How engaged are Australian employees?
Apparently, the answer could be 16%, 21% or 69%, depending on which research you open.
That does not mean someone has done the maths wrong. It means employee engagement research tools do not all measure the same thing.
ADP defines engagement as an emotional state that enables people to do their best work sustainably. ADP defines engagement as an emotional state that enables people to do their best work sustainably. Its 2025 Australian engagement research found that 16% of employees were fully engaged, down from 18% the previous year. Culture Amp currently reports that 69% of Australian employees are engaged, while Gallup places engagement across Australia and New Zealand at 21%.
These figures only become confusing when we treat them as competing answers to the same question.
For leaders, the more useful question is not, “Which engagement number is correct?”
It is:
What do we need to understand about our people, and which tool will help us understand it?
Some organisations need a clear benchmark. Others need to uncover what is driving disengagement, listen more regularly, understand different stages of the employee experience or determine whether the real problem sits within leadership and culture.
Before investing in another survey platform, start with the question you need answered.
Table of Contents
- 1. Culture Amp: What Is Driving Engagement?
- 2. Gallup Workplace: How Is Engagement Connected to Performance?
- 3. Qualtrics: What Is Happening Across the Employee Experience?
- 4. Workday Peakon: What Is Changing Right Now?
- 5. Microsoft Viva Glint: How Can Managers Listen and Respond?
- 6. Great Place To Work: How Much Do Employees Trust the Organisation?
- 7. Mercer Employee Experience: What If the Problem Is Bigger Than a Survey?
- Employee Engagement Research Tools Compared
- What Should Happen After the Engagement Survey?
- Choose the Question Before You Choose the Tool
1. Culture Amp: What Is Driving Engagement?
Culture Amp is a strong option for organisations that want to move beyond an overall score and understand what is influencing it.
Its current Australian employee engagement benchmark draws on approximately 16 million questions answered across 1,000 organisations between July 2025 and June 2026. It reports that 69% of Australian employees are engaged.
That number is useful, but the more interesting information sits underneath it.
Culture Amp identifies the workplace questions most closely associated with engagement. In its Australian benchmark, employees’ confidence in leaders and whether leaders demonstrate that people are important to the organisation are among the leading drivers.
Australian employees also scored comparatively lower in recognition, authenticity, collaboration and communication.
That gives leaders somewhere more useful to look than “morale”.
If the results point to recognition, the response might involve manager habits and how contributions are acknowledged. If collaboration is weak, the organisation can look more closely at silos, meeting practices and how teams work across functions. If confidence in leadership is low, another social event will not address the underlying issue.
Culture Amp is best suited to organisations that want:
Australian and industry benchmarks
analysis of the factors driving engagement
pulse, lifecycle and engagement surveys
reporting for HR, leaders and managers
action planning connected to survey findings
Its real value comes from helping an organisation decide where to focus. That only matters, however, if the organisation is prepared to respond visibly.
If employees complete a survey and hear nothing until the same questions arrive the following year, the research becomes a reporting exercise. Our guide to measuring whether culture change is actually happening explains why tracking action matters as much as collecting the original data.
Best for: Organisations that want to diagnose the specific drivers of engagement and track whether those drivers change.
2. Gallup Workplace: How Is Engagement Connected to Performance?
Gallup is the most established option for organisations that want a consistent engagement framework with a long history of workplace research behind it.
Its Q12 model focuses on 12 elements of the employee experience, including whether people understand what is expected of them, have the resources to do their work, receive recognition, feel cared about and have opportunities to develop.
This makes Gallup particularly useful when engagement needs to be discussed as a workplace performance issue rather than a measure of whether employees are generally happy.
According to the 2026 State of the Global Workplace data, 20% of employees globally were engaged in 2025. Engagement across Australia and New Zealand was 21%.
Again, this should not be compared directly with Culture Amp’s 69% as though one organisation must be wrong. Gallup uses a different method and threshold to classify employees as engaged.
Where Gallup becomes especially useful is in connecting engagement with business outcomes.
