Beyond Engagement: What Employee Listening Is Worth

Every leadership team eventually asks the same question about its people: Do they care? New Korn Ferry Institute research suggests leaders should also be asking a different, more challenging question: Are employees enabled to do the work?

The Korn Ferry Institute analyzed Korn Ferry Listen results from nearly 1.4 million employees, then followed 60 client organizations across multiple years to see what happened next. It is the largest study we have conducted linking Korn Ferry Listen results to business outcomes. Both engagement and enablement were significantly related to performance, retention, and revenue, with stronger relationships on average among organizations with longer listening histories.

Enablement Had the Closest Tie to Later Retention and Revenue

Engagement captures whether employees want to contribute. Enablement shows whether they have the tools, information, processes, and support to do so. The two are closely related, but they behaved differently against business outcomes.

Enablement showed the strongest relationship with both later retention and later revenue per employee. Engagement was also positively and significantly related to both, though somewhat weaker in each case. Organizations with longer listening histories showed stronger relationships across the board, consistent with listening creating value through repeated cycles of feedback and action rather than through a single survey.

Knowing whether employees can perform is at least as informative as knowing whether they want to.  

Manager Practices Had the Strongest Link to Individual Performance

Employees who reported a better experience at work were more likely to be rated top performers and about 22% more likely to receive an Exceeded Expectations rating.

Two of the strongest relationships were about the manager.  

• Employees who agreed that their immediate manager reviews their performance fairly had 2.12 times the odds of exceeding expectations.
• Those who agreed that their manager values their ideas and opinions had 1.99 times the odds.

Enablement, clear expectations, well-being, influence, and a supportive culture were the dimensions most consistently associated with higher performance ratings.

The Financial Scale Is Material

For an illustrative organization of 10,000 employees, a 10-point difference in enablement corresponds to roughly 242 fewer exits a year. Considering replacement costs, those exits could represent between $6.0 million and $24.2 million in avoided costs alone. This estimate captures only a portion of the broader costs associated with turnover. The range is a scenario, not a benchmark, and organizations can recalibrate it using their own turnover and cost data.

Listening also provides earlier warning than turnover data alone. In one Korn Ferry case study, 56% of employees who left within two years reported  in their most recent survey that they planned to leave, compared with 13% of those who stayed.

The Risk Sits with Employees Who Are Engaged but Not Enabled

Korn Ferry’s Engaged Performance™ framework describes employees who are highly engaged but poorly enabled as Frustrated. They believe in the organization and want to contribute, but structure, processes, or management practices get in their way.

These findings explain why that segment deserves attention. Frustrated employees are engaged, so leaders tend to assume they are secure. But they are not enabled, so they are at risk. The barriers in their way are often within leadership’s control: unclear decision rights, redundant approvals, information that does not reach the people who need it, and expectations that shift without explanation.

An organization that measures engagement alone cannot see this group. Measuring enablement alongside engagement turns listening from an annual read on sentiment into a view of where the organization is limiting its own performance.

What Leaders Can Do

Four actions follow from the findings:

1. Prioritize enablement barriers

Use listening data to identify where motivated employees lack the tools, information, clarity, or support to work effectively. Start with the Frustrated segment.

2. Treat listening as an early warning of retention risk

Pair intent-to-stay data with headcount forecasts, succession plans, compensation reviews, and critical-role analysis, and look beyond stated intent to the experiences that shape it.

3. Sustain listening and act visibly

A single survey diagnoses current conditions. Repeated cycles show whether they are improving. Set a cadence, name priorities, and tell employees what changed as a result.

4. Embed listening in the business rhythm

Connect survey findings to business reviews, workforce planning, and manager routines ensuring employee insight shapes how the organization operates, not only how it reports sentiment.

The organizations that get value from listening are not the ones that measure the most, but those that measure whether their people can do the work, and if not, remove the barriers in the way.

Read the full white paper: The Value of Employee Listening: Enablement as a Driver of Organizational Performance

Learn more about Korn Ferry Listen.