Employee Engagement And Behaviour Change

Why understanding behaviour matters more than chasing scores

We talk a lot about engagement.

We measure it, chart it, dashboard it. We give it traffic lights and trend lines and quarterly commentaries. We wrap it up in action planning templates and send it out to people who are already too tired to read another bullet-pointed promise of change.

And yet, most people still don’t really know what it means. Not in a way that helps them act differently. Not in a way that connects with how work actually feels.

Engagement has become one of those words that sounds like it should be useful, but rarely is. It gets treated as a kind of loyalty metric — the workplace equivalent of “Are you enjoying your meal?” A good score makes the business feel reassured. A bad one creates a flurry of well-meaning concern and a burst of tactical activity that rarely sticks.

But engagement isn’t an outcome. It’s a signal. A hint that something deeper is working — or not. It’s not the fire. It’s the smoke.

If you only focus on the score, you miss the system. And when internal comms is built around protecting the signal rather than shifting the system, we end up trying to write our way around structural problems that aren’t ours to solve.

That’s why the more useful question isn’t “How engaged are people?” It’s “How are people behaving?”

Not what they ticked in a survey. Not what they typed into the free text box under “anything else to add.” What are they doing?

Are they solving problems without being asked?

Are they raising issues early?

Are they speaking up, sharing insight, pushing back when something doesn’t feel right?

Are they choosing to care — even when it would be easier not to?

That’s where engagement lives. Not in sentiment, but in decision-making. Not in scores, but in shared behaviour.

And this is where internal communication earns its place at the leadership table.

Because behaviour doesn’t just emerge from nowhere. It’s shaped by perception. And perception is shaped by communication.

People behave the way they do because of what they believe. And what they believe is influenced by what they see, hear, and feel around them. That means tone of voice matters. Language choices matter. Consistency matters. Credibility matters.

Too often, internal communication is treated as the last mile of a leadership idea. Once the decision is made, the plan is formed, the budget agreed — then the comms team is invited in to make it “land well.” But by that point, the conditions for behaviour change have already been set.

If you want to influence behaviour, you have to be there earlier. You have to be part of shaping how the change is framed, how it feels, and how people come to understand what’s expected of them — not just what’s being explained to them.

There’s a psychological truth here that comms people instinctively understand. People don’t act on logic alone. They act on salience — what stands out. They act on emotional cues — what feels right or wrong. And they act on social norms — what people like them are doing.

Which is why those beautifully written slide decks and rational emails don’t always lead to meaningful action. Behaviour doesn’t shift just because something is clear. It shifts when it feels real, and relevant, and emotionally safe to try.

This is where the best internal communication earns its reputation. Not because it sounds clever, or because it ticks compliance boxes, but because it creates space for people to behave differently. It makes something feel possible. It reflects the tone of a place that is serious about change, not just serious about saying the right things.

So if you’re trying to move the needle on engagement, start with behaviour. Look at what’s happening, not just what’s being said. Ask what communication is reinforcing — and what it’s quietly undermining.

The real work of internal comms is rarely about the newsletter. It’s about shifting the story people tell themselves about where they work, and why it matters, and whether it’s worth bringing their best to it.

Engagement isn’t the end goal. It’s a reflection. The real goal is trust. Confidence. Shared clarity. And a thousand everyday decisions that point in the same direction.

That’s what we’re here to support. Not just a better score next quarter, but better behaviour — day by day, choice by choice, word by word.