The Perceptyx benchmark database provides deep insight into global trends in employee sentiment and engagement. Our benchmark data highlights how engagement levels have shifted and how the drivers of engagement have evolved. Businesses worldwide continue to navigate evolving workplace dynamics and the unique challenges they present. By analyzing the trends and factors that influence engagement, Perceptyx can help equip organizations with the insights needed to foster a more engaged and resilient workforce.
To set the stage for this analysis, it's important to first define employee engagement as well as its importance in measuring and understanding organizational health and the employee experience.
Employee engagement describes how employees feel about the organization — their emotional attachment — and what they're willing to do as a result of that emotional attachment. Engagement goes beyond mere job satisfaction to provide insight into behavioral outcomes of the work experience. When an employee is engaged, they feel connected to the organization, and motivated to put forth discretionary effort. Engagement and performance go hand in hand as a virtuous cycle. Engaged employees perform at a higher level — which leads to success for both the individual and the organization — and that experience of success builds stronger engagement. At the core, the anticipation of success fuels engagement.
To measure employee engagement effectively, Perceptyx employs a robust framework that measures four critical dimensions: Pride, Advocacy, Commitment, and Motivation. Together, these metrics help us understand the depth of pride employees feel towards their company, their willingness to endorse it as a great place to work, their plans to continue their tenure, and their overall sense of accomplishment in their roles. Our approach ensures a comprehensive picture of engagement across various companies and industries, allowing us to deliver data-driven, actionable insights.
The consistency of our methodology also enables extensive benchmark coverage and allows us to identify both broad trends and subtle nuances in employee engagement across diverse sectors, regions, groups, and time periods. This ensures that we can track changes effectively and accurately — continuity that's essential for understanding shifts in employee attitudes and preparing responsive strategies.
Employee engagement has experienced significant fluctuations in recent years as organizations navigate ongoing workplace transformation. While engagement levels have shown periods of both decline and recovery, the overall trajectory reflects the complex interplay between organizational change initiatives and broader economic factors.
A deeper dive into each engagement metric provides a clearer picture:
Pride: Pride in one's company has shown signs of recovery, though it continues to face headwinds from ongoing organizational and economic challenges.
Personal Accomplishment: Feelings of personal accomplishment have demonstrated notable increases, showing employees leaning into the work itself and finding meaning and fulfillment within their roles.
Commitment: Employee intention to stay levels reflect a variety of both organizational and macroeconomic factors including hybrid work, layoffs, ongoing disruption, economic uncertainties, and evolving perceptions of the job market.
Advocacy: Willingness to recommend the company as a great place to work remains a challenge for many organizations. While employees may be gaining confidence in their own employment experience, many are still hesitant to recommend their organization to others. This pattern represents ongoing uncertainty, instability, and disruption in the workplace.
The Engagement Index is an outcome measure, and the items are not designed to be directly actionable. Therefore, identifying the drivers of engagement is critical to inform the most appropriate actions for improvement. Prioritizing the top drivers helps narrow focus on the key barriers to be addressed in order to close the experience gap between highly engaged and less engaged employees. Our benchmark data reveals the top global drivers of engagement:
Change Management: The effectiveness of change management has emerged as the top driver of employee engagement, underlining the profound impact organizational transformation has on employee experience dynamics. Confidence in the ability of the organization to handle change, and support for employees in adapting to changes, are the top differentiators between highly engaged and less engaged employees, accounting for two of the top five drivers of engagement.
Confidence in Senior Management: Similarly, confidence in senior management is a key driver of overall engagement. This confidence factor is crucial during times of uncertainty and emphasizes the need for strong, visionary leadership during turbulent times.
Career Opportunities: Career opportunities remain a key differentiator in the employee experience. Anticipating success in the form of career growth is critical for engagement and retention in any organization.
Belonging: A sense of belonging also remains an enduring driver of engagement, reinforcing the focus on inclusion for improving overall engagement. As changes and disruptions persist, it's important that employees feel valued and connected within their organization.
Employee confidence is undermined by ongoing uncertainty related to both internal organizational factors and external macroeconomic factors, negatively impacting their ability to anticipate success, which is core to engagement. The importance of effective change management in the age of perpetual disruption cannot be overstated. However, our benchmarks reveal that only 59% of executives and 54% of managers express confidence in their organization's ability to manage change effectively. This gap in confidence is substantial, indicating potential weaknesses in the clarity, support, and execution of change strategies. Moreover, nearly 40% of individual contributors report a lack of understanding about the reasons behind organizational changes. This disconnect fuels uncertainty, underscoring the need for transparency and support in managing through disruption.
When leaders explain the reason for change, involve employees, and provide training, employees feel informed and prepared. That confidence lifts pride and commitment—two core engagement signals.
To address these challenges, it is essential for organizations to adopt best practices in change management. First, leadership must prioritize clear, consistent communication. Every phase of change should be communicated transparently to all levels of the organization, explaining not only what the changes entail, but also why they are necessary, and how they are expected to improve the organization. Second, involving employees in the change process can significantly boost buy-in and reduce resistance. This can be achieved through employee listening programs, workshops, feedback sessions, crowdsourcing opportunities for employees to voice their concerns and contribute ideas, and even AI-assisted activation.
Additionally, providing adequate training, resources, and support is crucial to prepare employees for new processes, technologies, or shifts in strategy. Equipping employees with the necessary skills and knowledge can alleviate anxieties and improve competency in new systems. Lastly, it's vital to measure and continuously track the impact of change. This involves assessing employee sentiment and engagement levels through regular surveys and other listening events, allowing leaders to adjust their strategies and action planning in response to real-time feedback and keep the workforce aligned, motivated, and anticipating success.
With a vast repository of more than 20 million responses from more than 500 global organizations, Perceptyx's benchmark database enables the tracking of engagement trends and the delivery of data-backed, actionable insights that can help organizations enhance their employee engagement strategies. Let our workforce transformation consultants and platform help you make the most of these insights to foster a more engaged, productive workforce. Schedule a meeting with a member of our team to learn more.