A decade-long shift in what employees care about has tipped into a new era, according to fresh research from Perceptyx. Analyzing more than 20 million global responses to employee engagement surveys reveals that organizational stability and confidence in leadership, rather than feelings of belonging or being valued, are now the new drivers of engagement in 2025, the biggest shift in the firm’s 20-year benchmark history.
For a number of years, there was an obvious link between engagement and emotional and cultural issues. That’s no longer true. Today’s employees seem more concerned about whether they work for organizations that are well-led, agile, and set up for long-term success. These results point to employees, in an era of economic uncertainty, restructuring, and turmoil in the market for talent, rethinking engagement from a more strategic point of view.
“For close to a decade, the biggest drivers for engagement were emotional and culture-based,” said Brad Wilson, Global Head of Workforce Insights and Innovation for Perceptyx. “However, in 2025, what’s happening is that this has now shifted in the largest way that we’ve ever recorded. Instead of saying, ‘Do I feel valued?’ now it’s ‘Do I believe that this business is going to succeed and that I am going to succeed alongside it?’ In a period where things are uncertain and companies are reorganizing and markets for talent are shifting, people are now judging organizational stability and effectiveness.”
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Data reveals that “change is handled effectively in my company” is now the number one driver of engagement, achieving a record high, followed by confidence in senior leadership, which is now in second position, having not appeared in the previous list of drivers before 2021. Belongingness and sense of being valued, which appeared in first and second positions, respectively, have moved to the bottom of the list.
A deeper look indicates that engagement is most delicate during times of change, like layoffs or mergers. When employees believe that they make a meaningful contribution to the progress of the company or have a voice in company decisions, the results show a marked increase in levels of trust and engagement.
Perceptyx has rolled out a new Engagement Model that centers on four key dimensions: Pride, Advocacy, Intent to Stay, and Achievement. The goal of this framework is to give leaders better insights into what is going wrong in engagement and how to win back their confidence.
“Leaders are operating in a time of such trust-damaging performance, and trust is the currency of performance,” Wilson continues. “The Perceptyx Engagement Model enables organizations to specifically identify how trust is being eroded and what can be done about it.” The results illustrate that in a new paradigm, trust-building change leaders are poised to reap the greatest rewards in terms of unlocking top talent.
