Employee engagement has been the holy grail of workplace productivity for decades. It’s the topic of countless research papers, consulting frameworks, and corporate initiatives. Yet, despite the time and money funneled into engagement surveys and strategies, organizations are still struggling with retention, performance, and innovation. The problem? The widespread beliefs about employee engagement rest on shaky ground. We take leaps of faith in our understanding of engagement—leaps that are unsupported by real evidence.
Here are three key myths about employee engagement that need re-examining, along with a fresh perspective grounded in the People Energy Principle: A business is the conversion of people energy into economic value.
Leap #1: Social Proof = Legitimate Proof
We tend to assume that because something is widely believed, it must be true. This is the foundation of social proof—the idea that if many people agree on something, there must be legitimacy to it. However, social proof is merely a starting point, not definitive proof of truth.
Peter Thiel, in his discussions on consensus and truth, points out that when a belief is held by 79-80% of people, it’s a strong indicator of its validity. But when something is accepted by nearly 100%—as in environments like North Korea—there’s a good chance that it’s an enforced narrative rather than an independent truth. Thiel highlights a real disconnect between social proof and legitimate proof.
Employee engagement has reached a similar level of unquestioned consensus. We rarely stop to ask: Do we actually have hard evidence that engagement programs drive the outcomes we assume they do? Many organizations implement engagement initiatives simply because everyone else is doing it, rather than because they have examined the real impact on business results. Engagement programs need more than just widespread agreement; they need legitimate proof that they effectively convert people energy into economic value.
Leap #2: Correlation = Causation (When Repeated Often Enough)
One of the most insidious errors in business thinking is mistaking correlation for causation. Just because engaged employees tend to perform better does not mean engagement causes higher performance. It could be that high performers are simply more engaged because they naturally enjoy their work, or that companies with great business models and leadership tend to have both high engagement scores and strong financial performance.
Repetition compounds this problem. The more we hear something, the more we believe it—even if it was never proven in the first place. This is known as the illusory truth effect, a cognitive bias that makes repeated statements seem more credible, regardless of their factual accuracy.
This phenomenon is rampant in employee engagement discourse. The message that “engaged employees drive business success” has been echoed so often that it is now treated as an absolute truth that should not be questioned. But when we dig deeper, we see that the research often fails to control for alternative explanations, and that studies supporting this claim are often funded by firms selling engagement surveys. Instead of blindly accepting engagement as a business driver, we should be asking: What are the true levers of employee effectiveness and value creation?
Leap #3: Employee Engagement is Easily Understood and Measured
We measure engagement, but how? Surveying employees about their feelings toward work seems straightforward, but the methodology is fraught with problems. Do employees answer honestly? Are we measuring engagement at the right moments? Are we even asking the right questions?
Many engagement surveys capture superficial sentiment rather than deeper indicators of motivation, creativity, and discretionary effort. Moreover, because engagement scores often influence managerial performance reviews, employees may respond in ways that protect their interests rather than reflect reality.
A more useful approach is to shift the focus from engagement to people energy. Employee engagement is an abstract concept, but people energy is tangible. Energy manifests in the momentum, resilience, and innovative capacity that employees bring to their work. If a business is the conversion of people energy into economic value, then we should be measuring and optimizing how energy flows through an organization—not just how employees feel about their work on a given day.
A Better Way: Measuring People Energy with Tech-Enablement
Instead of relying on traditional engagement surveys, organizations can leverage advanced technologies to track and optimize people energy in real time. Here are some tech-enabled approaches:
- Behavioral Analytics: AI-powered tools can track digital collaboration patterns, project completion rates, and workflow efficiency to gauge real engagement beyond self-reported surveys.
- Wearable Technology: Devices that monitor movement, stress levels, and even heart rate variability can provide insights into employee well-being and sustained energy levels.
- Sentiment Analysis: Natural Language Processing (NLP) can analyze employee communications (emails, chat messages, and meetings) to assess tone, stress, and team cohesion.
- Decision-Making Speed and Agility: Tracking how quickly employees respond to changes, solve problems, and adapt to new challenges can indicate the actual flow of energy in the workplace.
- Predictive People Analytics: AI-driven models can forecast burnout risk, disengagement trends, and productivity bottlenecks, allowing proactive intervention before problems escalate.
These tools move beyond static engagement scores and focus on dynamic energy trends—giving leaders real-time visibility into how well their teams are functioning and what’s driving high performance.
The Path Forward
Employee engagement is not useless—it’s just misunderstood and overhyped. Businesses need to challenge their assumptions and stop relying on social proof, overhyped correlations, and shallow self-report measurement tools. Instead, we can focus on the true work of business: unleashing and harnessing people energy to create economic value.
By rethinking engagement through this lens and embracing tech-enabled measurement methods, companies can move beyond buzzwords and into meaningful action, creating environments where people and businesses thrive together. The future of work isn’t about better surveys or perks—it’s about energy, momentum, and purpose-driven value creation.