by Arielle Shipper

I just got off a call with a company looking to reduce attrition and increase engagement for a subset of 200 remote employees working outside of their main office hub. It wasn’t a particularly unusual call; I’ve been at Donut for six years, and over the last 2,190 days I’ve chatted with a LOT of customers. The amount of experience they’ve shared with me has been humbling, and the amount I’ve learned from them has been inspiring.

But (there’s a but!) there’s one conversation I’ve been having on repeat lately, with companies of all sizes from SMB to enterprise, and in all industries. It tends to go something like this:

“We’re having an engagement and retention problem that’s showing up on surveys we’re running. We think random virtual coffees could solve it. Can we just mandate that everyone in the company do a 15-minute coffee meeting once a month?”

In short, the answer is no. This kind of conversation is a great illustration of three big misconceptions about how employee engagement works:

1. The Silver Bullet Fallacy

I wish I had better news, but there’s no single, simple solution to boost engagement. In reality, disengagement and poor retention are multifaceted issues, and therefore the solutions need to be similarly complex and holistic.

Implementing random coffee chats without considering your specific context is like throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping it sticks — there’s a good chance it won’t address the real issue at hand.

2. The “Set It and Forget It” Mindset

There’s often a disconnect between how important companies claim employee engagement is and the resources they’re willing to invest. Effective programs need proper planning, implementation, and ongoing support.

HR teams with limited resources and competing priorities want solutions that require minimal effort and resources—and those options exist! But truly effective engagement strategies will need some amount of advance forethought and ongoing iteration.

3. The Opt-Out Trap

Forcing participation in employee engagement initiatives can backfire. If someone doesn’t want to participate, they’ll find a way to opt themselves out, which creates a poor experience for everyone else. Opt-in programs tend to be more successful because the people that are there want to invest. And truthfully? Relationship building requires some level of investment.

The Hard Truth About Employee Engagement

Those three big misconceptions make it easy to think you can fix a mosaic of issues by implementing one low-effort, low-resource program and forcing folks to see the value in it. But the hard truth about employee engagement is that your return is going to be correlated with the size of your investment. Tech solutions can influence that equation by lowering the barrier to entry and ongoing cost, but they can’t fundamentally change it.

If tech solutions make it easier to automate, amplify, and scale, then what does investment look like? Investment means creating thoughtful programming tailored towards your team’s specific needs and goals.

If you truly want to see a difference in your next engagement survey, here’s what you’ll need to invest besides tech:

• Resources: Time, budget, and headcount allocated to developing and maintaining initiatives. Resourcing programming doesn’t mean breaking the bank—you can develop creative and thoughtful programs for any budget and still have a major impact.
• Leadership efforts: Executives must champion engagement efforts and lead by example. Leadership may be short on time, but 15-20 minutes of meetings per month, a Slack post encouraging folks to participate, or a short testimonial during an all-team meeting can go a long way.
• Commitment to iteration: Your program can and should be informed by what you know about your team’s needs, but it’s rare to get it 100% right on the first go. You’ll need to regularly assess and refine your strategies based on feedback and results.
• A holistic approach: Address all journey touchpoints of the employee lifecycle, from recruitment to exit.

So, what does work?

True engagement isn’t achieved through a single, isolated initiative. It’s the result of a layered approach that touches every aspect of the employee experience. The teams that are actually changing the numbers on their employee engagement surveys are running programs like:

• Comprehensive new hire onboarding that emphasizes network building, incorporates cross-collaborative little wins projects, and builds a foundational understanding of company goals and values. Read more: Restaurant365 uses Donut to automate their comprehensive onboarding process that’s customized by role—and decreased admin time by 25%.

• Structured peer mentorship programs that create opportunities for employees to learn from and support one another in career growth.Read more: AppDirect facilitates their mentorship program with Donut, which increased engagement scores and got 90% positive feedback.

• Leadership connection opportunities that facilitate meetings between senior leaders and employees at all levels to break down hierarchical barriers. Read more: Okta ‘s CEO Todd McKinnon has used Donut to meet employees across the company, sparking “interesting and relevant” conversations.

• Intentional network building that breaks down silos and thoughtfully connects folks across regions, offices, or departments with purposeful conversation topics. Read more: Our report on the impact of belonging on team performance. 65% of workers agree they are more collaborative when they have relationships with coworkers, and 70% of Donut users find it easy to meet colleagues.

The Bottom Line

While random virtual coffees can (maybe even should!) be a part of your employee engagement strategy, they’re not a cure-all.

True engagement—the kind that keeps stellar employees at your company for the better part of a decade and gets them to recruit other awesome people they know—requires a commitment to building relationships and offering growth opportunities at every stage of the employee lifecycle, including new hire onboarding, peer mentorship programs and trainings, and helping make meaningful connections across your org.

If you’re sitting in a planning meeting and simultaneously hearing “We need to change these retention numbers” and “But do we have to actually invest in X?” I’d ask “Are we truly prioritizing fixing the problem? Or just looking for an easy fix?”