Employee engagement strategies are key approaches that organizations use to boost employee motivation, satisfaction, and overall performance. These strategies focus on creating a positive workplace culture through enhancing communication and offering meaningful opportunities and recognition. Effective employee engagement strategies can boost retention rates while enhancing productivity and driving better organizational outcomes.

It’s Monday, and you’re back in the office. Returning to work after an eventful weekend, you notice that feeling coming on again: complete disengagement. As boredom looms, you already start to get distracted by something that isn’t really a part of your job (think doom scrolling). Despite often asking your boss for more challenging or meaningful tasks, every request has led to no avail. What your workplace management might need is some employee engagement strategies.

Employee engagement strategies are designed to foster a more motivated, productive, and, most importantly, satisfied workforce. These strategies focus on creating an environment where employees feel valued, supported, and connected to the organization’s goals instead of sinking into distraction. By prioritizing these strategies, companies can cultivate a culture that not only retains talent but also drives long-term business success. Ultimately, effective engagement strategies lead to more committed employees, demonstrated by higher performance levels and improved organizational outcomes.

Before delving into some popular strategies, let’s start by breaking down what employee engagement means in the first place. This concept, rooted in human resources, describes the level of enthusiasm and commitment someone feels toward their job. It’s often measured through surveys assessing factors like job satisfaction and workplace involvement.¹ You’ve likely seen what a highly engaged coworker looks like: they care deeply about their work, the company’s success, and making a meaningful impact. On the flip side, we all know the feeling of being disengaged—those days when work is just a means to a paycheck. In such moments, engagement strategies can help reignite focus and motivation.

Who is responsible for employee engagement? Workplaces with high engagement often have leaders who demonstrate commitment and communication, acting as role models for engaging environments. Research shows that about 70% of the change in team focus comes from the manager.² Though managers are a key influence, we cannot ignore the other players in the engagement ecosystem, like higher management setting the tone with policies, employees advocating for themselves and their colleagues’ needs for stimulation, and HR giving concrete support through career development and DEI initiatives. But above all, company leaders are the ones mostly responsible for employee engagement by enacting strategies that lead to measurable results. 

Top Employee Engagement Strategies

Unfortunately, it isn’t enough to just notice that a team lacks drive and expect managers to fix the problem by themselves. This is where employee engagement strategies come into play. Let’s take a closer look at five of the most popular approaches³—along with how behavioral science can help them drive evidence-based outcomes.

1. Recognition and rewards programs: Acknowledging employees for their hard work can boost morale and encourage continued high performance. These recognitions can be for stand-out employees or team-based. Critically, rewards should be given in a timely fashion and appropriately catered to truly strengthen an employee’s sense of purpose. One way to tailor these rewards is by considering when intrinsic versus extrinsic types of rewards would be preferred. 
2. Career development and growth opportunities: Offering training, mentorship, and professional development helps employees feel valued and invested in their roles. This is a win-win as employees can further their career trajectory while taking on more duties for the company. Keep in mind that growth isn’t merely about climbing the corporate ladder—it may otherwise be seen in mastering skills, lateral moves to better-suited positions, or adding variety to the work itself.
3. Regular and evidence-based feedback: Continuous feedback channels promote transparency, trust, and a sense of belonging among employees. To truly make an impact, feedback needs to be evidence-based and actionable—such as by referring to specific examples so that management can help the employee grow while avoiding any biases. At the same time, try not to be too overbearing to avoid feelings of micromanagement.
4. Work-life balance initiatives: Providing flexible work hours, remote work options, and wellness programs supports employees' overall well-being and helps reduce burnout. Work-life balance methods may be one of the most prevalent engagement strategies, especially since the dawn of COVID-19. Employees usually want work and life to stay separate—and while at work, they want to feel that the workload is manageable. However, others might prefer work and life to be intertwined, so considering variability is key.
5. Open communication: Setting the tone for continuous dialogue can clarify expectations and ensure managers are approachable from the get-go. Of course, what open communication looks like can take countless forms. Nowadays, a few elements worth emphasizing are promoting transparency from management and coworkers alike, in-person and online psychological safety, and two-way feedback where criticism is reciprocal. 

