via Jostle

Employee engagement has become a key measure of these things, so we set out to understand these issues a bit better ourselves. How do executives and employees feel about employee engagement? This seemed like an important question – very little research is published that contrasts the viewpoints of leaders and employees. We suspected there would be differences, but we wanted a deeper, more nuanced picture of exactly what those differences are. So we partnered with Brian Solis, who is known for his strong views and deep research in the area.

We built a survey full of questions like “How engaged do you feel you are at work?” and “Do you feel your work matters to your company, your customers, and a larger cause?”. We asked respondents whether there was an employee engagement program at work, and about what communication channels they used.

The results have been fascinating to sift through. Despite the fact that both employees and executives feel that employee engagement is very important, they aren’t making much progress on it. Brian coined the term “Engagement Gap” to highlight that this is in large part because leaders are not very empathetic to the real needs of employees. It turns out that all the communication in the world is only helpful if it’s communicating what people need to hear.

Brian worked with us to write a white paper on his findings about the Engagement Gap. The paper also shares a first look at some of the data we compiled. You can download the paper here – no strings attached! We hope you’ll find it interesting and useful. And let’s continue the conversation about this important and engaging topic to build brighter, better workplaces.