Employee engagement remains one of the most talked-about challenges in the world of work. Year after year, the data tells the same story: levels barely shift, no matter what organizations try. The usual response is to focus on what happens once people are already in the door, but the results rarely change.
At the same time, AI is reshaping roles and expectations, making employees question their value in ways that weren’t there before. So what if the real engagement problem starts in the hiring process itself?
My guest this week is Dr. Roz Cohen, Chief People Officer and author of “The Engagement Dilemma”. In our conversation, she explains why there are three distinct types of engagement, how outdated job descriptions undermine them, and what hiring teams should do differently to build belonging from the start.
In the interview, we discuss:
• Why engagement levels haven’t shifted
• Three types of employee engagement
• The role of TA in employee engagement
• Reassessing roles before recruiting
• Hiring for attributes and behaviours
• Onboarding for connection and belonging
• Identity beyond surface characteristics
• What does the future look like?
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00:00
Matt Alder
Despite a huge amount of focus, employee engagement remains a significant problem for many organizations. The focus tends to be on training managers, improving culture, and finding better ways of building belonging. But does the real problem start much earlier actually in the hiring process itself? Keep listening to find out. Support for this podcast comes from Maki. Maki enables businesses to build intelligent, science backed hiring strategies that predict on the job performance and adapt as roles and markets change. Companies today face a surge of undifferentiated AI, inflated CVs and often rely on manual screening or inconsistent processes. This leads to missed talent, weaker performance and a poor candidate experience. Maki combines science based assessments, behavioral signals and autonomous AI agents into one integrated engine. It evaluates every candidate, predicts who will succeed, and continuously improves hiring outcomes.
01:10
Matt Alder
Teams hire faster, more fairly and at a lower cost while delivering stronger on the job performance and a better experience for candidates and customers. To find out more you can go to makipeople.com and Maki is spelled M A K I and that’s makipeople.com.
01:49
Matt Alder
Hi there. Welcome to episode 796 of Recruiting Future with me, Matt Alder. Employee engagement remains one of the most talked about challenges in the world of work. Year after year, the data tells the same story. The levels barely shift no matter what organizations try. The usual response is to focus on what happens once people are already hired. But better managers, better culture programs, better ways of making people feel that they belong, the results rarely change. At the same time, AI is reshaping roles and expectations, making employees question their value in ways that weren’t there before. So what if the real engagement problem starts in the hiring process itself? My guest this week is Dr. Roz Cohen, Chief People Officer and author of the Engagement Dilemma.
02:44
Matt Alder
In our conversation, she explains why there are three distinct types of engagement, how outdated job descriptions undermine them, and what hiring teams should be doing differently to build belonging right from the start. Hi Roz, and welcome to the podcast. A pleasure to have you on the show. Please could you introduce yourself and tell us what you do?
03:06
Dr. Roz Cohen
Hi Matt, Great to chat with you again. I am Dr. Roz Cohen. I am a chief People officer, author and connectifier and really help companies build cultures of community, connection, belonging and inclusion.
03:21
Matt Alder
Fantastic. Well, it’s brilliant to be talking to you and we’re sort of talking a little bit about employee engagement and everything around that before we kind of dive into the topic a Lot of the data is sort of saying that, you know, disengagement hasn’t really shifted amongst employees for a really long time now. What do you think it is that employers are sort of fundamentally getting wrong about how employee engagement works?
03:48
Dr. Roz Cohen
I think we keep trying to fix something internally, which I think is important. Right. What data shows is that managers have the greatest impact on employee engagement. How they create cultures of inclusion and how they make people feel as though they belong is critical. But I’m starting to wonder a couple of things. One, how are we teaching managers to do that and is that the right way? And I’m beginning to question that it is. I think more recently, I think the reason that it’s not exactly going the way we hoped it would is because we now have things like AI and other technologies that are making employees question their value and their worth and within organizations. So I think there’s a lot more going on lately.
04:42
Matt Alder
And you’ve written a book called the Engagement Dilemma. Tell us a little bit about the book.
04:47
Dr. Roz Cohen
Yeah, I’d love to. So the Engagement Dilemma talks about there being three types of engagement. There’s this I feel, I think, and I belong. And what my research has shown, which is why I wrote the book, is that employers have a direct connection on the I feel and I belong. How managers and organizations create cultures of belonging and connection really impacts the way people feel about their work and the way they belong to the organization. And what I mean by belong is how they feel connected to the people that they work with. One of the areas which is the I think level of engagement really has no impact and can’t be impacted by organizations and the cultures that they create. So it really is critical that through the talent acquisition process and how we hire, we’re doing that correctly.
05:46
Dr. Roz Cohen
And so what the book does is it takes these three types of engagement and walks you through what organizations can do in order to impact each of those types of engagement. And there are some tear sheets in here at the end of each chapter that give very hands on. Here’s the things to look at, here’s questions to be asking, here’s ways in which organizations can impact that particular type of work.
06:12
Matt Alder
Let’s just dig into kind of the role of talent acquisition here, as you mentioned. What is it that needs to happen in the process that people need to be thinking about to get that kind of engagement shifting?
