Employee Engagement: 6 Barriers and How to Remove Them

Most organizations know employee engagement matters, yet persistent barriers keep employees from performing at their best. Effective employee listening reveals those obstacles before they erode retention, productivity, and profitability. Research from Perceptyx has repeatedly identified six common barriers to engagement:

• Recognition and reward

• Growth and development

• Continuous improvement and innovation

• Communication

• Collaboration and teamwork

• Empowerment

In this article, we'll discuss these barriers, add recent findings from our research and case studies, and outline data-driven actions to create a thriving work environment.

Barrier #1: Are your employees feeling valued and recognized?

Not feeling valued is a major barrier to success in the workplace and a principal cause of poor employee experience.

Recognition and Rewards Pro Tip: Implement various recognition methods, including both monetary and non-monetary rewards, to cater to different employee preferences (be sure to ask employees how they like to be recognized, too!). Encourage regular feedback and recognition from managers, peers, and clients to foster a culture of appreciation. Recognition also directly influences whether employees choose to stay: when people feel seen for their contributions, their loyalty and intent to remain with the organization increase. Use AI-powered software to surface feedback patterns for managers, ensuring that recognition is distributed fairly and consistently across the team.

Case Study: Organon, a large pharmaceutical organization that partners with Perceptyx for employee listening, used employee listening to evaluate its spot bonus recognition program, a system designed to reward employees exemplifying company values or performing exceptionally. Initially, they wanted to debunk the idea that the more monetary rewards given, the higher the employees' morale.

Through their investigations, Organon discovered an optimal frequency of giving one to two awards per quarter which positively impacted morale. Peer or boss recognition with a small gift card also proved beneficial. However, they found that when they were trying to solve workload issues, too many awards failed to drive further increases in morale. They addressed the issue through a program called "Better at Organon," focusing on resource and process improvements. They still give spot bonuses, but acknowledge it's not a one-size-fits-all solution —, a conclusion they reached through survey data.

Barrier #2: Do employees see a future for growth and development?

Perceptyx research has found that fostering growth and development in employees is the single most critical factor in engaging and retaining them. As businesses strive to maintain their competitive edge, employees are required to continually hone their skills and expand their knowledge base to fulfill evolving job requirements. Further, growth and development — particularly the belief that employees have a future with the company — leads to a sense of belonging, a key driver of intent to stay.

Growth and development do more than boost engagement and retention. They influence talent attraction at a stage many HR leaders overlook. Candidates often scan compensation first when exploring open roles, yet Perceptyx's research shows the prospect of future career growth was twice as likely to motivate a job change compared to compensation or benefits. That disconnect creates a problem: the factor that draws applicants in (a competitive salary) is not the factor that convinces them to accept the offer (career growth potential). Companies that stop at salary miss this pivot point.

When recent job-changers were asked their top reasons for leaving a previous employer, career growth and development opportunities ranked highest, followed by health benefits. Compensation trailed significantly, with fewer than half as many mentions as career growth. For HR leaders, this pattern reinforces why development investments often outperform salary increases in both retention and attraction strategies.

Growth and Development Pro Tip: Establish a culture of continuous learning by offering access to online courses, workshops, and mentorship programs. Implement "stay conversations" with employees to hear from them on what they need to succeed and grow. Regularly assess employee skills and interests to identify and provide targeted development opportunities leading to new roles or higher-utilization variations on existing roles. Use engagement surveys to pinpoint bottlenecks in growth and development processes and make necessary improvements.

Barrier #3: Is your organization committed to continuous improvement and innovation?

For many employees, the answer is no. When bureaucracy, scarcity of resources, risk aversion, or a blame-oriented culture dominate, employees lack the psychological safety to speak up and share perspectives. This hampers inclusion and engagement while eroding performance and profitability.

Managers play a central role in reversing this pattern. Leaders who listen to their teams more frequently, on diverse topics, and through various channels build the trust employees need to contribute ideas openly. By integrating both people and business data, they can understand what their employees need to flourish and how those needs translate into continuous organizational improvement.

Continuous Improvement and Innovation Pro Tip: Foster continuous dialogue and responsive action across the organization by integrating people and business data and taking action based on the insights gained. When organizations base decisions on integrated people and business data and build processes flexible enough to act on findings quickly, they improve both employee experience and operational efficiency. Additionally, creating a culture where risk-taking and innovation are recognized and rewarded — (formally, where and when possible) will empower organizations to grow and thrive.

Barrier #4: Are you communicating transparently and effectively?

In most organizations, the honest answer is: not consistently enough. A lack of transparent and open communication erodes trust in leadership, one of the strongest drivers of employee engagement. Employeeswant their opinions solicited, but they also want that feedback taken into consideration during decision-making. When leaders close the loop between what employees share and what the organization does, trust grows. When they don't, frustration follows.

Poor communication often pairs with an unclear organizational vision. When people cannot see where the company is heading, they struggle to align their work with broader goals.

