Every year, organisations invest considerable time, money and energy into understanding employee engagement.
We run surveys, analyse results, compare ourselves against benchmarks and present the findings to senior leaders. We look at what’s improved, what’s declined and where we sit compared to other organisations.
But how much are we really learning? And are we using that knowledge to make work better?
These were some of the questions at the heart of our recent People Lab webinar, Beyond the score: What the latest EX & EE evidence really tells us.
Drawing on findings from our 2026 Benchmarking Employee Experience and Engagement Report, we explored what the latest research is telling us, why interpreting engagement data isn’t always straightforward and what needs to change if we want to make a meaningful difference to people’s experiences at work.
Are we getting better at measuring work than improving it?
One of the biggest challenges isn’t necessarily gathering employee data. It’s knowing what to do with it.
We’ve become increasingly sophisticated in the way we collect and analyse feedback. Organisations have access to more surveys, listening tools, analytics platforms and data than ever before.
And with AI creating new possibilities for how we understand employee experience, that sophistication is only going to increase.
Yet the challenge of turning insight into meaningful change remains.
It’s something we’ve seen repeatedly in our work with organisations. Survey results are shared, priorities are agreed and action plans are developed, but the experiences employees have at work don’t always change in the ways we’d hoped.
During our webinar, we asked participants about their biggest challenges with engagement data. The responses reinforced something we’ve been talking about for years: getting from insight to meaningful action is often much harder than collecting the insight in the first place.
So, what’s getting in the way?
Are we asking the right questions? Do we really understand what’s driving the results? Are we involving employees in deciding what needs to change? And are we giving leaders and managers what they need to make a difference?
Perhaps it’s time to rethink not just how we measure engagement, but what we do next.
What if we started with the experience instead?
At People Lab, we’ve always advocated looking beyond engagement as an isolated outcome and focusing on the experiences that shape how people feel, behave and perform at work.
That means understanding what matters to employees, what helps them thrive and what gets in the way.
It also means recognising that improving employee experience is not simply an HR initiative or an annual action-planning exercise. It’s something that needs to be embedded in how organisations operate and how work happens every day.
This shift from measuring outcomes to understanding and intentionally designing better experiences was a central theme of our webinar.
We also explored what a more human-centred approach could look like in practice, how organisations can avoid some familiar traps when responding to survey results, and where AI might help us make better use of the insight available.
Where do we go from here?
We’re certainly not suggesting that organisations should stop measuring engagement or abandon benchmarking altogether.
But we do think there’s an opportunity to use these tools more effectively, moving beyond the pursuit of better scores towards a better understanding of what genuinely makes work better. Because ultimately, the question shouldn’t just be whether our engagement score has improved. It should be whether the experience of working in our organisation has improved, and how we know.
If you’d like to explore these questions in more detail, watch the recording of our recent webinar, Beyond the score: What the latest EX & EE evidence really tells us. We share the latest evidence, challenge some familiar assumptions and explore practical ways to move from measurement to meaningful improvement.
You can also download our 2026 Benchmarking Employee Experience and Engagement Report for a deeper look at the research and what it means for EX and EE professionals.
And there’s more to come. Over the coming weeks, we’ll be sharing further insights, practical tools and resources to help you turn employee insight into action, including a special edition of The Lab Report.
So if you haven’t already, join our mailing list to make sure you don’t miss it.