Its Q12 employee engagement meta-analysis covers more than 183,000 business and work units and approximately 3.35 million employees. When Gallup compared top-quartile and bottom-quartile business units, higher engagement was associated with outcomes including:
23% higher profitability
18% higher sales productivity
14% higher general productivity
10% higher customer loyalty or engagement
78% lower absenteeism
32% fewer quality defects
These are relationships across a large body of data, not a promise that every workplace will produce identical results. They do, however, give executive teams a much stronger reason to take engagement seriously.
Gallup is best suited to organisations that want:
a concise and validated engagement framework
long-term benchmarking
a clear connection between engagement and performance
manager development alongside measurement
engagement language that can be used consistently across the organisation
For leaders still sorting engagement from satisfaction, happiness and morale, our guide to understanding employee engagement provides a useful starting point.
Best for: Organisations that want a proven benchmark and a strong evidence base connecting engagement with workplace performance.
3. Qualtrics: What Is Happening Across the Employee Experience?
Not every engagement problem begins and ends with an annual survey.
An employee’s experience is shaped by hundreds of interactions, from recruitment and onboarding to development, promotion, organisational change and eventually departure. Qualtrics is designed for organisations that want to listen across that broader journey.
Its Employee Experience platform can bring together annual engagement surveys, pulse surveys and lifecycle feedback. Role-based dashboards also allow executives, HR teams and managers to see the information most relevant to them.
This is particularly useful in complex organisations.
A national workforce may include office-based teams, remote employees, frontline workers, new starters, experienced leaders and business units going through very different changes. One overall engagement score can conceal more than it reveals.
Qualtrics gives HR teams the flexibility to ask more specific questions:
Are new employees receiving the support they need during onboarding?
Has a major workplace change affected particular teams more than others?
Are employees leaving because of their manager, workload or development opportunities?
Do different parts of the organisation experience communication differently?
Where in the employee journey does confidence begin to fall?
The strength of Qualtrics is its depth and configurability. That is also where the challenge sits.
A smaller organisation that wants a straightforward pulse and a manageable action plan may not need its full capability. Larger organisations with dedicated people analytics, integration and governance requirements are more likely to use the platform well.
The goal is not to collect feedback at every possible touchpoint. It is to identify the moments that genuinely shape whether someone feels supported, connected and able to contribute. Our article on creating a more engaging employee experience explores what those moments can look like in practice.
Best for: Large or complex organisations that need flexible listening across the full employee journey.
4. Workday Peakon: What Is Changing Right Now?
An annual engagement survey can tell you what employees thought at one point in time. It may not tell you how a major change, new leader or difficult quarter is affecting people now.
Workday Peakon Employee Voice is designed around continuous listening.
Rather than relying only on a major annual survey, organisations can use shorter, more regular feedback to identify changes in sentiment, workload, leadership and team climate.
That cadence can help managers notice shifts earlier.
Perhaps one team’s confidence in leadership has fallen following a restructure. Another may be showing signs of workload pressure. A third may be struggling with communication after moving to a hybrid arrangement.
None of these issues will improve simply because they appear on a dashboard. Earlier visibility does, however, give leaders more time to ask questions and respond.
Workday Peakon is particularly well suited to organisations already using Workday. The platform can connect employee feedback with existing people systems and workflows, making it easier to place listening within the broader HR environment.
Its value depends heavily on manager capability.
Frequent surveys without frequent action can quickly create fatigue. Managers need to understand the results, discuss them with their teams and make it clear what can and cannot change.
That is closely connected to psychological safety in the workplace. Employees are more likely to share useful feedback when they believe it is safe to be honest and that honesty will be handled constructively.
Best for: Organisations that want continuous listening and already have the systems and manager capability to respond regularly.
5. Microsoft Viva Glint: How Can Managers Listen and Respond?
Microsoft Viva Glint is designed for organisation-wide employee listening, with surveys covering engagement, onboarding, exit, inclusion, transformation and other workplace moments.
Its practical appeal is strongest for organisations already operating within Microsoft 365.
Survey results, recommendations and action planning can sit closer to the digital tools managers already use, reducing the distance between receiving an engagement report and discussing it with a team.
That does not automatically guarantee action, but it removes one common excuse: that the findings are sitting in another system nobody opens.
Microsoft distinguishes Viva Glint from Viva Pulse. Glint is intended for broader, leadership-led listening programs, while Viva Pulse supports quicker feedback within individual teams.