Bringing Behavioral Science Into Employee Engagement 

Aside from the five popular strategies above, behavioral science highlights a few additional forms of engagement. 

1. Job autonomy and empowerment: Giving employees control over their tasks fosters a sense of ownership, boosting motivation and engagement. Research shows that employees with more decision-making powers tend to be more committed to the job, including self-management strategies such as empowering workers to pick what projects they get to work on.⁴
2. Purpose-driven work: Aligning tasks with meaningful goals taps into intrinsic motivation, driving employees to perform with greater enthusiasm. One study demonstrates that employees who are engaged in meaningful work express higher job satisfaction and performance in general,⁵ such as at companies like Patagonia where work and values align for employees.
3. Social connection and team cohesion: Fostering strong relationships and collaboration in the workplace enhances teamwork and an overall feeling of belonging. Some research illustrates that environments with a high amount of trust result in more engagement, where strategies like peer mentoring and social bonding activities can bolster involvement.⁶

The Employee Engagement Model

According to Gallup, an extensive resource that has been sharing workplace analytics for decades, there are four distinct levels of employee engagement. This hierarchical model builds from the bottom up, where core individual needs must be met first before true engagement is achieved—in a similar light to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Gallup integrates 12 elements, or “Q12,” that correlate with strong team performance to organize engagement. The model in its ascending order of needs is as follows:²

The 5 C’s of Employee Engagement

Along with the employee engagement model, there are 5 C’s of employee engagement engagement that can be applied as a framework for various employment engagement strategies. The intention of the “C’s” is to influence employees to be truly engaged, productive, and happy with their work culture. We can understand the 5 C’s and some accompanying employee engagement strategies as:⁷

Employee engagement: The level of enthusiasm, commitment, and emotional investment employees feel toward their work and organization.¹ Optimizing engagement leads to outcomes like higher productivity and job satisfaction, leading to a thriving workplace where employees want to stick around.

Employee engagement model: A framework from Gallup outlining the factors and strategies that drive employee engagement and workplace satisfaction.² These models guide organizations in creating environments where employees feel valued, motivated, and connected to organizational success.

The 5 C’s of employee engagement: A set of principles that spell out Clarity, Communication, Connection, Contribution, and Collaboration, which are designed to foster a highly engaged and effective workforce. Each “C” emphasizes a key element of engagement that helps organizations build a strong, cohesive workplace culture.

Hawthorne studies: A series of groundbreaking experiments conducted in the 1920s and 1930s that revealed how workplace conditions and social interactions influence employee productivity. This research laid the foundation for understanding employee engagement and human behavior in organizational settings.

Human relations movement: A management approach emphasizing the importance of human factors—such as relationships, motivation, and employee well-being—in achieving organizational success. This movement emerged as a response to previous mechanistic views of work, instead highlighting the value of employee satisfaction and collaboration.

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs: A motivational theory by Abraham Maslow that outlines five levels of human needs: physiological, safety, love/belonging, esteem, and self-actualization. In the workplace, meeting these needs fosters employee engagement, productivity, and personal fulfillment.

Two-factor theory: A motivational theory by Frederick Herzberg that identifies two factors influencing workplace satisfaction: hygiene factors and motivators. While hygiene factors (like salary and job security) prevent dissatisfaction, motivators (like recognition and meaningful work) drive engagement and productivity.

Self-determination theory (SDT):  A psychological framework that explains how intrinsic motivation and personal growth thrive when three basic human needs—autonomy, competence, and relatedness—are fulfilled. It emphasizes that people are more engaged and perform better when they feel in control of their actions, capable of their tasks, and connected to others.

Psychological meaningfulness: Refers to the sense that one’s work is valuable and contributes to something significant.⁸ According to Kahn, employees feel engaged when their roles allow them to invest themselves in meaningful tasks that align with their values.

Psychological safety: The perception that one can express themself authentically at work without fear of negative consequences.⁸ Kahn emphasized that a supportive and inclusive environment fosters engagement by making employees feel secure in taking risks and sharing ideas.

Psychological availability: An individual’s capacity to fully engage at work based on their physical, emotional, and mental resources.⁸ According to Kahn, employees are more likely to engage when they feel ready and free from external or internal distractions.

