Engagement is not perks, it is whether people trust their leaders

Why engagement became a shopping problem

Engagement is one of the few strategic problems that arrives with a catalogue attached. When the score drops, there is an entire industry ready to sell you something that plausibly addresses it, and every option has the enormous advantage of being purchasable this quarter and visible immediately.

Fixing management is neither of those things. It is slow, it is uncomfortable, it implicates people who are in the room when the decision is made, and it produces nothing you can photograph for the intranet. So the budget goes to the benefit, the score does not move, and the following year the conclusion drawn is that the benefit was the wrong one.

None of which means perks are pointless. They are genuinely nice and they matter at the margin, particularly for recruitment. But they are hygiene: their absence is noticed and their presence is not. Nobody has ever stayed in a job they were miserable in because of the coffee, and nobody leaves a manager they trust because a competitor has better snacks.

What the 2026 data actually shows

The CIPD published its Good Work Index 2026 on 4 August, the ninth wave of its UK Working Lives survey with YouGov, covering 5,074 UK employees with fieldwork from December 2025 to February 2026. Two findings sit at the heart of it.

The first is a gap. 45% of employees say they are always or often enthusiastic about their job. Only 26% say they are always or often full of energy at work. Nearly twice as many people like the work as reliably have the energy for it, and that difference is not a motivation problem. You cannot incentivise someone into energy they do not have.

The second finding is the one worth taking to a board, because it explains the first. Among the 4,392 respondents who have a line manager, the scores fall into two very distinct groups.

• Treats me fairly: 78%. Respects me as a person: 77%. Is supportive if I have a problem: 75%. UK managers are, on the whole, decent to work for.
• Helps me perform well in my job: 59%. Supports my learning and development: 57%. Provides useful feedback on my work: 57%. Fewer than six in ten, on all three.

The CIPD states it plainly in the report: fewer than six in ten employees agree that their manager provides useful feedback, helps them perform well in their job or supports their learning and development.

That is the entire argument of this article in one table. The warmth questions score in the high seventies. The competence questions score in the high fifties. Being liked and being led have come apart, and it is the second one that people are actually assessing when they decide whether there is a future here.

Why the exit interview says there was no problem

This split explains something that confuses a lot of HR teams. Good people leave managers they genuinely liked, and the exit interview surfaces no complaint at all. They say the new role was a great opportunity, which is true, and everyone concludes there was nothing to be done.

What does not get said is that nothing was going to change if they stayed. Nobody had discussed where they were going. Nobody had told them the one habit holding them back. Nobody had removed the obstacle they mentioned twice. A manager can be kind, fair and supportive, and still leave a career completely unattended, and the person on the receiving end has no grievance to report because none of it was unkind.

There is a structural version of the same problem in the data. The CIPD found that 15% of employees who have a line manager never meet them at all to discuss performance, and nearly half of those (49%) said that was adequate. Both halves are striking. One in seven people has no recurring conversation with the person responsible for their development, and a good proportion of them have stopped expecting one.

Six habits, none of which require a budget

The encouraging part of all this is that the six weak scores are habits rather than personality traits, which means they are teachable. This is where workplace culture training earns its place: not as a values workshop for everybody, but as targeted work with the small population of people whose behaviour sets the weather for everyone else.

• Feedback within 48 hours. Specific, close to the event, about the work. Not saved for a review and not softened into uselessness.
• Ask where they are going. What do they want to be able to do in two years that they cannot do now? Then remember it and raise it unprompted.
• Remove one obstacle a fortnight. End every one to one with “what is in your way?”, then actually move something before the next one.
• Keep small promises. “I will check and come back to you by Thursday” beats “leave it with me”, because the second one is only on your list and is the whole of theirs.
• Name what was good, not that it was good. Specific recognition proves you looked. A scheme nominated quarterly does not.
• Meet at all. None of the above is possible without a recurring conversation, and one in seven people with a manager does not have one.

If you want what each of these gaps actually costs you, our leader’s guide to a culture people do not want to leave works through all six. It is also worth reading alongside the question of whether people can raise a problem at all, which is a matter of psychological safety at work and sits underneath every one of these habits.