The Real Drivers of Employee Engagement (And Why Most Organizations Miss Them)

I just read some research from a few months ago on what drives employee engagement. 15,000 workers around the globe surveyed. Security and confidence in leadership topped the list.

Growth opportunities. Caring culture. Fulfilling work. Good managers.

None of this is surprising.

But here's what struck me: 80% of employees said they'd stay in “a job they hated” if they had a great manager.

Read that again.

People will tolerate work they don't want to do, in organizations they don't particularly like, if the person managing them doesn't make their life hell.

That's not an engagement strategy. That's damage control.

The Problem With Engagement Research

Most engagement research tells you what matters. Security matters. Trust matters. Development matters. All true.

What it doesn't tell you is why these things are missing in the first place, or how organizations systematically destroy them while trying to improve them.

Because here's what I’ve seen across Canada: most engagement problems aren't about what you're not doing. They're about what you're actively doing wrong.

Security Doesn't Come From Communication Plans

This latest research found that workers are seeking security: job security, financial security, confidence in leadership. The recommendation? Transparency and regular communication.

Fine. Communicate more. But let's be honest about what erodes security in the first place.

It's not a lack of town halls. It's watching leadership make layoffs their first line of defense while simultaneously approving executive bonuses. It's hearing "people are our greatest asset" in January and "we need to reduce headcount" in March. It's seeing your CEO post on LinkedIn about culture while your department is hemorrhaging talent because they won't approve backfills.

Communication doesn't build trust when the actions contradict the messaging. And no amount of "here's what we know, here's what we don't know" messaging will fix that gap.

Security comes from leaders who demonstrate (through resource allocation, through hiring decisions, through what they protect when budgets get tight) that their people aren't expendable.

Caring Culture Isn't a Perk Menu

The research is clear: organizations that demonstrate genuine care see stronger engagement. The usual response? Roll out more employee assistance programs, add mental health days, maybe throw in some meditation apps.

But here's the thing. Caring culture isn't built through benefits packages.

It's built when a manager notices someone is struggling and actually adjusts expectations instead of just saying "let me know if you need anything." It's built when organizations design systems that assume people have lives outside of work, not systems that require heroic effort to navigate basic human needs like medical appointments or childcare emergencies.

We've worked with organizations that offer incredible benefits but operate like people are disposable. And we've worked with smaller organizations with modest benefits where people stay for years because they feel genuinely valued.

The difference isn't the perks. It's whether your policies and practices were designed around efficiency metrics or around the reality that your workforce is made up of actual humans with actual lives.

Growth Opportunities Are Wasted on Bad Foundations

Yes, people want growth opportunities. The research confirms it. Development matters.

But we need to stop pretending that learning and development programs fix engagement when the fundamentals are broken.

You can't train someone into staying at an organization where their manager micromanages them. You can't develop someone into tolerating a toxic culture. You can't offer a "career lattice" as compensation for pay inequity or chronic understaffing.

Growth matters. But it matters after you've solved for basic respect, reasonable workloads, and competent management.

Too many organizations use development programs as a retention band-aid when the real problem is that people are burnt out, underpaid, or reporting to someone who shouldn't be managing people.

The Manager Problem No One Wants to Solve

So 80% of people would stay in a job they hated if they had a great manager.

Which means the inverse is also true. People will leave jobs they otherwise like because their manager makes it unbearable.

And yet, how do most organizations create managers?

They promote high performers who have no interest in leading people. They assume that excelling at the technical work translates to managing others. They provide minimal training, pile on unrealistic spans of control, and then act surprised when engagement scores tank.

I’ve seen it over and over. The top salesperson gets promoted to sales manager and becomes miserable. The brilliant engineer becomes a terrible engineering lead. The high-performing individual contributor who just wanted to keep doing great work is now drowning in people management responsibilities they never asked for.

The fix isn't more manager training. It's stopping the practice of using management roles as the only path to advancement. It's assessing for leadership potential before promoting people into leadership. It's recognizing that managing people is a distinct skill set, not a reward for being good at something else.

What Actually Drives Engagement

If you strip away the frameworks and the survey data, engagement comes down to this:

Do people trust that their organization will do right by them? Do they believe their work matters? Do they feel respected by the person they report to?

Everything else is downstream from those three things.

You can't communication-plan your way to trust. You can't benefits-package your way to purpose. You can't training-program your way out of bad management.

Engagement isn't a program. It's the outcome of dozens of small decisions organizations make every day about how they treat people, what they prioritize when resources are scarce, and who they put in positions of leadership.

The research confirms what workers want. So, the hard part isn't figuring out what matters. It's being willing to change the structures, practices, and decisions that are actively working against it.

About the Author: Kristi Searle, FCPHR, SHRM-SCP, CPC is the Founder and CEO of Peoplebiz Consulting Inc. Over the past 30+ years, she's helped organizations across North America build HR strategies that actually work: not just on paper, but in practice. Kristi is recognized as a leading voice in strategic HR and Indigenous workplace strategy, and she's known for telling it like it is.