That makes Viva Glint useful for organisations asking questions such as:
How is the workforce responding to a new strategy?
Which engagement drivers need leadership attention?
Are employees experiencing organisational change consistently?
What should managers discuss with their teams?
Are actions being followed through after the survey?
Its strongest fit is an organisation that already uses Microsoft 365 and wants employee listening to connect with familiar workflows.
The risk is assuming that integration will create adoption by itself. Managers still need time, confidence and clear expectations around what to do with the information.
This matters because the cost of employee disengagement is not caused by a lack of dashboards. It grows when the workplace conditions behind disengagement remain unchanged.
Best for: Microsoft-based organisations that want enterprise listening connected to familiar tools and manager workflows.
6. Great Place To Work: How Much Do Employees Trust the Organisation?
Great Place To Work sits in a slightly different category because it combines employee research, benchmarking and public certification.
Its Trust Index survey measures five dimensions of workplace culture:
credibility
respect
fairness
pride
belonging
Organisations that meet the required benchmark can achieve Great Place To Work Certification and may become eligible for Best Workplaces lists.
That public recognition can be valuable. It can strengthen employer branding, give employees something to celebrate and provide candidates with an external signal about the workplace.
But certification should not become the only objective.
The Trust Index is most useful when leaders look past the badge and examine what employees are actually saying about trust, fairness, leadership and their day-to-day experience.
A strong overall result may still contain important differences between teams. A lower result may give the organisation the clarity it needs to address long-standing issues.
Great Place To Work is best suited to organisations that want:
a recognised trust and culture framework
a straightforward employee survey
external benchmarking
certification and employer-brand opportunities
a clear story that can be communicated internally and externally
The question to ask before choosing it is whether the organisation primarily needs recognition, diagnosis or both.
Best for: Organisations that want to measure workplace trust while also pursuing recognised certification and employer-brand value.
7. Mercer Employee Experience: What If the Problem Is Bigger Than a Survey?
Sometimes an organisation already has plenty of employee data. The challenge is working out what it means and what to do with it.
Mercer combines employee listening tools with strategic support, helping organisations design their research, interpret workforce feedback and turn the findings into practical priorities.
Its employee listening services can include annual engagement surveys, shorter pulse surveys, feedback across important stages of the employee journey and research into what employees value most.
This makes Mercer useful when an organisation needs to answer broader questions such as:
What is really driving disengagement across our workforce?
How is organisational change affecting different teams?
Are employees experiencing our culture in the way leaders think they are?
Which workplace issues need attention first?
How do we turn all this employee feedback into a clear plan?
Mercer can work with different survey technologies, including existing systems, so organisations do not necessarily need to replace their current platform. The focus is on creating a listening strategy that connects the right questions with useful decisions.
This is particularly valuable for larger organisations where engagement sits alongside broader challenges involving leadership, culture, transformation and the employee experience.
Best for: Organisations that have plenty of workforce information but need help turning it into clear priorities and action.
Employee Engagement Research Tools Compared
| Research tool | The question it answers | Best suited to | Main strength |
|---|---|---|---|
| Culture Amp | What is driving engagement? | Organisations seeking diagnosis and Australian benchmarks | Driver analysis and local benchmarking |
| Gallup Workplace | How is engagement connected to performance? | Organisations wanting a validated, long-term framework | Extensive research and the Q12 model |
| Qualtrics Employee Experience | What is happening across the employee journey? | Large and complex organisations | Flexible lifecycle and enterprise listening |
| Workday Peakon Employee Voice | What is changing right now? | Workday organisations seeking continuous listening | Frequent feedback and manager insights |
| Microsoft Viva Glint | How can managers listen and respond? | Microsoft 365 organisations | Enterprise listening within familiar workflows |
| Great Place To Work | How much do employees trust the organisation? | Organisations pursuing culture recognition | Trust Index benchmarking and certification |
| Mercer Employee Experience | What if the problem is bigger than a survey? | Organisations needing strategic and consulting support | Listening strategy and transformation advice |
The comparison should begin with the workplace question, not the list of product features.
A highly configurable enterprise platform is not automatically the best choice for a 100-person organisation. A recognised certification program may not provide enough detail for a complex restructure. Continuous listening is not useful if managers do not have the capacity to respond continuously.
