Today more than 81% of employees report high levels of burnout and more than 25% of the U.S. workforce changes jobs each year. It’s a similar story in the rest of the world. A recent survey by a recruiter in the UK revealed that 40% of employees were poised to change jobs in 2024, a phenomenon driven by a combination of financial incentives and the pursuit of more flexible working conditions.

With labor shortages in almost every role, companies have to understand how to improve their people's engagement, enjoyment, and productivity. And while this is happening, employees are “acting out” by joining unions, protesting, and posting comments about their employers online. Understanding this environment is becoming a priority for many organizations around the world.

The history of EX goes back to industrial engineering and I/O psychology, often based on surveys. Surveys were a good idea in the 1930s and 1940s and carried on until the 1980s when people had less job mobility and job hopping was difficult. They were used to do annual “engagement surveys” often for benchmarking.

Then along came pulse surveys and more of a “listening strategy.” But even that falls short because nobody knows what questions to ask. Now we need to reverse the flow, let employees tell us what they see as opportunities for improvement, and open the aperture to suggestions about everything: benefits, management, productivity process improvements, product fixes, and more. That’s what we define as “employee activation.”