Stop Measuring Engagement
Your engagement survey isn't measuring engagement. It's measuring how people feel about answering engagement surveys.
Unpopular opinion: most engagement surveys measure the wrong thing.
They measure how people feel about answering questions about engagement. Not engagement itself.
Here's the problem: asking someone "How engaged are you?" is like asking "How happy is your marriage?" The answer you get depends more on what happened that morning than on any underlying truth.
Real engagement shows up in behavior, not self-reports. It shows up in whether people speak up in meetings. Whether they help colleagues without being asked. Whether they stick around when things get hard.
Annual surveys catch none of this. They're snapshots of sentiment, not signals of behavior.
The reframe: Instead of asking people how engaged they are, watch what they do. Measure recognition frequency. Track voluntary participation. Count the small discretionary efforts that nobody requires but engaged people do anyway.
Behavior doesn't lie. Surveys do (unintentionally).