360-degree feedback: An employee engagement process that gathers anonymous feedback from various sources in an employee's work environment (e.g., peers, managers, customers) to provide a comprehensive understanding of their level of engagement.¹⁰ The goal is to create a more objective and well-rounded view of an employee’s engagement and involvement at work.

Employee engagement may seem like a modern workplace concern, but its roots trace back to early management research on motivation and productivity. In the 1920s and 1930s, the Hawthorne studies at Western Electric investigated how changes in workplace conditions—such as lighting and rest breaks—impacted worker productivity.⁹ Surprisingly, researchers found that employees’ performance improved simply because they were being observed, an effect later known as the Hawthorne Effect. While this did not directly define employee engagement, it sparked interest in the role of social and psychological factors in workplace motivation. Early case studies in settings like Hawthorne illustrate how employee engagement was not initially a given, let alone considered at all, in most organizational environments.

Inspired by the Hawthorne studies, new ideas emerged in the 1930s and 1940s that emphasized workers’ input on their job conditions. The human relations movement highlighted the emotional and social needs of employees, suggesting that job satisfaction hinged on these factors.¹⁰ Workers weren’t just machines churning out productivity—motivation, satisfaction, and emotions mattered, too. This movement is notable for bringing the human element into how work happens, as something like employee engagement may have been neglected without this type of influence. Though the term “employee engagement” wouldn’t be coined for years, the shift from the Hawthorne Studies days was clear: focus moved from mechanical productivity to the psychological and mental well-being of employees.

Later, in the 1940s and 1950s, motivation theories like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and Herzberg’s two-factor theory further explored how satisfaction and motivation impact employee performance.¹¹ Maslow’s pyramid suggests that people are motivated by five levels of needs, ranging from physiological to self-actualization, where each lower need must be fulfilled to reach the one above it. From Maslow, we can appreciate how basic needs related to engagement, such as reasonable work conditions, a decent salary, and work-life balance, all find connections to bigger aspects of engagement, like purpose and mental stimulation at work.

Herzberg’s theory, meanwhile, differentiated between hygiene factors (e.g., salary, work conditions) and motivators (e.g., recognition, personal growth). While hygiene factors may help avoid dissatisfaction, motivators may inspire true engagement by addressing deeper-rooted psychological needs for purpose. For example, providing employees with opportunities for professional development and acknowledging their achievements can increase engagement by fulfilling their need for competence and recognition, leading to higher motivation and commitment at work. Both Hertzberg’s and Maslow’s theories laid the groundwork for understanding the internal and external factors that drive employees beyond just pay and continue to be influential to this day.

Emerging in the 1980s, self-determination theory (SDT) was introduced by psychologists Edward Deci and Richard Ryan as a way to understand human motivation beyond rewards and punishments.¹² SDT proposes that people are most motivated when their basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness are fulfilled. Deci and Ryan argued that intrinsic motivation—the drive to engage in activities for their inherent satisfaction—flourishes when these needs are met. Prior to SDT, motivational theories often focused on external incentives, but Deci and Ryan shifted the focus toward how internal processes and personal growth shape workplace engagement.

Following many theories developing on job satisfaction and motivation, it wasn't until the 1990s that the term “employee engagement” finally emerged. This followed the release of organizational psychologist William Kahn’s 1990 study on psychological engagement, titled “Psychological Conditions of Personal Engagement and Disengagement at Work.”⁸ In this paper, Khan explored the idea that there is variation in how much employees have physical, cognitive, and emotional roles at work and how they carry them out.¹³ Before Kahn, those in charge of hiring and managing employees thought of employee engagement as much, where job involvement and motivation remained at the forefront. 

Kahn identified three key psychological conditions for employee engagement: meaningfulness, safety, and availability.¹⁴ Meaningfulness relates to feeling valued, safety means being comfortable being yourself, and availability refers to manageable physical and mental work demands. Together, these conditions allow employees to be more themselves at work. While Kahn introduced the concept of employee engagement in 1990, it wasn’t until the early 2000s that it began to have a real impact on workplaces. 

