It’s time to stop with the free lunches and yoga sessions – meaningful employee engagement is about truly listening and doing the right things for your people, with purpose.
Breaking free from tick-box culture means shifting from “What can we do for engagement?” to “What do our people actually need?”
When engagement efforts turn into a checklist of initiatives – annual surveys, mandatory team-building days, or surface-level wellbeing programs – it leads to what’s known as “tick-box culture.”
Tick-box culture creates a disconnect between HR teams, leadership, and employees – making even the best intentions feel disingenuous.
Research shows this disconnect is more common than we’d like to admit.
Gallup found that only 23% of employees globally feel engaged at work, despite companies spending billions on engagement programs each year.
For HR managers, this can be frustrating, especially when employees feel these efforts as hollow or performative.
So, how can you avoid tick-box culture?
In this article, we’ll explore the risks of superficial engagement, share actionable strategies to make engagement efforts meaningful, and provide insights on how to gain leadership buy-in for long-term success.
It’s time to move beyond the checklist and start building trust, connection, and genuine engagement in your workplace.
Low engagement costs the global economy $8.8 trillion dollars, or 9% of global GDP. 
Tick-box culture manifests when employee engagement becomes a process of checking off tasks for the sake of it – instead of truly connecting with people.
It’s when employee engagement initiatives are rolled out – not because they’re meaningful or because there is a goal in mind, but because HR teams simply feel like it’s something they should do.
At first glance, these efforts might look good on paper. But when they lack authenticity or follow-through, they can do more harm than good.
Your employees can tell when something’s just for show – and this can back-fire. Leading to feelings of distrust and disengagement.
After all, no one wants to feel like just another number in a system.
When engagement starts to feel like a checklist, employees quickly lose trust in your organisation and leadership.
They’ll see your efforts as superficial, which can make them feel undervalued or even ignored.
For HR managers, this creates a frustrating cycle of putting in work without seeing results.
And for organisations, it leads to a bigger problem – disengaged employees who are less productive, less motivated, and more likely to leave.
In our opinion, the quickest way to create an unhappy team is to ask your employees for feedback and then change nothing – there is nothing worse, and you’ll only damage workplace engagement.
Rolling out wellbeing initiatives that don’t reflect the team’s actual needs, like hosting yoga classes for a team struggling with workload pressures.
Leaders who claim to champion engagement but don’t follow through with visible actions or support create distrust in the workplace.
There are now up to five generations in each workplace. When you consider this alongside everyone’s personal beliefs, aspirations and wants you quickly realise what works for some people won’t work for others. Your approach to employee engagement needs to be flexible and holistic.
When employee engagement is done right, it has the power to completely change how a workplace feels and functions.
It creates an environment where people feel genuinely valued and motivated to give their best.
And the results? They’re huge.
Engaged employees don’t just get through their to-do lists – they go above and beyond because they actually care about the work they’re doing.
Teams that feel supported and connected are healthier and less likely to burnout.
And when employees feel like they belong, they’re far more likely to stick around, saving businesses the headache (and cost) of constant recruitment and retraining.
Wigan and Leigh College provides a real-world example of the benefits of genuine engagement.
By implementing regular pulse surveys with Stribe, they captured employee feedback and acted on it.
Their commitment to meaningful employee engagement led improved engagement scores, moving from ‘Very Good’ to ‘World Class’ within a year!
Creating genuine employee engagement requires moving beyond surface-level initiatives and focusing on meaningful actions that resonate with your team.
Here’s how to build a framework for authentic engagement and avoid tick-box culture:
Regularly gather employee feedback through surveys and use the insights to design initiatives that address specific challenges your employees face.
For example, if workload stress is a common issue, consider implementing flexible work arrangements or wellness programs that focus on stress management.
Without leadership buy-in, your employee engagement efforts will likely struggle.
So you need to share the benefits of employee engagement with leadership, emphasising how it leads to increased productivity, improved morale, and reduced turnover.
Highlighting that only 10% of UK employees are “actively engaged” at work underscores the need for change.
We mentioned this previously, but acting on the feedback you receive from employees cannot be emphasised enough – this is so important.
Even if it involves small changes or adjustments, it demonstrates that you are taking employee opinions seriously and that their input is valued.
In addition to this, you need to keep teams informed and regularly update employees on the progress of initiatives and any changes being made.
Transparency builds trust and keeps employees engaged in the process.
Want to know more about Stribe?
Starting out her early career as a journalist, Jade Madeley is an accomplished content writer with 8+ years’ experience across business, personal finance, SaaS, human resources and employee engagement. Working with Stribe, she crafts insightful content that brings complex HR topics to life and drives meaningful action.
