Is it time to rethink how you measure engagement and growth?

Against a backdrop of AI disruption, career uncertainty and wider global change, the discussion looked at why traditional engagement surveys no longer provide enough insight into what employees need to develop, navigate change and build meaningful careers.

The session was led by Catherine Debray, Principal Consultant, together with Jon Matthews, CEO, from The Career Innovation Company. Drawing on our Career Pulse research, Catherine explored what more than 24,000 employee responses reveal about career growth, satisfaction and future readiness, and why looking beyond headline engagement scores can help organisations identify the conditions that enable people to thrive.

Look beyond the engagement scores.

A central question emerged throughout the discussion: when measuring engagement scores, are organisations really measuring the factors that help people to feel they are building a future with them?

Employee engagement surveys are still valuable to organisations. They remain an important way to listen at scale, identify trends and benchmark performance. However, given increasing uncertainty and change, broad engagement measures may not explain why – or even whether – employees feel optimistic, motivated or committed to their future.

Recent external research illustrates the changing landscape. According to Gallup and several other research organisations, global engagement continues to decline, while concerns about future-ready skills, AI disruption and career uncertainty have increased.

Traditional survey questions often do not explain these underlying causes. Lower scores reflect limited visibility of opportunities, reduced confidence, poor manager conversations, lack of career networks, perceptions of unfairness or uncertainty about the future. Understanding these underlying factors has become more important as organisations seek to improve both engagement and adaptability.

At the same time, employees have become more cautious, with many choosing stability over mobility. The result is that strong retention figures may not necessarily indicate an engaged workforce. In short, lower engagement plus lower mobility may look like retention to employers – but feel like inertia to employees. Organisations are seeing people remain in post in body, rather than in spirit.

Measuring career growth differently

Career Pulse, Career Innovation’s skills assessment measuring career growth, career satisfaction and future readiness, is designed to look at this underlying picture. More than 30,000 people have completed Career Pulse since 2011, with the latest research analysing approximately 24,000 responses collected between 2018 and 2025.

Unlike traditional engagement surveys, Career Pulse combines perceptions with behaviour. It looks at how people feel about their careers but also what they are actively doing to develop, adapt and prepare for future opportunities. It’s built around our seven career skills – with the dataset identifying three of these skills as most strongly associated with career satisfaction:

• Build your Network – access to career support, sponsorship and opportunity
• Know Yourself – understanding strengths, values and personal contribution
• Stretch Yourself – seeking experiences that develop confidence and capability

The data gives organisations richer insight into the complexities of career readiness. For example, it is perfectly possible for employees to appear engaged, while simultaneously feeling uncertain, underprepared or unable to move forward. And digging deeper helps identify whether people have the skills, confidence, relationships and organisational support needed to build career momentum.

While the research identifies associations rather than direct causation, the findings provide organisations with a more practical way of understanding what sits beneath employee perceptions of career growth.

Creating the conditions for career confidence

One of the strongest messages from the session was that career ownership is not solely in the hands of individuals. While employees play a key role in managing their own careers, organisations need to create the conditions that enable them to act.

The research highlighted five steps that consistently support career growth:

• Making opportunities visible and accessible
• Providing access to career support and networks
• Equipping managers to guide career conversations
• Creating stretch through meaningful work and experiences
• Building confidence that career opportunities are fair and transparent

The importance of adaptation

The discussion also highlighted an important finding around adaptability. The career skill “Adapt to Change” remained the highest-scoring career skill across the dataset, suggesting that many employees still see themselves as capable of responding to change.

However, scores declined significantly during 2022 and 2023 before partially recovering, indicating that while people may retain the capability to adapt, sustaining the energy to do so repeatedly has become more challenging. 

This finding has relevance as organisations respond to AI-driven transformation. Rather than measuring AI readiness directly, it is important to highlight the broader capabilities that support successful adaptation, including self-awareness, opportunity spotting, learning through stretch experiences and building supportive networks.

Our view

The evidence shows us that the question is not just: “Are people engaged?”

But: “Do people feel able to build a future here?”

Our research suggests that while engagement surveys remain an important part of the employee insight toolkit, they are only the starting point. To know whether employees feel able to build a future within their organisation, leaders need to look beyond overall engagement scores towards the career confidence, behaviours, relationships and organisational conditions that enable people to continue growing through change.

Furthermore, career development is no longer simply an HR initiative. It has become a strategic lever for strengthening engagement, adaptability, internal mobility and organisational resilience. By looking beyond how employees feel today and understanding what enables them to build confidence in their future, organisations can develop places where people continue to learn, grow and contribute through periods of constant change.

Engagement surveys can show that growth matters. Career insight helps explain what kind of growth support people need.