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The 2026 Guide to Employee Engagement
Do you like your job? Are you satisfied with it? Some organizations feel this is all they need to retain an employee. However, your satisfaction with something can change quickly. How fast or complete the shift is depends on your connection to it.
Take a taco. The first bite was very satisfying, but the second revealed some flavorless, overcooked meat. If you were at a restaurant, you’d make a note to never order this again, if you return at all. If you or a friend made it, you’d see how it could be improved going forward, but could still find something to appreciate about it in the meantime.
Believe it or not, this is about employee engagement. Today, we’re sharpening our understanding and techniques with an updated refresher on employee engagement best practices. Keep reading if greater productivity, higher retention, and a culture that supports it all are on your 2026 workplace wish list.
What’s inside:
Why does employee engagement matter?
The 3 pillars of employee engagement
Employee engagement and a culture of recognition: A case study
10 employee engagement best practices for strong, authentic connections
- Embed recognition into the culture.
- Clear, transparent, consistent communication.
- Empower employees to use their voices.
- Focus on belonging in the workplace.
- Share opportunities for growth.
- Support work-life balance.
- Highlight the purpose of their work.
- Develop manager skills.
- Track, measure, plan, adjust.
- Start small and build from there.
Main takeaway: Work feels better when people feel seen.
Employee engagement best practices FAQ
What is employee engagement?
Employee engagement is most succinctly described as one’s emotional connection and commitment to their job. However, engagement also describes:
- How intrinsically motivated an employee is to perform
- How the employee views their growth and development in the workplace
- Their alignment with the company’s mission, values, and culture
And finally, among these layers, job satisfaction. That’s a mutable metric that comes in handy as supporting evidence–not proof–of engagement.
Why does employee engagement matter?
Higher employee engagement doesn’t just suggest that your organization is a great place to work. It’s another way to measure how successful your company truly is, now and into the future.
Research repeatedly shows that higher engagement is worth pursuing if you want to increase profit and productivity while reducing turnover. Engaged employees miss work less often, do better on performance reviews, and are more resilient in the face of organizational shakeups.
Engagement benefits by the numbers A 2024 study examining the connection between engagement and better business outcomes finds that strong engagement is related to a:
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The 3 pillars of employee engagement
A few key features create the right environmental conditions for workplace connection. The best practices we share coming up serve one or more of these engagement essentials.
Recognition and appreciation
Feeling seen and valued is non-negotiable. In fact, nearly every survey or body of research examining engagement points back to recognition and appreciation as the cornerstone.
Hold fast to what you already know about employee recognition. It should be frequent, timely, specific, and true. Peer recognition is real-time positive feedback from coworkers, reducing managerial blind spots and increasing authenticity.
Purpose and meaning
Recognition, especially the small, daily stuff, helps reveal strengths. An employee who repeatedly receives recognition for their knowledge on a topic or supportive behavior knows their worth at work. The rapport peer recognition builds across teams is also meaningful and culture-enriching.
From a top-down perspective, communicating values and showing evidence of impact mentally cements one’s purpose. Take a manager who consistently champions autonomy as a core value. If they can show an employee how their independent process design contributed to project success, everyone wins.
Growth and development
If you value someone, you care about what happens to them tomorrow. Employees cannot feel appreciated and valued if their relationship with an employer stagnates. Growth in the workplace involves both the individual’s skills and voice.
Offerings like stretch projects and mentorship are forms of recognition as well as growth and development opportunities. Asking for, accepting, and implementing employee feedback proves to employees that they do have the power to make positive change in the organization. With this, they’ll be much more willing to help develop a beneficial culture.
Employee engagement and a culture of recognition: A case studyRemote teams have difficulty building the type of connections that characterize strong engagement. Email signature management provider Exclaimer learned this the hard way during the pandemic. The solution was to create a cultural shift centered around recognition. One department began using HeyTaco as an informal, fun way to increase positive interactions in a virtual setting. The practice naturally caught on across the company. Exclaimer had to make a separate channel to contain all of the gratitude being shared daily. This stood out to new hires during the onboarding process. It became the basis of monthly team rituals. Higher engagement was visible through the gratitude channel alone. It also fostered greater cross-department collaboration–a massive achievement for remote teams. Employee feedback improved, confirming the increase in morale and enthusiasm that managers were observing. Monetary rewards and physical prizes are not emphasized here. When a prize is given, its meaning and cultural relevance are the focus, not the spending. |
10 employee engagement best practices for strong, authentic connections
These 10 practices can take a siloed staff perpetually on the brink of quiet cracking and turn them into teams that move with meaning and purpose.
