When turbulence strikes — be it a pandemic, a supply-chain shock or a steep rise in living costs — engagement steers performance. While disengaged teams let change happen, engaged teams drive it, safeguarding customers and margins. This article examines how leading organisations kept their people motivated in the eye of the storm — and what you can learn from their examples.
What Does Disengagement Look Like — And Why Should You Care?
Disengagement seldom announces itself loudly. It lurks in quiet quitting, safety slips, chronic absenteeism and a rash of resignation letters. Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace shows global engagement sliding from 23% to 21% in 2024, with manager engagement dropping from 30% to 27%. When leaders seem listless or unmotivated, their teams often pick up on those cues — making apathy contagious and quick to spread.
Power dynamics can complicate matters. Colleagues should be equals, yet some behave as informal superiors — fuelling tension and infighting. These hidden hierarchies amplify risk when uncertainty is already high.
What Research Reveals About Engagement Under Pressure
Recent studies demonstrate how engagement holds — or collapses — when pressure mounts. The HOW Institute’s 2025 State of Moral Leadership in Business reveals that 95% of employees deem moral leadership indispensable, yet only 10% of chief executives and managers consistently embody it. That gap in lived values sets the stage for low morale.
Gallup’s 2024 State of the Global Workplace highlights that 70% of the variance in team engagement traces directly back to the line manager, and slipping manager morale helped drive global engagement down to 21% — wiping £323.682 billion from productivity.
The regional picture shows sizable headroom, too — only 65% of U.K. employees actively engage at work, placing the country in the bottom 39% worldwide, according to Culture Amp’s 2025 benchmark. An open feedback culture fuels resilience and sparks innovative problem-solving, surfacing ideas that would remain hidden in more siloed environments. In fact, a study shows that 80% of employees who receive constructive feedback tend to be more effective in their roles.
NHS: Holding the Line During Industrial Strife
When junior-doctor strikes loomed in early 2024, NHS England Chief Executive Amanda Pritchard wrote to every trust, reminding leaders that “there is no NHS without the people working in it.” That acknowledgement set the tone for a year in which engagement — not pay negotiations — became the fulcrum of stability.
Trusts rolled out self-rostering pilots that let clinicians trade or bank shifts weeks in advance, restoring a modicum of control over family life. More than 40 regional mental-health hubs opened, guaranteeing staff a counselling session within days rather than months. At the ward level, People Promise micro-recognition schemes flourished — digital thank-you cards, peer-nominated awards and even free parking during punishing rota blocks gave exhausted teams visible nudges of appreciation.
The pay dispute rumbled on, but the 2024 staff survey showed engagement holding steady and morale edging up in exemplar trusts — a feat many observers once considered improbable. Flexible time control and prompt well-being support proved more than sticking plasters — they became the cultural shock absorbers that kept patient care on track.
Tesco: Putting Money Where Morale Is
Grocery inflation hit double digits in 2023-2024, squeezing colleagues as hard as customers. Tesco’s response was blunt and public — “We’re investing in our people with a record pay increase and new well-being benefits,” said CEO Ken Murphy when the year-end results landed.
The headline move was an 8% hourly-pay rise, followed by an extra £500 annual store-discount allowance. The retailer layered on a My Tesco app so frontline staff could swap shifts in seconds, check payslips and tap mental health resources, while an on-demand GP service extended care to families. By treating disposable income and personal time as equally sacred, Tesco reframed benefits as crisis-era essentials rather than perks.
Unilever: Purpose as a Shock Absorber
Unilever CEO Hein Schumacher has kept discussing purpose even during volatile commodities and geopolitical flashpoints. “We’ve built more resilient supply chains, saved substantial costs and attracted great talent,” he said while outlining the company’s next sustainability era.
That rhetoric translated into action. Purpose workshops helped employees map personal values to household brands tackling water scarcity or plastic waste, while a time-banking scheme let staff trade bank holidays for volunteering. Fortnightly CEO blogs turned top-down messaging into a two-way dialogue, giving employees front-row seats to strategic debates. The lesson is stark — when employees feel their daily tasks improve bottom-line results, they stick around and push harder.
What Common Threads Connect Organisations That Thrived During Crises?
Note that none of these examples treated engagement as an HR side project. They called it risk management, with four trends emerging:
- Relentless communication
- Visible care for well-being
- Manager empowerment
- Fairness and purpose
Take a step back and ask yourself which of these threads is weakest in your organisation. What experiment could you run this quarter to strengthen it?
Tesco rolled out its My Tesco app not as a tech upgrade but as stories of colleagues being able to put dinner on the table. Pair that with an open feedback culture where people feel comfortable sharing criticism respectfully to create a safe space for innovative problem-solving. Creativity sparks and solutions surface when people voice their ideas without fear of repercussions. Encourage staff to share short “win stories” at meetings or on Slack, then watch discretionary effort bloom.
Forward Momentum
Uncertainty is the new normal, but the organisations above prove you can thrive when you put engagement at the heart of your crisis playbook. Whether you start with a listening session for first-line managers or implement an employee wellness initiative, act before the next shock wave hits.
Author: Eleanor Hecks – Editor-in-Chief of Designerly Magazine
Photo credit: StockCake
