In my leadership and coaching work, I find myself having conversations almost every day about engagement, or the lack of it within organisations, and how it can be improved. These conversations span both the executive team and those across the business, often including leaders themselves who feel increasingly frustrated by some of the behaviours they witness on a day-to-day basis.
Workforce engagement has become a hot topic across the boardroom and beyond, particularly as hybrid working practices have become the norm. While this shift has brought greater flexibility, it has also created new challenges for leaders in maintaining connection, consistency and a shared sense of engagement across their teams.
Ultimately, if your workforce is not working with you, your vision, goals and ambitions are unlikely to succeed. Organisations today rely not only on people completing tasks, but on their energy, ideas and commitment to the work they do. When that engagement is missing, it becomes much harder for organisations to innovate, collaborate and adapt to the challenges they face.
This is not just anecdotal. Global research highlights the scale of the challenge, with Gallup reporting that only 23% of employees worldwide are engaged at work. For many organisations, this raises an important question, if engagement matters so much, why is it proving so difficult to improve?
The rise of engagement initiatives – and reasons why they fail
In response to this challenge, many organisations have invested heavily in engagement initiatives. These often take the form of regular engagement surveys designed to capture employee sentiment, wellbeing programmes aimed at supporting mental health and resilience. I am seeing a regular review of flexible working policies, team-building activities and recognition schemes, all intended to strengthen connection and improve the overall employee engagement.
On the surface, these initiatives make sense. They signal intent, however, despite this significant investment, many leaders are still asking the same question, why is engagement not improving in the way we expected?
Engagement initiatives often fail because they focus first on business outcomes, rather than taking a step back to truly understand the sentiment within an organisation. While the overarching intent is often right, there is frequently a disconnect between what is being said at a strategic level and what is being experienced day-to-day.
It is these micro behaviours, how leaders communicate, listen, respond and engage with their teams, that ultimately shape how people feel at work. When these behaviours are not aligned with the stated ambition of putting people at the heart of culture and growth, they can quietly derail even the most well-intentioned initiatives.
So, what can leaders do to improve engagement in a way that creates real momentum across the business, where people are aligned, engaged and contributing to sustainable success?
The role of human-centric leadership and alignment
The answer lies not in introducing more initiatives, but in how culture is experienced on the ground. Human-centred leadership creates a people-first approach that is central to engagement and sustainable success. However, contrary to what many might assume, it does not come at the expense of commercial outcomes.
In fact, what I consistently see through my work is that individuals thrive in environments that combine collaboration, challenge and a strong commercial focus. When done well, this drives value for the business while strengthening engagement across the workforce.
At its simplest, human-centred leadership is about understanding that organisations do not deliver results, people do. It requires leaders to move beyond managing tasks and outputs, and instead focus on how individuals experience their work, their environment and the conversations they are part of.
At its heart, human-centred leadership draws on skills that are core to those used in coaching, where leaders take the time to ask better questions, listen more deeply and create space for others to think and contribute. Human-centred leaders take the time to understand what drives their people, where they are feeling stretched, and what may be getting in the way of them performing at their best. They recognise that engagement is not something that can be mandated, but something that is created through trust, clarity and meaningful interaction.
This is why it is so central to both engagement and sustainable success. When people feel heard, valued and understood, they are far more likely to contribute their ideas, take ownership and engage fully in the work they are doing. Over time, this creates a culture where people are not just delivering against expectations but actively contributing to the direction and success of the business.
Developing a commercial-coaching culture
Human-centred leadership is often positioned as something that sits purely within the people agenda, focused on culture, wellbeing or employee experience. However, in my experience, this is far from the full picture.
The skills that sit at the heart of human-centred leadership, listening, curiosity, understanding and meaningful conversation, are not just people skills, they are commercial skills. They are the skills that enable leaders to build stronger relationships, uncover real challenges, make better decisions and ultimately drive better outcomes for their teams, their clients and the business as a whole.
When leaders take the time to truly understand their people, they unlock higher levels of engagement. When they apply that same approach in their commercial conversations, they create deeper client relationships and more sustainable growth. This is where human-centred leadership moves beyond culture and becomes a critical driver of both the top and bottom line.
In my work, I describe five core components of HUMAN-first leadership that underpin a human AND commercial way of leading, from how you show up as a leader, to how you understand others, shape your mindset, act and adapt in the moment, and ultimately move conversations forward into meaningful action.
Reframing engagement initiatives
These are not abstract concepts, but a unified set of practical skills that leaders can apply every day. When developed consistently, they enable leaders to build stronger connections, create better conversations and drive outcomes that are both human and commercial. It is through these capabilities, and the micro behaviours that leaders demonstrate day to day, that engagement is shaped in practice.
In my view, what is needed is a reframing of engagement initiatives towards a focus creating a commercial-coaching culture across the business. An environment where individuals thrive through the micro human interactions that take place every day, combined with a clear commercial focus on where the business and team are heading.
It is this balance that creates engagement, energy and value across the business and ultimately drives sustainable success for all.
Helen Wada leads The Human Advantage®, a leadership development and executive coaching business, and is the author of HUMAN-WISE: How to lead from within and sell with confidence.
