Awesome Employee Engagement

A curated list of the best resources about employee engagement for HR leaders, people operations professionals, and executives who want to measure and improve how connected their workforce feels to the work.

Inspired by awesome lists. Maintained by Rework.

Employee engagement isn't a soft metric. Gallup's research consistently shows that companies in the top quartile of engagement see 23% higher profitability, 43% less turnover, and 10% higher customer loyalty than those in the bottom quartile. And yet engagement dropped to just 21% globally in 2024. This list covers the research, tools, and frameworks that actually move the needle.

Contents

Articles

Books

  • First, Break All the Rules by Marcus Buckingham & Curt Coffman - Gallup's landmark research on the 12 questions that predict team performance and the manager behaviors that drive them.
  • Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel Pink - The science of intrinsic motivation: autonomy, mastery, and purpose as the real drivers of engagement.
  • The Employee Experience Advantage by Jacob Morgan - Research on how physical, technological, and cultural environments combine to create meaningful employee experiences.
  • An Everyone Culture by Robert Kegan & Lisa Laskow Lahey - How the most transformative organizations make development part of daily work, not a separate HR program.
  • The Power of Moments by Chip Heath & Dan Heath - How to create memorable, meaningful experiences that drive connection and loyalty in the workplace.

Videos & Talks

Tools & Software

  • Culture Amp - Employee feedback and people analytics platform used by 6,000+ companies for engagement measurement and action planning.
  • Glint - Microsoft Viva Glint provides real-time employee engagement insights integrated into the Microsoft 365 ecosystem.
  • Lattice - Connects engagement survey data with performance management and compensation to give a complete picture of the employee experience.
  • 15Five - Weekly check-in tool with pulse surveys and manager coaching prompts designed to surface issues before they become problems.
  • Leapsome - AI-powered HR platform that links engagement data to learning, performance, and compensation in one system.
  • Workday Peakon Employee Voice - Continuous listening platform that uses machine learning to surface engagement signals in real time.
  • Officevibe - Team-level engagement tool designed for managers, with weekly pulse questions and direct feedback features.

Templates & Frameworks

Case Studies & Real-World Examples

  • Microsoft - Deployed Microsoft Viva as an integrated employee experience platform across its own 220,000-person workforce before selling it externally. Internal data showed that teams using Viva Insights to track meeting load and focus time reported higher manager effectiveness scores and lower self-reported burnout. The rollout became a foundational case study for the "digital employee experience" category. Source

  • Barry-Wehmiller - A manufacturing conglomerate of 12,000+ employees that is widely studied in business schools for treating employee wellbeing as a core performance metric, not a nice-to-have. CEO Bob Chapman's "Truly Human Leadership" approach - including never laying off people for business downturns and measuring engagement at every acquisition - is documented in HBR and in his book Everybody Matters. The company has consistently reported engagement scores well above industry norms in manufacturing. Source

  • Gallup (Q12 Meta-Analysis) - Gallup's landmark meta-analysis of 276 organizations found that business units in the top quartile of engagement had 23% higher profitability, 43% lower turnover, 10% higher customer loyalty, and 66% higher wellbeing compared to bottom-quartile units. The Q12 survey that drives these results has been validated across 49 industries and 73 countries over 30+ years of data. Source

  • Salesforce - Built "Ohana" culture programs including equality groups, wellness reimbursements, and transparent pay equity audits into the core of its employee experience. During its high-growth years from 2015 to 2022, Salesforce consistently ranked in Fortune's 100 Best Companies to Work For, crediting structured engagement programs with lowering attrition in a hyper-competitive Salesforce talent market. Source

  • Spotify - Implemented a "Heartbeat" pulse survey system that measures squad-level engagement every six months, feeds directly to team leads, and drives local action planning without requiring central HR intervention. The model lets 10,000+ employees in 30 countries get meaningful feedback cycles without bureaucracy. Source

  • Southwest Airlines - Consistently cited as a top-quartile engagement employer in the airline industry, Southwest attributes much of its operational reliability and customer satisfaction to employee engagement practices: profit-sharing with all employees, frontline worker involvement in decision-making, and a culture where managers are trained to serve employees first. During the 2020 pandemic, Southwest avoided mass layoffs through voluntary separation and preserved employee trust measurably. Source

Communities & Newsletters

  • People Geek by Culture Amp - A global community for people operations professionals focused on data-driven approaches to culture and engagement.
  • SHRM HR Magazine - The leading publication for HR professionals with research and practical guidance on engagement programs.
  • Josh Bersin Academy - Research-driven learning community for HR leaders, with regular reports on engagement trends and best practices.

Rework Resources

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Contributing

Know a great resource that belongs on this list? Let us know.

This list is maintained by the Rework team. Resources are selected for evidence quality, practical applicability, and relevance to 2026 workforce realities.