10 employee engagement strategies to boost productivity in 2025

Employee engagement is a critical factor for organisational success. Engaged employees are more productive, dinnovative, and loyal, contributing significantly to a company’s bottom line. As we step into 2025, HR professionals and business leaders must stay ahead of the curve. There’s always room to innovate and improve.

This article collates 10 fresh employee engagement tips based on proven effectiveness. At the highest level, none of these ideas are new. Many organisations will have these things in place to some extent. Yet there is always room to review and improve what you’re doing, and it doesn’t need to be a lot of work. Draw inspiration from leading organisations and tailor these practices to suit your unique culture and work environment; try something new this year.

1. Elevate purpose-driven work

Tip: Align company goals with social or environmental causes to give employees a greater sense of purpose beyond the paycheck. Share updates on how you’re helping the cause in terms of numbers and dollar amounts to keep people invested. Share how you’re extending your purpose-driven work with customers and stakeholders to align them better.
Example: Patagonia, an outdoor clothing company, implements a self-imposed Earth tax, ‘1% for the Planet’, which provides support to environmental nonprofits working to defend Australia’s air, land and water around the globe. They also give grants to grassroots environmental groups, which are organisations that identify the root causes of environmental problems and approach issues with a commitment to long-term change. These initiatives help to cultivate a greater sense of purpose outside of the individual, the team and even the organisation.

2. Craft a memorable onboarding experience

Tip: Ensure new hires feel welcomed, valued, and well-prepared by providing a comprehensive and engaging onboarding process. Ensure there is a clear path mapped out as to what their first day, week, month, and even first few months will look like. Who do they need to meet with? What tasks can they default to when they have some downtime? Whom do they go to with questions? What are the expectations for learning and training in the initial onboarding phase? Introduce them to your culture with fun and engaging activities that help them to get to know the team and the organisation.
Example: Google has a renowned onboarding process. The process includes the new hire’s receipt of the infamous Noogler beanie (with a motorised propeller) and attendance at the Mountain View all-Noogler TGIF meetings, where the founders “just come in and make some dad jokes”. These zany and unique aspects quickly introduce the culture of the organisation and invite the new hire to become a part of it. While these aspects are important, the introduction of the simple yet impactful “just in time” checklist has seen an increase in Google’s onboarding results by 25%. The checklist is sent to the manager of the new hire the day before their first day. It outlines five tasks for the manager to execute: discuss roles and responsibilities, match the new hire with a peer buddy, help the new hire build a social network, set up employee onboarding check-ins once a month for the new hire’s first six months, and encourage open dialogue. This email goes directly to the manager only, creating a sense of responsibility and accountability for supporting the new hire.

3. Lead with transparency and openness

Tip: Share company updates, challenges, and goals openly with employees to build trust and alignment. As leaders, be visible and connect regularly with your people. Be authentic, open, and vulnerable. Show understanding and empathy. Be honest when you don’t get something right. Don’t separate work and emotion; emotion builds connection.
Example: Buffer, a social media management platform, holds monthly “all-hands” meetings where leadership shares company performance metrics, successes, and challenges. Employees can ask questions directly to the leadership team, helping build transparency and trust. The company embraces what is unique to them and makes the meeting fun and inclusive, encouraging visits from pets, babies and other family members.

4. Encourage flexible work options

Tip: Provide employees with flexible work hours, hybrid models, or remote work opportunities to support work-life balance while balancing the requirements of the organisation. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, flexible work practices have become an expectation, not a nice to have. Make sure to have a policy that reflects the needs of the organisation as well as the expectations of your people (including those you hope to attract).
Example: Salesforce introduced Return & Remote guidelines, which empower leaders to make decisions for their teams about how and where they work, with consideration for clear and consistent guidelines applied across the company. Depending on the individual and team’s role, the guidelines outline specific in-person and remote work options. The result is a win-win — employees can continue to lead with flexibility, and leaders can increase efficiency and productivity.

5. Offer personalised learning and development

Tip: Invest in career and professional development plans and tailored training programs to support the unique career goals of your employees. Personal and professional development is an integral part of employee engagement. People want to learn and grow. Ensure structure and consistency in what is applied, with an emphasis from leadership on its importance. Plans must include meaningful discussions between managers and direct reports, incorporating feedback development discussions.
Example: Cigna, a global health service company, invests significantly in the professional growth of its employees, removing top-down initiatives and focusing more on self-motivated and self-initiated learning, with an emphasis on personalised goal-setting. Cigna’s personalised learning platform, Learning Academy, facilitates employee self-assessments to determine their strengths and weaknesses. Based on the results, the Academy highlights essential topics to support employee growth, with these suggestions reinforced through regular one-on-one career conversations between managers and employees.

