Fostering a Culture of Engagement is Key to Combating Employee Disengagement and Quiet Quitting

Employee engagement in the U.S. workforce has reached an alarming 11-year low, with only 30% of employees actively engaged at work, according to Gallup. This significant drop in engagement and rise in disengagement highlights a pressing challenge for leaders across various industries on how to foster a culture where employees feel motivated and valued.

What strategies can leaders implement to transform disengagement into proactive engagement within their organizations?

Holistic Leadership: The Future of Work & Education in Healthcare,” hosted by Geoffrey M. Roche, features Tom Willis, co-founder and partner at Phoenix Performance Partners and author of “The Great Engagement: How CEOs Create Exceptional Cultures.” Together, they delve into the intricacies of fostering a culture of engagement in the workplace.

Key Points of Discussion:

  • Engagement as the Antidote to Resignation: Willis emphasizes that focusing on engagement, rather than resignation, can counteract the trend of “quiet quitting” and disengagement.
  • Creating a Culture of Belonging and Psychological Safety: Effective leadership requires balancing psychological safety with encouraging employees to exercise psychological courage.
  • Leadership’s Role in Stress Alleviation: Leaders need to adopt a strategic approach to reduce workplace stress, ensuring a more supportive and productive environment.

Tom Willis is a seasoned leader with a diverse background in education, consulting, and executive management. He has served as CEO of Cornerstone and worked as a consultant with PricewaterhouseCoopers and an engineer at Intel Corporation. With degrees from the University of Michigan and an MBA from the University of Notre Dame, Willis brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to his role at Phoenix Performance Partners. He is also the author of “The Great Engagement: How CEOs Create Exceptional Cultures.”

Recent Episodes

Hospitals and surgery centers own millions of dollars in equipment — but owning assets and having actionable visibility into them are two different things. Most systems maintain inventories, yet many struggle with outdated records, fragmented tracking, and limited insight into useful life or service contracts. With nearly half of U.S. hospitals reporting negative operating…

Behind every city vote, hospital budget or zoning decision is a leader navigating tough, often conflicting priorities. Right now, public leaders are operating in an environment of rising healthcare costs, workforce shortages and heightened community expectations—especially within safety-net systems that collectively provide billions in uncompensated care each year. The stakes are real—they affect patients…

Artificial intelligence used to live in strategy decks and conference keynotes—but now it’s showing up in a very different place: right on the assembly tables where SPD technicians build trays for the next case. And it’s arriving at a time when the pressure on sterile processing has never been higher. As surgical volumes climb and…