In the 2000s, businesses began recognizing the link between employee engagement and organizational performance. Breakthrough research from a variety of firms highlighted how engaged employees were more productive and likely to stay, leading to a focus on formal strategies like recognition programs and leadership development.² As previously mentioned, Gallup became a prominent organization in this field, offering frameworks for implementing strategies like its employee engagement model. From Gallup’s research, we can see how employee engagement has value in making concrete differences, such as decreases in absenteeism and turnover, along with boosting customer loyalty and profits.²

Engagement strategies broadened to include work-life balance, well-being, and diversity and inclusion by the 2010s. The shift was driven by younger generations’ desire for purposeful and meaningful work, prompting organizations to adopt more holistic, employee-centric practices. Now, employee engagement is increasingly personalized and data-driven, with companies leveraging AI and employee feedback platforms for real-time insights. Engagement efforts today focus on creating inclusive, flexible workplaces that meet individual needs and align with organizational values.

The future of employee engagement will inevitably be shaped by technology, the gig economy, and the continued rise of purpose-driven work. How employees continue to demand various ways to be engaged and find meaning in our digital era remains an open question. Organizations will need to keep evolving their engagement strategies to accommodate these trends, focusing on individualized, dynamic approaches to keep employees motivated, connected, and humanized in a work world that is more artificial than ever. 

Abraham Maslow

An American psychologist best known for his hierarchy of needs, with the top of the pyramid being self-actualization in relation to basic needs at the bottom. Maslow emphasized how various needs must be considered cumulative for humans, where each need builds upon the next. Maslow's pyramid can be applied to employee engagement by addressing fundamental needs like job security and safety before fostering belonging, recognition, and self-actualization in the workplace.

Frederick Herzberg

An American psychologist known for his two-factor theory that highlights the importance of intrinsic motivators like recognition and achievement in driving employee engagement, while distinguishing them from extrinsic “hygiene” factors that play a crucial role in ensuring that basic employee needs are met.¹⁵ Herzberg’s work influenced scholars and managers alike leading up to studies such as those on employee engagement.

Edward Deci

An American psychologist and one of the co-creators of self-determination theory (SDT), a framework that explores how autonomy, competence, and relatedness drive intrinsic motivation and engagement in the workplace. His research has profoundly influenced how organizations understand the factors that foster employee engagement, emphasizing the importance of fulfilling employees' psychological needs to boost performance and well-being.

Richard Ryan

An American psychologist and co-developer of self-determination theory (SDT), which has shaped how employee engagement is viewed through the lens of intrinsic motivation. His work underscores the critical role of autonomy, competence, and relatedness in cultivating a work environment where employees are motivated, engaged, and able to reach their full potential.

William Kahn

An American professor and organizational psychologist who first popularized the term “employee engagement.”¹³ Kahn’s research in the 1990s introduced the concept of employee engagement, emphasizing the psychological conditions of meaning, safety, and availability that influence whether employees feel engaged at work.

With only a third of American employees considering themselves to be “engaged,” it is no secret that a huge number of workers are not feeling their best on the job.² But when we do happen to feel engaged at work, we all know the positive impacts that experience can have. With this in mind, let’s take a look at the broader impacts of employee engagement strategies below. 

Improved Productivity

When we compare days where we are engaged versus disengaged at work, we might notice how much more we accomplish during those lucky instances where we feel present. Research from Gallup shows that companies with more employee engagement, defined by the involvement and enthusiasm of employees in their work and workplace, experience a 21% jump in productivity, in terms of profitability, when compared to those with less.^16,2

A specific strategy we may see for increased productivity is recognition and reward initiatives. Those who are incentivized to perform may be motivated and engaged in their pursuit of doing so, as higher productivity yields something extra. Research shows that as many as 84% of employees feel recognition has an effect on motivation.¹⁷ An important consideration here is that not all employees value the same incentives—while some may be engaged in work for a reward like a raise, others may prefer recognition in front of the team or company-wide for their efforts via engagement, reminding us the importance of the two-factor theory for its hygiene and motivator factors.

