2025 Employee Engagement Trends by Geo: What’s the Local Story?

What motivates a healthcare worker in Brazil may be very different from what drives a software engineer in Japan or a banker in South Africa. Despite geographical and cultural differences, the underlying need to feel valued, supported, and connected at work is universal.

As organizations grow increasingly global, leaders can no longer afford to take a one-size-fits-all approach to employee engagement. Cultural norms, economic pressures, political stability, and workforce expectations all shape how people experience their jobs and, in turn, how they respond to their organizations.

The Perceptyx Benchmark Database — including more than 20 million responses across 500+ global organizations and 226 countries — allows us to track those differences in depth. In this blog, we take a closer look at how employee engagement has evolved across regions and why local context matters when designing a truly responsive people strategy.

What Does Employee Engagement Really Mean and Why Does It Matter?

While many aspects of the workplace vary across cultures and countries, employee engagement remains a consistent, research-backed way to understand how people feel about their organizations and what they’re willing to do because of that connection.

At Perceptyx, we define engagement through four core indicators: Pride, Advocacy, Commitment, and Motivation. Employees who score highly in these areas are more likely to speak positively about their organization, stay for the long term, and go above and beyond in their roles.

Importantly, engagement is more than just satisfaction; it reflects emotional investment and a sense of shared purpose. When organizations foster engagement, they ignite a virtuous cycle: engaged employees perform better, contributing to business success, which in turn deepens engagement. This dynamic becomes a powerful driver of organizational resilience, adaptability, and growth.

How Does Employee Engagement Vary Around the World?

Employee engagement is not uniform across the globe. While the global average engagement score has stabilized at 79.5%, this surface-level figure conceals meaningful differences across regions, and even more so at the country level.

For example, engagement scores in our 2025 benchmark range from 87.8% in Southern Asia to 74.4% in Western Europe, with individual country scores spanning a 20-point range. These differences are not merely statistical quirks; they are deeply shaped by local economic conditions, cultural norms, workforce structures, and leadership expectations.

Rather than comparing regions or countries against one another — asking, for example, why Germany isn’t more like Ecuador — it’s far more productive to understand how engagement is shifting over time within each context. This allows for a more grounded, culturally informed approach to interpreting scores and planning effective interventions.

Here’s a breakdown of the engagement story across key global regions, based on data from our 2023, 2024, and 2025 benchmark databases.

Employee Engagement in South America

South America consistently remains the highest-scoring region, well above the global average, which speaks to a number of cultural norms. South American countries place a high value on relationships and communication, leading them to be more positive to one another and prioritise the group over individuals. Additionally, many South American countries have a greater acceptance of hierarchical structures, which may lead to more social desirability bias in responses to appease senior leadership. We also know that unemployment levels in South America can be high, and employment rights and the job market can be more volatile, resulting in respondents being more thankful to their organisation for providing employment opportunities. 

Although declining slightly in 2024, there has been a resurgence in our 2025 database. Some of the region's largest economies have experienced positive economic growth over the last few years, accompanied by significant investment in green energy. These positive changes are leading to greater job security and more opportunities. 

Employee Engagement in Africa

African countries share many similarities with South America, particularly around collectivism, respecting authority, and hierarchical norms, but with the addition of strong emotional resilience and optimism. The African continent has, and continues to have, many challenges, which, when shared in a community, lead to this resilience and gratitude for employment opportunities.

Africa has seen a slow but steady increase in engagement over the last few years, due to continued economic growth, resulting in greater opportunities and growing equality between men and women.

Employee Engagement in Asia

Asia is a region of incredible diversity, and a vast range of scores, ranging from 88.8% for Vietnam to 70.9% for Japan (only Germany is lower scoring), which coincides with enormous cultural and economic differences. Take China, for example, a country where compliance with authority is expected, and challenging authority can be risky; therefore, we are likely to see much more inflated scores. Then, when you look at Japan, although they share some similarities, extremely high standards are set, and although Japanese people may not respond favourably, there is greater reliance on neutrality and being in the middle to avoid standing out in either direction. Across Asia, building trust in surveys and their anonymity is key to unlocking responses.

We continue to see an upward trend in Asia, particularly driven by China and India (which is experiencing similarly strong economic growth). 

Employee Engagement in North America

North America and Western culture in general lean more toward individualism, which often results in higher scores when asked about oneself or the team, yet scores get lower as employees respond to questions around leadership and the company. There is a greater willingness to be critical and share their views on leadership. There is also a greater expectation that being heard and action being taken is the norm, not a luxury. 

North America has, over the last year or so, been impacted by growing numbers of layoffs. As a result, stability in engagement may be driven, in part, by the acknowledgment that job opportunities are harder to come by and that, in the current environment, maintaining their current job is preferable.

Employee Engagement in Oceania

Oceania, which includes Australia, New Zealand, and Pacific Island nations, has seen a modest but consistent increase in engagement, rising from 77.9% in 2023 to 78.5% in 2025. The region shares cultural similarities with North America, including a high value on transparency and direct communication. However, employees in Oceania tend to be more skeptical and candid in feedback, which may contribute to lower scores in areas such as leadership and change management. 

While the economic climate has remained relatively stable, ongoing challenges like cost-of-living pressures and workforce shortages continue to shape employee perceptions.

Employee Engagement in Europe

Europe, much like Asia, has significant diversity and engagement scores that range from 85.0% in Portugal to 70.8% in Germany, driven by the wide variety of cultures and economies throughout Europe. It's much harder to provide a generalised description of how and why Europeans score how they do. Countries like Germany, Norway, and the Netherlands tend to be very individualistic, often quite blunt, and very open to giving feedback. Countries like the United Kingdom and Belgium are more moderate; they are willing to be critical but also want to be constructive. And countries like Spain, Greece, and Portugal are more collectivist, cherish relationships, and can have strong emotional ties to their work, making them more likely to respond positively. 

Europe is the only region to record a decrease in engagement. Europe has seen, and continues to see, significant changes both politically and economically. These include ongoing challenges with the Ukrainian conflict and the migrant crisis.

Despite significant regional and cultural differences in how people respond to surveys and score specific items, one universal insight emerges: individuals across the globe share a fundamental desire to be heard and to trust that their feedback will lead to meaningful action. This consistent theme underscores the importance of listening and follow-through as core drivers of engagement and trust in any organization.

How Should Organizations Respond to These Insights?

As our data shows, engagement is deeply influenced by local cultural, economic, and organizational dynamics. Simply comparing scores across regions or countries without context can lead to flawed conclusions and missed opportunities. To drive meaningful improvement:

• Interpret results locally. Ensure leaders understand what “good” looks like in their specific region or country. Benchmarks are helpful, but local nuance is critical.
  
  
• Prioritize action, not just measurement. Engagement surveys only create value when results lead to visible, meaningful change. Equip managers at all levels to take focused, relevant action based on the data.
  
  
• Close the loop. Employees need to hear how their feedback is being used. Communicating what has been heard — and what’s being done about it — builds trust and boosts future participation.
  
  
• Enable alignment and accountability. Make it easy for leaders and teams to stay aligned on priorities, progress, and impact. This can ensure that insights are transformed into sustained action.

Solutions like Activate and services from our Workforce Transformation Consultants can help your organisation build this capability, equipping leaders to act with confidence in a local context and ensure engagement efforts translate into real progress.

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