Employee Engagement Back to Normal — With One Big Exception

Employees Are Less Likely to Recommend Their Workplace to People They Know  

TEMECULA, Calif., June 25, 2024 – Employee engagement has stabilized since the pandemic, but the advocacy gap is growing, according to the 2024 release of the Benchmark Database from Perceptyx, the global leader in employee experience (EX) transformation.

Perceptyx’s Benchmark Database is the industry’s most comprehensive collection of employee experience metrics, with more than 20 million responses representing 707 unique items from over 500 enterprises across 19 industries in 226 countries, including one-third of the Fortune 500. Maintained for over a decade and updated annually, the Benchmarks give organizations reliable data to compare themselves with their peers, target areas for improvement, and cultivate a more engaged workforce. 

The Perceptyx 2024 Benchmark reveals that most employee engagement markers have rebounded to levels at or above their pre-pandemic baseline. The one exception is advocacy. Employees are less willing to recommend their organization as a workplace than before the pandemic, suggesting a mood of lingering uncertainty about organizations’ ability to manage change. 

Other noteworthy findings include:

• Well-being among managers is dangerously low. Squeezed between executives (who score an average 3.84 of 5) and individual contributors (who score 3.77), managers score lower (3.69) than both.
  
  
• Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) positively impact employees’ sense of belonging. There’s an equal impact for those who don’t participate in ERGs. Employees are 1.4x more likely to feel they don't belong in their organization. Perceptyx has also found that employees with a positive sense of belonging are less likely to experience loneliness at work, reducing the risk of disengagement, low productivity, and a wide range of physical and emotional disorders.

• Effectively leading teams through change has become a core management skill. However, only 59% of executives and 54% of managers express confidence in their organization's ability to manage change effectively. 

“With millions of customer data points spanning the employee experience lifecycle, the Perceptyx 2024 Benchmark Database provides deep insights from teams consistently working to deliver a positive employee experience,” said Emily Killham, Senior Director and Head of the Center for Workforce Transformation at Perceptyx. “Over the past three years, we’ve seen engagement trends shift for the better, but employees still show signs of disruption and doubt. It’s clear organizations still have work to do to foster a sense of belonging and inclusion among all employees. That includes middle managers, who often receive little training and are spread thin trying to satisfy demands from above and below.”

Perceptyx's People Insights Model incorporates research from the Benchmark Database and provides a detailed categorization of workplace behaviors to understand the employee experience. The model delivers specific insights while recommending personalized actions that cater to individual needs. 

Read more about the 2024 Perceptyx Benchmark Database here. To download the full 2024 Perceptyx Benchmark Trend report, click here.