However, the advent of crowdsourcing , an innovative approach to collecting feedback, has transformed conventional modes of communication. It allows organizations to pose timely questions to their employees, capture their feedback and ideas, and prioritize the most popular responses through a pairwise voting system. It's also a great tool for building trust and credibility between senior leaders and the front lines, a prevalent issue observed across industries. By conducting surveys with a crowdsourcing component, companies can capture and synthesize real-time feedback , fostering data-driven decision-making and giving employees a seat at the decision-making table.

Communication Pro Tip: Breaking the mold of corporate hierarchy to promote open and honest dialogue is vital. Leaders should continually be asking employees how things can be done differently — and better, and find ways to connect communications and decisions back to employee feedback whenever possible. They should also be open to challenges. Crowdsourcing through the Perceptyx platform connects employee feedback directly to decisions, so employees see their input reflected in strategy and action — not just acknowledged in a summary email.

Barrier #5: Are teams collaborating effectively across boundaries?

Often, no. Collaboration across team and departmental boundaries remains one of the lowest-scoring areas in Perceptyx customer data. That matters because collaboration also strengthens community: when colleagues and leaders actively work together, employees feel that others genuinely care about their success. Agile collaboration and rapid teaming are becoming more prevalent, empowering employees to cross hierarchical boundaries to solve unique problems. Perceptyx benchmark data consistently shows that cross-functional and cross-departmental collaboration ranks among the lowest-scoring themes in employee listening programs, driven primarily by communication gaps and undefined handoff processes between teams. If traditional organizations do not rethink their workflows, they risk being left behind.

Perceptyx's crowdsourcing capability, built on two decades of listening expertise, addresses these collaboration challenges by amplifying employee feedback and empowering swift action. This powerful collaborative process includes:

• Action on Employee Experience Survey Results: Crowdsourcing allows organizations to co-create actions based on survey results, leading to meaningful change. With crowdsourcing, organizations can engage their teams to gain additional insights and prioritize actions.

• Co-create Solutions to Known Challenges: Crowdsourcing facilitates the co-creation of solutions to existing problems. During challenging times like a global pandemic, it can help leaders quickly collaborate with their workers to learn about their unique needs.

• Build Change Buy-in with Inclusive Crowdsourcing: Crowdsourcing enables organizations to gain buy-in and include all voices in change efforts. By involving employees in the collaborative dialogue, a sense of ownership can be built, ensuring successful and well-received change efforts.

Collaboration Case Study: One organization that leveraged crowdsourcing's collaborative power for improved results is BJC Healthcare. They used crowdsourcing to significantly elevate their safety culture. By offering an accessible channel for all employees to provide feedback, BJC surpassed its participation goal with over 10,000 employees providing helpful suggestions during a two-week listening event. The results led to actionable solutions to key safety challenges and greatly facilitated their change management efforts.

Collaboration and Teamwork Pro Tip: Pay attention to the culture, systems, and processes supporting rapid problem-solving. Employee listening can enable your organization to recognize hotspots (such as during M&A activity and other major events requiring change management) and factors hindering success. As agile collaboration and teamwork become increasingly critical, crowdsourcing can help foster a collaborative and inclusive environment.

Barrier #6: Do employees feel empowered to make decisions?

Too often, no. Empowerment depends on whether the work environment gives employees the autonomy, resources, and trust to act on their judgment. When that environment exists, teams perform at higher levels and stay longer. When it doesn't, employees who feel undervalued and unheard are far less likely to remain engaged or stay with the organization.

The shift towards remote and hybrid work models has presented the challenge of maintaining employee engagement and effectiveness. Two predominant strategies have emerged: "monitoring" and "empowering." The former, characterized by surveillance-like tracking of employee activities, was prevalent in the early stages of remote work transitions.

Empowerment strategies, however, prioritize trust and growth. They've gained traction in recent years, driven by a workforce increasingly seeking personal development opportunities. An empowerment strategy is especially beneficial in the current remote work era as it equips leaders with tools and products to manage distributed teams effectively.

Empowerment collapses when employees lack basic resources—: insufficient tools, technology, or staffing erode any trust leaders try to build.

Such an approach implies trusting employees with their data and decision-making processes. Organizations opting for this strategy foster an environment of psychological safety and trust , encouraging open dialogue without fear of reprisals.

Empowerment Pro Tip: Implement strategies and products that promote growth and development, improve collaboration and teamwork, foster innovation, and enhance reward and recognition systems. Empowering employees at a team level, decentralizing people analytics to team leaders, and implementing tools and products promoting flexible work schedules, team autonomy, and dynamic work norms can all enhance employee empowerment. All of these steps will contribute to creating a culture that empowers employees and leads to success. Remember, removing barriers to success is synonymous with empowering employees. That empowerment, in turn, improves engagement and organizational performance.

Frequently asked questions

What activities have the biggest impact on employee engagement?

Perceptyx research points to five activities with a consistent impact on engagement:

• Running employee listening surveys and visibly acting on the results.

• Building structured recognition programs that include both monetary and non-monetary options.

• Holding regular stay conversations to surface growth needs before employees decide to leave.

• Using crowdsourcing to let employees co-create solutions to workplace challenges.

• Giving teams more autonomy over how they work.

The activity that amplifies all others is closing the feedback loop. Employees engage more when they see their input lead to a real change.