Choose the tool that matches the decision you need to make.
What Should Happen After the Engagement Survey?
Collecting the data is the beginning of the work, not the end.
Employees have taken the time to explain what is helping or hindering their experience. What happens next will influence whether they take the following survey seriously.
A useful response follows five stages.
1. Listen
Start by understanding what the data says without rushing to defend the result.
Look beyond the organisation-wide score. Examine differences between teams, roles, locations and stages of the employee experience. Read comments for context and give managers a chance to discuss the findings with their people.
2. Identify the Real Barrier
An engagement score is a signal, not a diagnosis.
Low engagement may be connected to:
workload
pay
recognition
leadership confidence
limited development
poor communication
unclear expectations
weak collaboration
lack of connection or belonging
The response needs to match the barrier.
Reward Gateway’s 2025 Workplace Engagement Index found that one in two Australian employees had considered leaving during the previous six months. The leading reasons included overwork at 37%, poor pay at 35% and lack of recognition at 31%.
Those findings require different responses. A remuneration problem needs a remuneration conversation. An unreasonable workload needs work redesign or resourcing. A recognition problem requires leaders and managers to change what they notice and acknowledge.
3. Make the Organisational Changes
This is where trust is either strengthened or lost.
If employees identify a structural problem, leaders need to explain what will change, what will not change and why. Silence invites people to assume the survey disappeared into a report.
Not every request can be implemented. Employees are more likely to accept that when leaders acknowledge the feedback and explain the decision honestly.
Culture Amp’s Australian benchmark shows why follow-through matters. Its lowest-scoring area was Action, including whether organisations respond when someone is not delivering in their role. The same benchmark found that 20% of Australian employees were thinking about or actively seeking work elsewhere.
People are watching what leaders do with the information, not merely whether they asked for it.
4. Build the Team Experience That Supports the Change
Once structural issues are being addressed, leaders can look at what the team needs to experience together.
If the research identifies weak collaboration, teams may need an opportunity to work across silos and solve something together.
If connection is low, they may benefit from a shared experience that creates new conversations and relationships.
If confidence has fallen after a period of change, the priority may be rebuilding trust and shared momentum.
This is where play-based team building can support the wider engagement strategy. It gives people an opportunity to practise communication, collaboration, problem-solving and trust, rather than simply discussing those behaviours.
The objective needs to be clear.
A team experience should not be positioned as the solution to pay, workload or poor leadership. It should be designed around a workplace outcome it can genuinely influence, such as connection, communication, collaboration or shared momentum.
5. Measure What Changed
Return to the original problem and look for evidence of movement.
That might involve another engagement pulse, manager observations, team feedback, retention data or measures linked to the specific objective.
Gallup’s research shows how closely feedback and recognition can work together. When employees received both weekly feedback and recognition, 61% were engaged, compared with 38% among those who received weekly feedback but less frequent recognition. The findings are explored in Gallup’s research on why employee feedback should include recognition.
For organisations building a broader measurement approach, this guide to data analytics strategies covers areas including KPI frameworks, real-time monitoring, cohort analysis and experimentation.
The goal is not to prove that every action worked perfectly. It is to learn what changed, what did not and what the organisation needs to do next.
Choose the Question Before You Choose the Tool
The best employee engagement research tool is not the one with the longest feature list.
It is the one that helps your organisation answer a meaningful question and make a better decision.
Culture Amp can help identify engagement drivers. Gallup can connect engagement with performance. Qualtrics can examine the wider employee journey. Workday Peakon can detect changes more frequently. Microsoft Viva Glint can bring listening closer to everyday workflows. Great Place To Work can measure trust and support certification. Mercer can help when the organisation needs a broader listening and transformation strategy.
But no platform can take the next step for you.
The value of employee engagement research is created when leaders listen carefully, act visibly and design workplace experiences that respond to what their people actually need.
The survey shows you where to look.
What happens next determines whether anything changes.
Corporate Challenge Events designs play-based team building that gives HR and People & Culture teams a practical way to strengthen connection, communication and collaboration around a clear workplace goal. For conference, charity, Christmas and culture-focused programs, visit Corporate Challenge Events to see how structured team experiences can support the engagement work already happening inside the organisation.
