70% of the Fortune 500 companies rely on Willis Towers Watson's global organizational development practice to build engaged teams.
Culture Building
Employee Engagement Researcher
2013 to 2014
Inside some of the biggest companies in the world, hundreds of thousands of people showed up each day, each with unique perspectives about what is going well and what wears them down. That feeling shapes how committed people feel, how motivated they are, and how well a company performs. At that scale, truly understanding the drivers of engagement and developing strategies takes rigor.
Every company wanted something a little different, but the deeper need was the same. They wanted to learn what truly drives how people feel about their work and understand how that compares against other companies with the same question. Leaders did not want a vague read on morale. They wanted to know exactly where to focus, whether the scores were meaningfully different, and whether they were keeping up with the best.
Each work engagement study started by giving employees a clear, trustworthy way to share their perspectives. Then the question on everyone's mind needed to be answered: out of everything people said, which few things actually have the most impact on how they feel? Finding that signal inside the noise, alongside data scientists, is where the work was different from the rest. The rigor and precision of the research led to clear, practical recommendations leaders could act on, and a growing library of proven ideas for taking action.
Company after company acted on what employees said, focusing on the few things that would make the biggest difference. In a single year, the work reached dozens of major companies across nearly every industry, from Avon and Citizens Bank to US Foods, including a health system with 250,000 employees. Across all industries, insights revealed that empowered, enabled, and energized teams are the most engaged.