1. Embed recognition into the culture.
This is always first. You cannot foster engagement without recognition. If you’re lacking a structured program, consider HeyTaco’s clear-cut, budget-friendly, highly scalable TEMPLE framework.
No matter how you go about it, here are the essential elements that make recognition part of a company’s culture.
- Peer-to-peer recognition. Tools, nominations, charitable initiatives, and celebrations.
- Manager recognition. Shout-outs, 1:1s, milestone recognition, and using tools alongside teams.
- Creating rituals around recognition to make it habitual. Taco Tuesdays, gratitude channels, weekly peer shout-outs.
- Measuring recognition. Weighing the impact and adjusting as needed, recognizing those who give as well as receive recognition.
2. Clear, transparent, consistent communication.
Vague instructions and a general sense of “I’m not sure what they want from me” are leading causes of frozen engagement rates. Use plain language and limited jargon to define all role expectations.
Additionally, town hall-style meetings and Q&A sessions give leadership an idea of where everyone stands.
Review and leverage the mechanics of a feedback loop, too. Managers can make check-ins part of issue resolution, easily converting critical feedback into an infinite loop of positivity.
3. Empower employees to use their voices.
Environments where you’re not invited to speak up or feel that nothing you say matters are not positive cultures, ever. When feedback isn’t just allowed but solicited and valued, you’ll find that those contributions are more relevant and productive.
- Distribute regular surveys and pulse checks. Ensure these do not disrupt workflows or cut into personal time.
- Implement feedback where possible. Give timelines for addressing longer-term issues and explanations for things that cannot be resolved.
- Let employees form committees and resource groups. A culture of support, recognition, and inclusivity is ultimately driven by teams empowered to do so.
- Involve them in decision-making. Set goals and let employees help pave the path toward them. Be open to ideas that improve or streamline processes.
4. Focus on belonging in the workplace.
Ensure rituals and recognition aren’t exclusively based on performance. Remote employees will need access to faster, easier-to-execute rituals more frequently.
Recommended reading:
- The full guide to team rituals
- Team building activities for small groups and remote teams
- Targeted team building to improve collaboration
5. Share opportunities for growth.
A lack of opportunity is a moderately insidious retention killer. Employees may not be begging for more training or consistently inquiring about promotions. However, if they see it on offer somewhere else, it immediately raises a green flag and lures them in.
Promoting from within is far from the only avenue:
- Career development paths
- Voluntary training and skill-building workshops
- Mentorship programs
- Lateral moves and stretch projects
6. Support work-life balance.
You’re likely aware that work-life balance now sits atop the list of candidate priorities. Many would even accept less compensation for greater flexibility. Employees want a say in their schedule and boundaries drawn around their personal time.
Speak to leadership about the chance to offer more flexible work arrangements. Ensure PTO policies are competitive and clear-cut, and encourage employees to take advantage of them. Finally, wellness programs, from gym membership reimbursement to mindfulness sessions, serve as an admirable show of support.
7. Highlight the purpose of their work.
Improving communication helps employees get clarity on the “what.” Now they need the “why.” People are straying further from the idea of busywork and don’t want to waste time feeling invisible. Ways to engage employees and weave their idea of success into the organization’s include:
- Clearing up the company mission. Remind everyone what the shared objective is.
- Individual impact visibility. Data, customer reviews, and other forms of proof influence how people view their roles.
- Link recognition to values. Features like Taco Tags take a positive behavior and make it even more impactful by aligning it with what the company stands for.
- Offer meaningful work assignments. Leading a project, cracking a problem, or updating a process feels worthwhile and shows you trust someone’s ability or expertise.
8. Develop manager skills.
A culture with substantial positive peer influence seems to achieve so much of what we want. Yet, employees still remember top-down recognition most. Their self-esteem, enthusiasm, and sense of belonging still rely on managerial awareness, participation, and support.
- Train managers on engagement. What it is, how it will be prioritized, and how they should participate.
