After peaking in 2023, employee engagement has declined for two years in a row, and looks set to fall again in 2026. The reasons for this malaise are…well, just look around. We’re not exactly living in the most joyous and carefree of times. The rising cost of everything, a stagnant job market, and a worrying future have a lot of American workers feeling trapped and hopeless. These aren’t the conditions that enable people to do their best.
Normally, when people start to disengage emotionally from their job, they go looking for a new one: a new challenge, a fresh start. But that’s not an option for many workers. The way to get employees engaged again is to bring that same feeling to their current job. The answer to fixing these engagement issues may lie in your CRM.
Why Employees Disengage
There are a number of factors that influence employee engagement. Some of them, like family or social life, are largely beyond an employer’s ability to influence, though creating a welcoming, safe environment can help employees feel a little more relaxed and secure at work.
Other factors that influence engagement arise, intentionally or unintentionally, from workplaces processes (or the absence of clear processes). Lack of support from superiors is a leading factor. The cliché “people don’t quit jobs, they quit managers” is a cliché because it’s true. Similarly, employees disengage when their contributions to company success go unrecognized or their suggestions for improving the workplace fall on deaf ears. Other employees lose interest in their jobs when they are not given the opportunity to grow. Personal growth at work might take the form of promotions, but not always. Expanded knowledge and expanded responsibility through professional development programs keep employees engaged. When we’re not learning and growing—when we’re stagnating—we become disenchanted and just go through the motions.
These factors (lack of support, lack of recognition, lack of growth opportunities) all lie within the remit of HR. The challenge is collecting data on employee engagement levels, diagnosing which of these reasons is behind disengagement, and successfully implementing the right solutions.
The Role of CRM
Though it’s called a customer relationship management system, CRM has evolved quite a bit since its introduction as a “digital rolodex.” If you’re just using it to store customer information, you’re missing out on some of its more powerful features. CRM is a way of doing business that brings sales and marketing into alignment in service of the customer. Modern smart CRM systems can do even more than that, giving your HR department insight into sales, marketing, and operations productivity, capacity, and engagement, helping you identify what’s working and what’s not in employee engagement. This holistic approach to human resources enables a customer-centric culture in which each department stays focused on serving the customer the best possible experience.
Here are some of the ways CRM can support an employee engagement initiative.
Time Tracking and Capacity: See who is overwhelmed and who is being underutilized. Employees with both too much and too little on their plate can become disengaged. A CRM shows you how employees are spending their time, where more help is needed, and where that help can come from.
Skills Management: Learning is an ongoing process. Onboarding helps new employees integrate into a new workplace. Training teaches them the day-to-day processes of their role. Professional development keeps those skills sharp and up-to-date. All three are typically managed through a learning management system (LMS).
When you integrate your LMS with your CRM, you put customer data and needs at the center of your onboarding, training, and professional development programs. Employees get the benefit of accessing everything through a single system. Administrators benefit by having the ability to design courses around customer needs based on marketing and sales data. This is how CRM can play an integral role in training and onboarding optimization.
In-App Messaging: Poor communication is a major contributor to disengagement. A smart CRM keeps all communication in one place, easily accessible to everyone who needs it. Customer interactions, conversations with leads, and discussions between team members all happen in one place, keeping lines of communication open and reducing the frustration of missing an important message.
Segmented and Automated Messaging: Missing an important message, whether from a lead or a coworker, is frustrating, but so is being bombarded with irrelevant messages. A CRM lets you segment employees by department, seniority, role, on-site or remote status, and more to ensure employees aren’t overwhelmed by irrelevant messages.
Data Analytics: Data is at its most powerful when it is comprehensive, pulling in insights from all departments, and from employees and customers alike.
Enabling People Through Technology
Technology has a role to play in making your workplace an engaging one, but the right tech alone is only one piece of the puzzle. The data you gather can help you identify which systems and processes are fostering engagement and which are not. The right platforms can also help you implement. Technology works best when it is implemented as part of a culture of continuous learning and development, in which all employees understand the goals of the business and are pulling in the same direction. Growing a business requires both a plan for success that everybody understands and the technological tools that empower employees to do their best in service of that goal.