6. Prioritise mental health and wellbeing

Tip: Elevate discussions on mental health and wellbeing, provide helpful resources and incorporate mental health support programs such as counselling, stress management workshops and mental health days off.
Example: Unilever, a consumer goods company, outlines a specific mission for its employee health and wellbeing. Its mission is to ‘add healthy years to the lives of our people, unlocking untapped human potential for our business and our world’. Unilever’s Wellbeing Framework is at the heart of its business, underpinning everything it does. The Framework outlines four key pillars for supporting employees: Purposeful, Mental, Emotional and Physical. Specific initiatives include a global community of trained mental health champions (providing coordinated peer-to-peer support), regular 20-30 minute facilitated mindfulness sessions, Team Energy Assessment resources (to facilitate group-wide assessment of energy levels), and access to periodic health surveillance programmes.

7. Consider different approaches to mentoring

Tip: Don’t get too stuck in the conventional ideas of mentorship programs, which can be resource-intensive and challenging to coordinate and embed. Consider different models, platforms and modes of delivery to embed mentorship as business-as-usual.
Example: PwC China’s Deals Reverse Mentoring programme is overcoming generational differences by pairing senior and junior staff to open their minds, build new skills and foster greater inclusion. The program flips conventional views of mentorship on its head, with the more junior member of staff being the mentor and the more senior member of staff the mentee. The six-month program aims to build stronger relationships, expand networks, bridge generational gaps, inspire new ideas and reimagine ways of working.

8. Promote and embed regular feedback and recognition

Tip: Implement continuous feedback systems (not just annual reviews) and public recognition to show employees their value. Make it meaningful and fun. Encourage feedback and recognition from leaders to employees, employees to leaders and peer-to-peer. Over time, this becomes part of the culture and the way you work.
Example: Zappos, an online retailer, embeds a culture of frequent feedback, with support from a web-based tool, which provides an easy way for employees to get feedback from their peers regarding their impact, trustworthiness, strengths, and weaknesses. The organisation also encourages and facilitates real-time feedback through weekly team huddle meetings, or “Zuddles.” The goal is to help individuals and teams reflect on their wins and losses in the last week. They also have a Coworker Bonus Program, where employees have $50 each month to allocate to a peer. Employees recognise their coworkers by describing the great work they did and how it relates to the organisation’s 10 core values.

9. Foster understanding and commitment to inclusivity and diversity

Tip: Ensure open and frequent dialogue on the importance of diversity and inclusion and implement programs and practices that create an inclusive and diverse workplace. Ask employees how they want to celebrate and recognise diversity across the organisation and implement a calendar of events. Just like you do regular mandatory IT or other training, implement regular D&I training, which draws infinite resources available.
Example: Microsoft promotes the critical importance of diversity and inclusion to the success of its business. Microsoft has established a Diversity & Inclusion task force, which focuses on driving systemic and sustainable change for more diverse and inclusive companies and industries. They started hosting and sharing monthly “Diversity Dialogues” where they speak with academics and thought leaders from outside of Microsoft to bring about more significant learning, understanding and engagement on the topic of D&I. Microsoft’s Inclusion Journey brings together learning, storytelling, and thought leadership content in one place, to elevate and enhance its focus on D&I, as well as to facilitate easy access for others to join the journey.

10. Promote work-life integration, not just balance

Tip: Encourage employees to integrate personal passions with their workday through initiatives that cater to both personal and professional growth. These initiatives touch on numerous employee engagement levers, aligning and enhancing purpose, elevating mastery, and fostering relationships by sharing knowledge and building connections.
Example: Accenture, a global consultancy firm, introduced a “Passion Project” program, where employees are encouraged to dedicate up to 10% of their work hours to a personal project they are passionate about (e.g., learning a new language or writing a book).

As you reflect on these strategies, remember that engagement is an ongoing journey. Even small changes can make a significant impact. We suggest you choose one or two ideas to start with and see where they take you in 2025.

How Insync can help with employee engagement

At Insync, we understand that employee engagement is a cornerstone of organisational success. With decades of experience working alongside businesses to elevate their people strategies, we’ve developed tailored solutions to help organisations like yours create more engaged, productive, and loyal teams.

Our approach is collaborative and grounded in evidence. Whether it’s through insightful engagement surveys, innovative workshops, or leadership programs, we help you uncover meaningful data and practical insights to drive change. We don’t just hand over a report; we guide you in translating those findings into action, ensuring lasting improvements that align with your unique goals and culture.

10 employee engagement strategies to boost productivity in 2025