Higher Retention Rates

Have you ever wanted to leave your job purely out of boredom? You’re not alone. Feelings of apathy, burnout, or other emotional responses may be what leads to low engagement. On the other hand, Gallup's analysis highlights the impact of employee engagement, showing a 21% decrease in turnover for highly engaged companies and a 51% decrease for those with lower turnover, demonstrating how engagement directly contributes to employee retention.²

One strategy we may rely on here is promoting work-life balance. By working somewhere that genuinely cares about the balance between your 9-5 in contrast to your life 5-9, it naturally feels easier to stick around. Work-life balance may include flexibility of work options like remote work and adjustable schedules, additional support for employees with children, or mental health programs (which we explore further in the case studies below). Yet, flexibility works best when it is accompanied by clear, defined boundaries to ensure psychological safety. One example is that companies should make sure to remind their staff that fully remote work does not mean that they have to be online 24/7.

Enhanced Customer Satisfaction

As much as we’d like to think engagement at work is all about us employees, it also tends to have a positive effect on the customers we provide products and services to. Customers can usually tell when a worker isn’t engaged (or simply doesn’t care) when the quality of service drops, which may be especially obvious in fields like customer service or public-facing jobs. For this reason, keeping employees engaged can have a pretty direct impact on customers’ feelings—and subsequently, their purchases.

With this relationship in mind, it's no surprise that Gallup has identified a 10% increase in both customer loyalty and engagement with more engaging companies.² Further, 92% of executives themselves feel that higher engagement leads to happier customers.¹⁸ Those who are engaged employees are more capable of creating better, more satisfying customer experiences.¹⁹

A strategy that we can deploy here is open communication—if positive, purposeful, and transparent discourse comes from the top, it flows all the way to the customer experience. For example, customer service representatives who have clear and consistent communication with product teams can provide a smoother and more efficient service, leading to higher customer satisfaction.

Unfortunately, it is impossible for us to be engaged at work 100% of the time—after all, we are human employees, not robots. However, there are still several ways that employee engagement strategies may fall short, such as only focusing on the moment, failing to personalize to the individual, or using up too many resources 

Only Engaging in the Short Term

Employee engagement strategies can sometimes prioritize immediate results over long-term sustainability. Have you ever left an office workshop feeling hopeful, only to return back to your desk and continue dozing off? In cases like these, the right strategies must not only be chosen for a given employee or team but also implemented consistently over time within the company, ensuring that engagement is nurtured continuously rather than addressed as a one-time effort. (Luckily, there are numerous strategies to make sure that your training hits the mark.)

An additional solution may be providing frequent and evidence-based opportunities for feedback between managers and employees, such as 360-degree feedback where everyone is involved in providing both constructive criticism.¹⁰ A proactive manager may organize such a strategy by scheduling monthly or quarterly check-ins—or whatever frequency fits the needs of the employee—to ensure that the engagement is ongoing. It’s worth mentioning that managers must also be engaged in these check-ins, actively listening as employees share their experiences instead of treating them as just another task.

When One Size Doesn’t Fit All

Standardized engagement programs may not address the diverse needs and preferences of individual employees, reducing their overall effectiveness. From the theories that shape employee engagement strategies today, we may recognize how what leads to satisfaction, motivation, and other aspects of engagement itself is unique to each worker. For this reason, managers may benefit from being flexible when asking employees how they can feel more engaged—which may also include taking into account their own leadership style. For example, micromanagement may be less engaging for more independent workers who can work alone easily but helpful to those who value structure and supervision.

Remember: the race for engagement is a marathon, not a sprint. If managers implement too many measures too fast, overengagement may become just as big of a concern, eventually leading to burnout.²⁰ When considering this dichotomy, we may also appreciate that disengagement is not inherently negative all the time—it can be a rational coping mechanism to avoid toxic workplaces or mitigate the feeling of an overwhelming workload.

As opposed to sending a standardized means to engage, a leader may bring both frequent feedback sessions and catered career development opportunities for their employees to customize to their needs. For instance, Harvard Business Review found that employees with regular feedback are 3.5 times more likely to be engaged than those without feedback.²¹ This may once again require a manager to approach the situation with an open mind for how these check-ins will go. Being able to adjust, accommodate, and listen to employees’ own ideas on how to develop themselves may be a method for them to stay engaged beyond a standard version of such.

