7 Steps to High Engagement: VISTIM’s Guide to workforce commitment in 2025

Engaged employees boost productivity by up to 21% and significantly reduce turnover. In this article, VISTIM presents a pragmatic, data-driven framework with 7 essential steps to embed employee engagement into your company’s core strategy for 2025 and beyond.

The benefits of a highly engaged workforce are widely recognized and well documented — from improved productivity and retention to profitability and customer satisfaction. Yet, in 2025, many companies still struggle to create sustainable employee engagement.

This isn’t due to a lack of initiatives, but rather the absence of a coherent strategy, alignment across leadership, and long-term cultural investment. In times of disruption, such as the current economic volatility and hybrid work transitions, maintaining high engagement becomes even more critical — and even more difficult.

With evolving employee expectations, new generational values, and the growing emphasis on purpose, mental wellbeing, and inclusion, it’s time to revisit how we embed engagement into our DNA. Based on our experience and current trends, here are the 7 steps to high engagement in today’s world.

Engagement is not just an HR initiative — it needs to sit at the heart of the business strategy. One of the top reasons organizations fail to maintain engagement is that people strategy remains separate from company strategy.

In tough times, this disconnect becomes fatal: development is paused, communication breaks down, and long-term consequences are ignored in favour of short-term impact mitigation.

But engagement, when central to decision-making, has a ripple effect: it boosts employer branding, reduces turnover, and simplifies hiring. It improves collaboration, fuels innovation, and enhances customer experience. Companies that include engagement in their board agenda — not as a side note, but as a strategic priority — make better, more sustainable decisions.

Tip: Rethink how you define success. Financial KPIs matter, but they don’t inspire. Translate goals into meaningful projects that employees can rally behind.

2. Understand Your Current Engagement Level

Engagement can’t be improved blindly. Organizations need data, insights, and context — not assumptions.

A modern engagement survey is the first step: well-designed tools can uncover not just how people feel, but why. They can reveal systemic gaps (e.g., pay equity, psychological safety) and team-level pain points (e.g., clarity of goals, manager support).

Beyond annual surveys, leading companies are now implementing pulse surveys, AI-powered listening tools, and qualitative feedback mechanisms. This gives leaders real-time insight into engagement drivers and risks — crucial in fast-changing environments.

Action: Focus on gaps in psychological safety and perception of fairness before investing in baby foot, gym rooms or fruit baskets.

3. Align Your People Policies to Engagement

Inconsistencies between declared values and actual practices are a silent killer of engagement. If performance systems reward only results — not behaviours or collaboration — employees will focus on ticking boxes, not contribution.

Performance management must be forward-looking, development-oriented, and centred on growth. Yet many systems still emphasize ratings and rankings of past performance, which can’t be changed, rather than develop the future.

HR policies should also reflect trust and maturity — avoid overly restrictive rules or outdated procedures that suggest a lack of confidence in employees' judgment.

Example: Companies that moved to outcomes-based evaluation as opposed to controlling on-line time during the shift to hybrid work saw higher engagement and productivity.

4. Develop Your Leadership Capability

The saying still holds true: people join companies but leave managers. Leadership is the single most important factor in engagement.

Yet, most managers are promoted for technical skills — not people skills — and are left without the training, time, or support to lead effectively. In 2025, employees expect empathy, clarity, flexibility, and empowerment — and leaders must be equipped to deliver on all fronts.

What works: Continuous leadership development, coaching, mentoring, and strong support from HR Business Partners. Microlearning, real-time feedback, and team-based reflection are rising in popularity.

Investing in people managers is a long-term lever for culture and engagement — more than anything else.

5. Define Your Engagement Governance

Sustainable engagement requires structure. This means defining clear processes, roles, and timelines for how engagement is measured, discussed, and acted upon.

From the annual survey to board discussions, from employee forums to executive decisions — every step must be intentional. Governance ensures that engagement doesn't depend on individual champions but becomes institutionalized.

Engagement governance also includes transparent communication — both ways. Employees must understand the why behind actions, and leaders must remain open to feedback and challenge.

Reminder: True engagement involves participation, not just consultation. Co-creation beats top-down announcements every time.

6. Recognise Engagement

Recognition is a proven multiplier of engagement. In fact, employees who feel recognized are four times more likely to be engaged¹.

Recognition doesn’t need to be expensive. What matters is that it’s meaningful, timely, and aligned with your values. A culture of frequent, specific, and sincere appreciation improves morale, strengthens belonging, and encourages high performance.

Modern companies are embedding peer-to-peer recognition into everyday tools (e.g., Slack, Teams, intranets), creating a flow of gratitude across levels and functions.

Don't forget: Financial rewards must not contradict your engagement efforts. A well-meaning thank-you is nullified if bonuses reward only individual output, not collaborative effort.

7. Restart at Step 1

Engagement is not static. Generational shifts, economic pressures, new technologies — all change what matters to employees. What worked last year may not work now.

Revisit your approach annually. Run the 7 steps as a cycle. Review assumptions. Reassess your people’s experience. Refine your policies and messages.

Making engagement a continuous priority keeps your culture adaptive, and your people committed.

Conclusion

Let’s compare two similar companies:

• Company A, with high engagement
• Company B, with neutral engagement

After one year, A performs better. After two years, A attracts better talent, innovates faster, and builds stronger resilience. Over time, A’s success becomes exponential as it can seize opportunities that are out of reach for B.

In 2025, data confirms:

• Engaged companies are 21% more profitable³
• Experience 59% lower turnover⁴

Engagement is not a soft metric. It’s a business imperative — and a cultural cornerstone.

You don’t get engagement by chance. You build it — step by step.

Footnotes

1. Gallup, “State of the Global Workplace 2023”
2. Workhuman & Gallup, “Empowering Workplace Culture Through Recognition”, 2023
3. Gallup Meta-Analysis: Employee Engagement and Performance, 2023
4. LinkedIn Global Talent Trends, 2024

VISTIM services to boost team engagement:

• Engagement Focus: https://www.vistim-sa.com/engagement/

• Assess Your Engagement Level: https://www.vistim-sa.com/challenges/assess/

• Quick Self-Assessment: https://www.vistim-sa.com/engagement-self-assessment/