” Reality: Culture is co-owned — it’s shaped at all levels and especially through everyday manager behaviours.
Myth 3: “Our culture is fine — no need to change.” Reality: Just because things are okay doesn’t mean they’re future-proof. Jennifer’s work shows that stagnation is a real risk: culture needs to evolve.
By avoiding these traps, you can shift from incremental fixes to meaningful, sustainable cultural change.
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A. Jennifer highlights several key levers that drive impact:
Psychological safety & belonging: People need to feel seen, safe and valued in order to engage deeply.
Autonomy & agency: Employees want to influence how they work and contribute — giving them that freedom creates motivation.
Purpose & meaning: When work connects to a “why,” commitment rises.
Trust & leadership behaviour: Leaders who show up with authenticity, clarity and support set the tone for culture.
Measurement + feedback loops: Culture isn’t intangible — you can measure key signals (engagement pulse, turnover, unsolicited feedback) and act on them.
By focusing on these, you move from surface-level fixes to structural change.
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A. Culture change is a journey, not a sprint. You’ll often see early signals within 6-12 months (e.g., improved engagement scores, increased voluntary collaboration, reduced silent turnover). Deeper shifts — such as into new behaviour norms or leadership practices — may take 18-36 months. Key progress markers:
Rising engagement scores and internal referrals
More cross-team collaboration and fewer “us vs them” silos
Lower unintended attrition (especially among high performers)
Leaders operating differently and being role models for the changed culture
Jennifer’s engagements with organizations show that when you treat culture as a strategic asset (not HR side-project), progress is measurable and meaningful.
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A. Having an expert like Jennifer provides three distinct advantages:
Credibility & fresh perspective: Her global research, media experience, and track record enable her to frame your culture/engagement challenge in a way that internal voices cannot.
Accelerated impact: Bringing in an external voice can shift mindsets faster, spark broader conversations, and align leaders and teams around new thinking.
Sustainable momentum: Jennifer doesn’t just present — she provides frameworks, actionable strategies, and helps you embed change beyond the event.
If you’re serious about transforming engagement and culture (and not just “talking about it”), partnering with a speaker-author like Jennifer can be a catalyst.
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A. Great question. Here are three high-impact next steps:
Run a quick culture/engagement pulse (survey + focus groups) to identify where you stand and uncover the hidden gaps.
Bring leadership together (senior/executive + HR) for a half-day strategy session to align on vision, culture priorities and ways to mobilize at scale.
Engage Jennifer’s team to deliver a keynote or workshop (virtual, hybrid or in-person) aligned with your culture agenda — using her book(s) as a shared language to energize the broader organization.
By combining data, alignment and external expertise, you’ll set the stage for meaningful change.
Ready to move from “we should improve culture” to “we are the culture everyone wants”?
Over 1000 talks to companies of all sizes with 95% satisfaction rating