Believing In Performance

Leaders with foresight are always looking for ways to raise the profile of their companies and improve performance. On matters of engagement, however, trends show that the UK is slow to  incorporate people-centric policies and as a result, economies suffer nationally and individually for the companies concerned. Are we falling short on believing in ourselves these days?

Culture Amp, an American company, report in their 2025 survey results that, “People in Manufacturing were much more positive than average regarding Decision Making and Social Connections. On the lower side, people in Manufacturing had much lower favourable scores than average in Learning & Development.” Their findings reflect a higher level of engagement in the industrial sector than in other fields, with data drawn from 350 organisations over a 12-month period. 

People Insight, based in the UK, paint a different picture. They found that nearly 90% of employees are disengaged from their job, leaving the UK with the lowest engagement in Europe and costing the economy billions of pounds each year. However, there is hope for those who want to get ahead of the exponential curve, for “across hundreds of thousands of data points, we discovered 88% of employees care about the future of their company.”

With practical approaches to problem-solving and a technically-focused mindset, people in engineering should be enjoying a head start in creating a proactive, thriving culture even from a history of intense resistance. For as People Insight attest, “The benefits of employee engagement can’t be overlooked, with research showing  that highly-engaged businesses are 21% more profitable than those without an engaged workforce.”

Why should the UK be suffering such shortfalls in employee welfare? Knowing as we do that staff who are happy at their place of work outperform those who are not, what’s stopping UK companies from progressing their cultural health? Perhaps it’s the scope of application that makes the prospect daunting. Typically, aspects in need of address fall into the following categories;

• Employee Retention. Happiness at work translates into loyalty, so it follows that an engaged workforce stays engaged, and stays together.

• Autonomy and Flexibility. While the pandemic introduced remote working as a ‘new normal’, autonomy has long been recognised as a factor in workplace satisfaction. Micro-management and dictatorial techniques only serve to push people into corners from which they long to escape.

• Diversity and Inclusion. Often mentioned in mission statements and less frequently acted upon, D&I initiatives become increasingly important as a fluid job market continues to expand its cultural demands. 

• Recognition and Reward. Personnel commonly feel undervalued as the quality of their work goes unmentioned and their attempts to achieve excellence are ignored. This leads to a decrease in commitment and effort, in turn resulting in lower productivity and quality output.

• Innovation and Morale. People get bored with routine, even if they appear to want nothing more than to work to a pattern every day. Stimulus is important to prevent auto-pilot from causing errors and blockages in production flow, so an element of creativity is essential to engender vibrance and enthusiasm for innovative implementations.

Taking all these factors  into account, the scope of application may appear to be vast but in fact they are interconnected. One thing leads to another, as they say; more so when a collective is involved. In the mix of elements listed here you’ll find communication, collaboration, training and development, continuous improvement, proactivity and time-management to be naturally occurring ingredients that spring from the process of implementing an employee engagement strategy. 

Starting out may be a case of ‘feel the fear and do it anyway,’ but the road does not need to be rocky, it can be easily navigated and lead to endless treasures that only an engaged workforce can ever hope to find.

So start today, believing in your company, for as individuals or communities, we can never outperform our own beliefs.