- Encourage regular check-ins. Employees should interact with their manager in some way at least once a week.
- Hold managers accountable. They’re the ones that carry out many employee engagement best practices. If they agree but don’t deliver, they should address it.
9. Track, measure, plan, adjust.
Gumption and optimism may light the way at first. But once the numbers and feedback start rolling in, there’s your guide. Use a combination of qualitative and quantitative data to assess progress. Consider:
- Key engagement metrics
- Setting a regular assessment cadence
- Benchmarking
- Action planning from data
Read more about employee engagement measurement best practices and KPIs.
10. Start small and build from there.
Small, easy wins. In recognition, celebrating small wins feels authentic and fun, not awkward and hard-won. It’s easy for employees to envision getting more small wins. They can sustain it.
The same goes for working on employee engagement. Those quick little victories, like a manager adopting weekly shout-outs or a team sending their coworker work anniversary memes, are sustainable.
Test tools and rituals, iterate on what works, and celebrate everything.
Mistakes to avoid
Not finding much to celebrate? It can take some time and adjustment, but these are the main issues impeding progress:
- Lots of surveys that never result in actions, changes, or planning. Participation will begin to drop as these exercises present themselves as a waste of time.
- One-size-fits-all approaches with quotas, checklists, and obligatory gestures. Every culture is unique. Employees have to connect and belong to this place, not this one and every other one like it.
- Lack of leadership buy-in, failure to participate or understand. Managers have to be willing to model the behaviors.
- Forgetting remote employees. They are productive. They’re enjoying flexibility. They’re still missing the most essential ingredient: connection.
- Treating engagement as HR's job alone. Our latest white paper, Designing Peer Recognition for Engagement, contains actionable advice for HR and people leaders. The actions in question encourage managers and employees to adopt and drive the plan.
Main takeaway: Work feels better when people feel seen.
Recognition is the foundation of engagement. It’s here that employees start to feel like respected humans at work. If recognition isn’t doing the job, it’s likely too rare, inauthentic, or inconsistent.
Helping teams adopt a peer recognition tool is a great way to make it a habit. Ultimately, you’ll find that initial planning is where most of the work lies.
Laura, a manager at Insightly, made peer recognition part of the culture in a few easy steps.
First, she secured leadership buy-in by effectively presenting the benefits of HeyTaco as a peer recognition tool. Then, she showed everyone how it worked and asked them to prepare their first message of recognition.
Next, it was time to launch. “People were all over it,” Laura recalls. “As leaders, we didn’t have to do much.” Within two weeks, employees passed around almost 500 virtual tacos of recognition.
Exceeding expectations, skyrocketing engagement, and laying the groundwork for a culture of gratitude. You can see how it’s done with your own free trial of HeyTaco.
Employee engagement best practices FAQ
How can startups increase employee engagement?
As with other types of organizations, a strong foundation can be found in a culture of recognition. The key consideration is that startups need to be ready to scale their programs much more rapidly than others.
Some peer recognition tools prioritize scalability for this purpose. Hear how a Web3 security startup scaled recognition using HeyTaco.
What are the three dimensions of work engagement?
William Khan is a psychologist whom many consider the “father of employee engagement.” He asserts that work engagement is a physical, cognitive, and emotional experience.
Physical engagement refers to the expenditure of both physical and mental effort. We see this with both a commitment to showing up and working out solutions to challenges.
Cognitive engagement attaches the employee to their employer. They understand how their contributions impact the organization’s vision and goals.
Emotional engagement involves one’s sense of belonging at work. Plus, they don’t just understand the company’s mission; they invest in it as well.
How do you measure staff engagement?
Use a few different methods and channels to measure engagement. The ideal ones will depend on your industry and goals. Options include but aren’t limited to:
- Annual and pulse surveys
- Exit interviews
- Turnover and absentee rates
- eNPS scoring
- 1:1s
- Analytics and reporting features
What are good employee engagement questions?
If you want to help measure engagement through surveys, here are several example questions that may yield helpful responses:
- What is the most interesting part of your job?
- How does your role affect company success?
- Is there a team event you’d like to see offered?
- How does management recognize your efforts?
- How would you compare the culture here to other places you’ve worked?
- What resources do you use to complete your work, and are there any missing?
- What question do you feel is missing from this survey?