Cost and Resource Intensive 

True engagement isn’t cheap. Implementing comprehensive engagement strategies can require significant financial and organizational resources, making them difficult for smaller companies to adopt fully. This can be true of bigger companies, who already dedicate resources to thousands of employees. However, the cost of not engaging employees may be much higher in the long run. Gallup found that low engagement has cost $8.8 trillion on a global scale—larger than that of the GDP of countries like Japan or Germany.²² 

With this in mind, managers must take a step back and consider what is more costly: spending money on proactively engaging employees or taking the risk that employees won’t be as productive. In reality, striking a balance in spending the right amount of time, money, and effort on engaging employees is key. One strategy may be first introducing engagement strategies in group settings, allowing employees to pick what is best, or even necessary, for their own needs. An alternative option is to find a way to implement these strategies into pre-existing systems.

Summer Camp, Scuba Diving and Kahn’s Epiphany of Engagement

Remember Kahn? Well, he did more than just coin the term employee engagement, going on to explore these strategies in a variety of settings, one sticking out from the rest: summer camp.⁸ To Kahn, camp provided an important contrast to traditional office settings, where engagement could be seen in an environment where relationships and purpose-driven work were crucial. 

Alongside 100 teenagers ages 12 to 17 and 22 counselors at a six-week summer camp in the West Indies, Kahn fully stepped into his role as a researcher and as part of the staff. The counselors, ranging from committed leaders to those who couldn’t care less, were key to his findings in being able to empirically distinguish between the two groups. Taking on the role of the “head tennis counselor” (to the knowledge of the counselors but not the kids), Kahn collected data through observations, self-reflection, interviews, and analyzing documents. 

One particular scuba-diving instructor taught a niche class for advanced divers at camp, spending a lot of time with students in and out of class sharing his perspective of the ocean and the care for marine wildlife he has as a diver. This scuba diver demonstrated engagement in his work on all levels through his physical lead of gear-checking and dives, his cognitive awareness of the student divers and animals, and his emotional fear yet thrill for his young divers. 

Whether it be a scuba-diver counselor or professionals working at large organizations, Kahn found as a commonality across all these settings was the importance of personal engagement in the ability to connect to our jobs and those around us in impactful ways. 

Bell Canada “Let’s Talk”

Employee engagement strategies often extend beyond the workplace, addressing broader issues like health and wellness, including mental health. A company in Canada that is well-known for these efforts is telecommunications company Bell and its “Let’s Talk” campaign.²³

Bell Canada’s Let’s Talk Day is a leading case study on employee engagement and mental health, aiming to reduce the stigma in the workplace for employees across Canada. By offering mental health resources, promoting open conversations, and integrating well-being into their company culture, Bell has improved employee engagement through more supportive work environments. Canadians have been inspired since the campaign began through four key pillars: anti-stigma, care and access, research, and workplace leadership.²³

This has gone far beyond the walls of Bell offices, becoming a household name in Canada for mental health awareness. Ever January 22nd for the past 15 years, “Bell Let’s Talk Day” has helped to start those tough conversations. A handful of ways the campaign relies on employee engagement strategies is by encouraging open communication, fostering a supportive workplace culture, and providing resources to prioritize mental well-being. These strategies signify how engagement can match overarching organizational values and social responsibility initiatives.

“Let’s Talk” shows how employee engagement strategies and their surrounding issues can be addressed by starting important conversations outside of work itself. With campaigns such as Bell’s, it will be fascinating to see how new employee engagement methods emerge at these larger scales—where engagement expands from inside the cubicle to across the country.

Creativity in the Workplace: How to bolster engagement and productivity at work

In this article, TDL columnists Janessa Pong and Sarah Chudleigh, along with co-founder Sekeol Krastev, look at reigniting creativity to increase engagement and productivity on the job. The authors break down various psychological needs, intrinsic and extrinsic rewards, and the value of creativity on the job.

Internal CSR: How to measure employee engagement to improve corporate social responsibility

It isn’t always easy to be yourself at work—especially when feeling unengaged. In this piece, columnist Nima Toussi and TDL co-founder Sekoul Krastev discuss the relationship between employee engagement and fostering more corporate social responsibility (CSR). This discussion unpacks CSR's growth, ethical challenges, internal risks, and the intriguing influence of the IKEA effect.

