Employee engagement doesn't happen by accident. At Prialto, it's the result of small, consistent practices that keep people informed, recognized, heard, and focused. These are the employee engagement ideas and activities we've used, and they've helped us earn recognition as a Top Workplace several years running.
TL;DR
- Celebrate small wins and peer recognition to keep engagement high.
- Listen actively through pulse surveys, committees, and open-door policies.
- Run fewer, high-impact meetings so employees stay focused.
- Support remote and hybrid wellbeing with flexible hours and mental health days.
We’ve also seen these, and similar, practices work in hundreds of successful companies of all sizes.
: Four practices sit at the heart of our approach:
- Our highly transparent culture ensures employees at all levels are informed about what's happening in our company.
- We celebrate small wins to build momentum for big success.
- Our leadership actively listens to voices across the organization to learn from our workforce's diverse perspectives.
- We strive to have high-impact meetings to empower employees to focus on the activities that drive their success.
In this article, I'll share the activities that helped us foster employee engagement in each of those areas. You'll also find ideas for supporting remote and hybrid teams.
What is Employee Engagement and Why Does it Matter?
Employee engagement is the level of commitment, enthusiasm, and involvement people bring to their work, their team, and their organization. It's more than job satisfaction. A satisfied employee may be content to do the minimum, while an engaged employee cares about the outcome and puts in extra effort to reach it.
It's also in short supply. Global employee engagement fell to 20% in 2025, its lowest level since 2020. Only about 31% of US employees are engaged at work, according to a recent Gallup report.
The good news is that leaders can influence engagement through everyday practices, which is what the sections below cover.
Note: employee engagement shouldn’t be confused with employee productivity. Productivity can typically be measured with KPIs – by tasks completed and goals hit. Employee engagement is often a little harder to measure but is reflected in commitment. Higher engagement drives higher productivity.
Be Transparent With Employees at All Levels
Employees who understand their organizations' decisions and plans are more engaged than those who only receive the information necessary to do their jobs.
There are a couple of reasons why:
- They understand how their work supports the organization's goals and can better visualize their potential career growth
- They're more accepting of company changes because they know what's driving them
- They feel trusted, which encourages reciprocal trust in the organization
Ultimately, the better informed your employees are, the more likely they will perform in ways that align with your organization's broader goals.
Reaching Every Level of the Organization
Many leaders intuitively understand this concept; however, they often only apply to senior-level and above teams. This leaves frontline and junior workers in the dark about company developments.
To foster engagement across your entire workforce, launch initiatives that reach every level. Here are a couple of activities that we use:
- Company-wide morning huddle: In our daily huddle, representatives from all departments give updates, including KPIs, small wins, and best practices that everyone can use.
- Weekly talking points from the CEO: Our CEO gives managers talking points about what's on his mind each week to share that information with employees.
- Town halls on our annual plan: At the beginning of the year, leaders from each department share key goals and initiatives in a town hall that everyone is encouraged to attend.
Activities like these are easy to implement and can significantly improve employee engagement.
Celebrate Small Wins to Foster Big Success
Everyone wants to feel like they're part of a winning team. Employees who believe their company can execute on its goals tend to put more effort into their jobs. In other words, when they think your company is winning, they're more motivated to support continued success.
To create and sustain this perception, celebrate positive efforts throughout your organization so that employees constantly see progress. These small wins create momentum that motivates your workforce to achieve immense success. Consistent recognition is also one of the most effective employee retention strategies for keeping your top talent engaged.
Here are a few of the activities we host to engage employees in our company's broader success:
- A monthly ceremony for employee-nominated awards in categories such as representing our core values and delivering outstanding client service.
- Space in our daily huddle for sharing positive feedback highlights from our clients to celebrate our service team's great work.
- Weekly KPI updates that are shared with the entire company so that everyone sees our ongoing positive performance.
Keep in mind that recognition drives success only when it's based on performance that moves your company forward. If your management team struggles to find worthy efforts to recognize, you likely need to look for opportunities to improve your workforce's skills and processes. Once you've boosted performance, you can keep morale high with consistent recognition.
Actively Listen to Voices Across Your Organization
Diverse teams tend to bring a greater quantity of ideas to the table. Having varied opinions in the room forces people to think differently. This, in turn, can lead to more innovative solutions.
Instead of quickly coming to mutual conclusions, diverse teams in open-minded cultures consider how to combine the best parts of several perspectives to create a holistic solution. This not only generates more successful outcomes, but also fosters engagement by ensuring every employee feels heard and respected.
