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Engagement as a consequence of action
It’s about more than how people feel
How do you create engagement?
Ready to create engagement, not just measure it?
Wouldn't it be radical to cut straight to the action? To just do the things that employees tell you would make their day-to-day job easier, enable them to collaborate better, or make work more fulfilling - and then check that doing those things is boosting engagement?
Employee engagement has long been a reliable proxy for performance, and it’s still a valuable signal. But the road to get there is often long. Design and send the survey, await responses, analyse the data, decide on a course of action, communicate, act, follow up - by which point the moment may have passed.
There are multiple touchpoints that slow down or break this loop. Line managers who are not confident communicating change, leadership who are not bought into the programme, overstretched HR teams without time to ensure follow-through and so the feedback loop rarely closes as cleanly as it should.
Engagement as a consequence of action
This isn’t diminish engagement as a core influence on business and people performance, it’s about changing the parameters to start with the most impactful changes first – those that are impacting people right now in their everyday work life and that are undoubtedly having an influence on the bottom line:
- How is the new operating model working for your team?
- What do you think is creating friction in our buyer journey right now?
- How’s the new menu going down with customers?
- What’s the most common customer complaint that we should be fixing?
- What would make you feel more confident and better equipped in your role tomorrow?
The list is endless, but the concept is the same – action comes first and engagement will follow.
It’s about more than how people feel
Engagement is not just about how people feel, it’s about whether they are truly heard. The goal isn’t just better engagement scores, it’s an organisation where people feel they’re listened to, where leaders act faster, and engagement builds naturally as a consequence of being heard, rather than ‘employee engagement’ being run as a parallel programme.
Authors Tony Martignetti and Moe Carrick, writing for Fast Company note that in today’s remote, hybrid and distributed workforces:
“People are completing their tasks but not always experiencing the relationships that make work sustainable, creative, or truly human.” And that the crux of the issue isn’t motivation but relational capacity: people’s ability to work together, navigate conflict, build trust, and collaborate across distance and difference.
Creating engagement within this context means addressing these needs directly through better feedback loops, leaders who are quick to act, and organisations that make trust and collaboration visible habits.
Getting this right requires something most organisations don’t yet have: a fast, lightweight way to ask the right question, hear an honest answer at scale, and act on it before the moment passes. That is the gap Dialogue was built to fill.
Dialogue doesn’t replace existing employee engagement programmes, it fills the gap between insight and action, turning that gap into a continuous improvement loop. It starts with solving the most pressing issues that people are facing.
Nationwide uses Dialogue to capture real-time frontline feedback across 4,000 employees and turn it into visible, fast action at scale. In one example, Nationwide’s Branch Network Director captured video, voice and text feedback from 600+ branches, packaged the themes using AI and closed the Loop in just 70 minutes. Senior leaders outlined three immediate actions and longer-term commitments as a result; demonstrating that the senior team is listening and acting.
This is what creating engagement looks like. Not a score that improves slowly over time, but a culture that builds trust every time a leader asks a question and responds to it visibly.
See Dialogue in action at workbuzz.com/dialogue.