1. What is employee engagement? Definition, strategies, and example. (2010, May 11). Investopedia. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/employee-engagement.asp
2. Gallup. (2020, February 21). How to improve employee engagement in the workplace. Gallup.com. https://www.gallup.com/workplace/285674/improve-employee-engagement-workplace.aspx
3. Six Effective Strategies To Enhance Employee Engagement. (2024, June 14). Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/paolacecchi-dimeglio/2024/06/14/six-effective-strategies-to-enhance-employee-engagement/
4. Hackman, J., & Oldham, G. R. (1976). Motivation through the design of work: Test of a theory. Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, 16(2), 250-279. https://doi.org/10.1016/0030-5073(76)90016-7
5. Bailey, C., Lips‐Wiersma, M., Madden, A., Yeoman, R., Thompson, M., & Chalofsky, N. (2018). The five paradoxes of meaningful work: Introduction to the special issue ‘Meaningful work: Prospects for the 21st century’. Journal of Management Studies, 56(3), 481-499. https://doi.org/10.1111/joms.12422
6. The neuroscience of trust. (2017, January 1). Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2017/01/the-neuroscience-of-trust
7. The 5 Cs of Employee Engagement. (n.d.). Horton International. https://hortoninternational.com/the-5-cs-of-employee-engagement/
8. Kahn, W. A. (1990). Psychological conditions of personal engagement and disengagement at work. Academy of Management Journal, 33(4), 692-724. https://doi.org/10.5465/256287
9. Hawthorne effect definition: How it works and is it real. (2013, July 17). Investopedia. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/h/hawthorne-effect.asp
10. John-Eke, E. C., & Akintokunbo, O. O. (2021). The Alignment of Employee Engagement with Human Relations School of Thought. American Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences Research (AJHSSR), 5(9), 99-106. https://www.ajhssr.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/M215999106.pdf
11. Gawel, J. E. (1997). Herzberg's Theory of Motivation and Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Practical Assessment, Research & Evaluation, 5(11). https://openpublishing.library.umass.edu/pare/article/1254/galley/1205/view/#:~:text=Among%20various%20behavioral%20theories%20long,cited%20in%20the%20business%20literature
12. Center for Self-Determination Theory (CSDT). (n.d.). The theory. selfdeterminationtheory.org. https://selfdeterminationtheory.org/the-theory/
13. The origins of employee engagement. (n.d.). Engagedly. https://engagedly.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Drivers_of_Employee_Engagement_New.pdf
14. Gatti, T. (2016). The Role of Psychological States in Predicting Work Engagement: A Test of Kahn's Model. Master's Theses. https://doi.org/10.31979/etd.vpzk-4c95
15. One more time: How do you motivate employees? (2003, January 1). Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2003/01/one-more-time-how-do-you-motivate-employees
16. Stone, K. (2023, December 2). The impact of employee engagement on productivity. Engagedly. https://engagedly.com/blog/impact-of-employee-engagement-on-productivity/
17. Exploring the benefits of employee recognition programs: Strategies and impacts. (2025, February 7). Maven Clinic - The next generation of care for women and families. https://www.mavenclinic.com/post/exploring-the-benefits-of-employee-recognition-programs-strategies-and-impacts?utm_source
18. Harvard Business Review. (2024, July 26). A Winning Approach to Employee Success. Quantum Workplace. https://www.quantumworkplace.com/winning-approach-to-employee-success
19. Engaged employees create better customer experiences. (2023, April 5). Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2023/04/engaged-employees-create-better-customer-experiences
20. Bakker, A. B., & Demerouti, E. (2007). The job demands‐resources model: State of the art. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 22(3), 309-328. https://doi.org/10.1108/02683940710733115
21. Psico-smart.com. (n.d.). The impact of continuous feedback tools on employee engagement and performance. Psicosmart. https://psico-smart.com/en/blogs/blog-the-impact-of-continuous-feedback-tools-on-employee-engagement-and-performance-172130?utm_source
22. Gallup says 88 trillion is the true cost of low employee engagement. (2024, July 16). Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/karadennison/2024/07/16/gallup-says-88-trillion-is-the-true-cost-of-low-employee-engagement/
23. Bell Let's Talk. (n.d.). Learn how Bell Let’s Talk is creating positive change in Canada. https://letstalk.bell.ca/