Alignment is not Engagement

We fill out an employee engagement survey every year. There are companies that made full businesses out of this (*cough* Great Place to Work cough). They peddle these templatized questionnaires we all have to fill out on a regular basis, as if there were a numerically significant employee population willing to bad-mouth their own employer and thereby reduce the value of their own work with them… How do these even make sense? "Do you feel valued at work? Do you have a best friend at the office? Would you recommend your manager?" Yeah, they’re well-meaning. They aim to take the pulse of the organization, to see if people are showing up with energy, motivation, and loyalty.

Image courtesy of WIX Media

But there’s a trap in that thinking. Because engagement is not alignment. And even more so… whatever they’re asking you there is definitely, categorically, FAR from even being engagement.

Engagement is emotional. Alignment is directional.

Your team might feel great and still be headed in the wrong direction. Conversely, a company can be tightly aligned around purpose and strategy while employees are… kinda tired. So if you're measuring the wrong thing (or assuming one stands in for the other), you risk optimizing for morale instead of for mission.

Let’s define the terms

• Employee Engagement: The emotional commitment an employee has to the organization and its goals. It’s about enthusiasm, motivation, and satisfaction.

• Customer Engagement: The degree of interaction and emotional investment customers have in a brand, product, or service.

• Alignment: A shared understanding and commitment to company goals across leadership, teams, and individuals. It’s clarity, consistency, and coordination. And yes, it can even extend to your customers.

  
  

Engagement is how you feel. Alignment is what you do, why you do it, and how it fits into the bigger picture.

Where companies get it wrong

• Focusing on perks, vibe, and culture surveys to fix deeper misalignment issues

• Assuming that a happy workforce = a productive, strategic workforce

• Launching engagement initiatives (e.g., wellness weeks, game nights, new Slack emojis) without ensuring teams understand how their work drives company value

  
  

This isn’t just a theoretical difference; it has real-world consequences. Think of companies with high Glassdoor ratings but declining stock prices. Think of product teams sending out features no one uses. Think of leaders "feeling good" about momentum while customer churn ticks up month after month.

Remote vs. In-Office: it’s not about the desk

Bear with me here, because this is where the discussion gets timely. Remote work has shaken up how we understand engagement. Employers generally seem to have a breakdown every time remote work enters the conversation. Employees working from home, on the other hand, often report higher productivity, better work-life balance, and less burnout.

But does that mean they’re aligned?

Not necessarily.

Engagement can happen anywhere. Whether you're on Zoom or in a boardroom, you can enjoy your team, feel appreciated, and be motivated.

But alignment requires intentional effort. It thrives on clarity of goals, streamlined communication, and repeatable systems. You don’t need a watercooler for alignment; you need leadership that knows where the company is going and makes sure everyone else knows, too. Maybe that’s why it is exactly these people who seem so offended by working from home?

So let’s stop asking: “How do we make remote work more engaging?” And start asking: “How do we ensure distributed teams are aligned with our mission, strategy, and value delivery?”

The cost of confusion

When engagement is mistaken for alignment:

• Resources get misallocated to surface-level morale boosters

• Strategic drift sets in, and teams get off course

• Leadership assumes buy-in when what they actually have is passive compliance

• Customer experience suffers because teams are busy, but not necessarily effective

  
  

Examples of failure due to misalignment:

• Yahoo in the early 2010s: High morale and creative freedom couldn’t save the company from a lack of strategic clarity and leadership misalignment

• WeWork: Engaged workforce, charismatic leadership, but strategic delusion and absence of operational discipline led to its spectacular crash

What alignment looks like

• Every employee knows how their role connects to the company’s broader goals

• Leaders share the same definition of success

• Communication is consistent, transparent, and two-way

• Metrics are shared, understood, and actionable

  
  

Alignment is measured by clarity, not energy.

Engagement ≠ Alignment: the core differences

Element	Engagement	Alignment
Focus	Emotion, morale, motivation	Strategy, goals, direction
Outcome	Loyalty, retention, energy	Execution, impact, velocity
Key drivers	Recognition, purpose, relationships	Clarity, priorities, structure
Risk when lacking	Burnout, apathy, turnover	Confusion, wasted effort, missed targets
Location sensitivity	Medium, affected by the environment	Low, driven by clarity, not geography

Toolkit: how to build alignment (with engagement as a nifty bonus)

1. Start with Strategy: Define a north star. Make sure everyone, from leadership to interns, can connect their role to it.

2. Communicate in Layers: Translate strategic goals into team OKRs and personal KPIs.

3. Check for Understanding: Don’t assume alignment. Survey for clarity, not just sentiment.

4. Reinforce with Rituals: Weekly standups, quarterly town halls, dashboards. Repetition = retention.

5. Train for Context, not just Tasks: Make strategic education part of onboarding. Include context in briefs and reviews.

6. Use Engagement as a Signal, not a Goal: If engagement dips, investigate. But fix alignment before morale.

   
   

Real-world examples:

• Adobe ties employee performance to clearly defined quarterly objectives across teams, ensuring that even remote workers stay directionally aligned with the company’s strategy.

• Microsoft implemented a cultural reset under Satya Nadella by embedding a growth mindset and shared purpose into every layer, from C-suite to engineering, fueling both engagement and alignment.

• Salesforce uses values-led storytelling and structured goal-setting rituals (like V2MOM: Vision, Values, Methods, Obstacles, and Measures) to continuously realign teams globally.

Final thought: it’s a both-and, not either-or

You want engaged employees. Of course. But engagement without alignment is a motivational captain with no map. Alignment without engagement is a GPS no one bothers to use.

The future belongs to organizations that lead with clarity and reinforce with care. Because when people know where they’re going and feel good about the journey, you don’t just grow.

You thrive.

Let’s make sure your team isn’t just energized. Let’s make sure they’re aligned.