Employee Engagement Is Dead

Pretend engagement surveys don't exist. You can no longer ask your people to rate their level of agreement with statements like "my manager cares about me as a person." How would you know if your culture was working? You'd probably watch retention. You'd watch how fast new hires get productive. You'd watch whether your teams are actually shipping. You'd watch which conversations get had in your one-on-ones and which get avoided. You'd watch results. Which raises a question. If those signals would be enough to tell you the truth about your culture, why do you need the engagement score in the first place? The honest answer, often, is that the score is what you can put in the board deck. That's a reporting problem, worth solving on its own. Stop hanging the culture conversation on it.