Here are some of the initiatives we've implemented to ensure that our leadership actively listens to voices from across the organization:
- Administering employee engagement surveys regularly and using the data to drive our efforts.
- Encouraging frontline staff to form committees on topics such as wellness, new technology, knowledge sharing, etc.
- Having a company-wide open-door policy and actively encouraging employees to reach out to anyone in the organization with questions or collaborate on projects.
- Inviting representatives from frontline teams to participate in strategic planning meetings to ensure our leaders consider their perspectives when making decisions that affect them.
Initiatives like these help you leverage your workforce's talent and make everyone feel heard and included.
Make Meetings Worthwhile
Meetings are one of the most overlooked contributors to employee engagement. An environment full of overly long, disorganized, or hostile meetings leaves employees feeling drained and confused.
When your organization has fewer, high-impact meetings, employees collaborate more productively and remain aligned on goals. To get there, work with your managers to limit discussions to brainstorming sessions and conversations about critical and/or sensitive issues. Share everything else by email or chat.
When you make this shift, meetings support your employees' success instead of pulling their attention away from priorities.
Here are a few of the ways that we run high-impact meetings:
- The meeting host sets clear agendas based on input from our teams on what needs to be discussed.
- We assign a moderator to make sure the panel follows the schedule and ends on time.
- After meetings, a designated person sends a follow-up email with action items (if any) and dates so that everyone is clear on the next steps.
- We ask for feedback at the end of each meeting.
Keep in mind that the ideal frequency of meetings varies based on each teams' workload. Ones that leverage project management tools and assign employees largely independent portions may need only to connect live a couple of times a month to keep everyone aligned. In contrast, highly collaborative groups may need daily meetings. Work with your employees to find the cadence that best fosters engagement and productivity.
Support Hybrid and Remote Team Wellbeing
Engagement is harder to sustain when people are stressed, stretched thin, or cut off from their teammates. Half of employees in the United States and Canada report significant daily stress, the highest rate of any region. Remote and hybrid workers can also miss the casual connection that office life provides. When wellbeing slips, engagement tends to follow, which makes it harder to keep your best people.
A few simple employee engagement ideas can make a real difference:
• Flexible hours: Let people shape their schedules around when they do their best work and what's happening in their lives.
• Mental health days: Give employees permission to step away and recharge before stress turns into burnout.
• Virtual team challenges: Run step challenges or other friendly competitions so remote teammates can build momentum and connection together.
Digital bonding practices, like virtual coffee chats and shared channels for non-work conversation, also help bridge the distance. For more ways to keep remote teammates connected, see these communication best practices for remote teams.
Final Thoughts
One of the most important lessons we've learned on our journey to becoming a Top Workplace is that sustaining employee engagement requires a wide variety of initiatives and a continuous improvement mindset. Combined, these elements allow you to create an environment that empowers your workforce to perform their best.
FAQs about Employee Engagement Ideas
What are the main drivers of employee engagement in the workplace?
Employee engagement is driven by transparency, recognition, and active communication. When employees understand how their work supports company goals and feel heard, they develop a natural sense of accountability and connection to the organization.
How can companies build a more transparent workplace culture to increase morale?
Organizations can foster transparency by:
- Sharing news. Implementing daily or weekly routines that keep all teams, including frontline and junior staff, informed about company performance.
- Sharing executive updates. Activities like company-wide morning huddles, regular updates from executives.
- Holding town halls. Annual town hall meetings ensure everyone feels trusted and understands the business's broader direction.
Why is celebrating small wins critical for employee retention and performance?
Regularly celebrating daily and weekly progress creates positive momentum. When employees regularly see wins, they're more motivated to support the next one. Peer nominations, spontaneous recognition, and sharing client praise also make people feel valued, which helps keep employee engagement high.
How do meeting structures influence overall team engagement?
Overly long and disorganized meetings drain energy and cause confusion. By holding fewer high-impact discussions with clear agendas you can keep your team more productive and aligned. Limit live meetings to strategic brainstorming or critical issues and handle standard status updates through email or chat channels.
What are some effective ways to show employees that their opinions are valued?
Ask for feedback regularly through employee engagement surveys and pulse surveys. Set up frontline committees. Maintain an open-door policy across all leadership levels. Act on what you hear and tell people what changed because feedback that goes nowhere erodes trust.