06:23
Dr. Roz Cohen
Yeah, yeah, that’s such a great question. So here’s what happens in most organizations. So manager comes into their head of hr, their chief people officer or someone in the HR department and says, oh, no, so and so just quit. And everyone goes, oh, my God, what are we going to do? We need to fill this position. This role is critical within the department and the organization. Whatever. Okay, let’s dust off the job description. Let’s look at it real quick. Let’s figure out the process that we’re going to do that we’re going to use in order to hire. Who’s going to be on the. On the recruiting team, who’s going to ask the questions. Great, let’s post it in the next 24 hours. And the horses out of the barn. Right. We’re heading out there.
07:08
Dr. Roz Cohen
Well, what we don’t do because there’s such this feeling of, I think, impending doom, what’s going to happen if we don’t hire this position? What’s going to happen if this role goes vacant for a period of time is we don’t pause and we don’t ask some really critical questions like, okay, is this role still necessary in its current form? And that’s a key piece of it. Right. We’re not saying let go of the position because nobody wants to lose headcount, but is the role still valuable in the way it was originally constructed? We feel such pressure to backfill the role quickly that we don’t take that pause and go, okay, what are the needs of the department? What are the needs of the business? What is this person actually doing? Because, look, let’s be clear.
07:58
Dr. Roz Cohen
The job description was written with some theoretical fantasy like belief of what the role would be. Over the course of time, that role has evolved, and if the person did a really good job in their role, they’ve gotten 15 more responsibilities added that have never been captured on a job description. Yeah, so what if we pause and we say, okay, do we still need this role? What is this role? And are we looking for the right people for this role? So my suggestion is we take a look at the job description. We give it to the person who’s doing the job and say, is this still accurate? We give it to the people who interact with this person on a regular basis and say, is this the way in which you work with this individual?
08:44
Dr. Roz Cohen
We look at the needs maybe three to six months out of the organization and how would this role impact and be impacted by any changing business needs? And then we go back and recraft the role. Now, maybe it’s the exact same role. Well, great, fantastic. Then job description’s done. But I’m going to bet dinner at your favorite restaurant that is not the case. So once we do that, then we start to ask additional questions. Questions like, what are the attributes that this person needs to have in order to be successful in the role? So maybe you have some organizational, cultural values that you want to make sure this person has in order to be successful in the role. Well, okay, well, what are the behaviors? What are the ways in which people demonstrate that?
09:36
Dr. Roz Cohen
How are we interviewing people to see if those behaviors exist? So it’s really taking a moment and thinking through what are the needs of the organization, what are the tasks and responsibilities that this person’s actually doing, and then crafting the job description and the talent acquisition process to fall in line with those needs.
10:00
Matt Alder
And that kind of runs through to onboarding as well, doesn’t it?
10:03
Dr. Roz Cohen
It does, absolutely does. Because when you think about I always. Let’s look at the end goal in mind. 612 Months from now, how is this person going to be successful? Well, okay, they’re going to be able to do these 15, 20, 100 things. Okay, well, how are we going to set them up for success? Who do they need to meet? What are the skills they need to have? We know that they’re going to be walking in with certain attributes or certain behaviors that they have, but they’re going to need to be potentially adapted to fit with the need of the organization. So how are we going to make that happen then? Aside from the skills, how are we going to make sure that they feel strongly connected and as though that they belong in the organization?
10:49
Dr. Roz Cohen
Do they have a buddy, not a mentor, but someone who takes them out to lunch every so often and says, here are the ways in which we work that nobody’s written down. Right. People don’t really like to send emails. They’re really more face to face or don’t ever talk to this person before 9am because they need their coffee. Those kinds of things really help a person feel connected in an organization. And what are we doing to set them up for success in those ways as well?
11:17
Matt Alder
And you kind of also talk about identity in all of this. Can you expand on that a little bit for us?
11:23
Dr. Roz Cohen
Yeah. So when we think about identity, we usually think about surface identity. We think about the way people look and there’s so much more to individuals and who they are and how they are unique within their themselves and within organizations. But we focus sometimes more on the. On the surface identity. So when managers have teams where people may or may not look the same, may or may not have visible characteristics that seem similar to themselves, we’re Losing a whole aspect of their identity in helping people connect. So what I talk with managers about is, how else are you creating ways for people to understand what who the other person is in ways that are casual or natural, or ways that allow people to express themselves so that they can learn more about each other.
12:19
Dr. Roz Cohen
So, for example, if you have a team and you are a majority of women, so I’ll use one of my previous teams as an example. We were all women, so you would think that we all connected because we have the same gender expression. Well, the reality is were very, very different people. And it became very apparent that I needed to, as the manager, figure out other ways that we could connect so that we could work better. So by allowing or setting up situations where we would talk with each other or share things about our identities that were not visible, we got a chance to work better together because were able to connect on a deeper level.
13:01
Dr. Roz Cohen
Asking questions, for example, at the beginning of meetings that are goofy but really allow for conversation will give people the chance to express those different aspects of their identity that may or may not be visible.
13:16
Matt Alder
That makes perfect sense. One of the things that I wanted to kind of pick up on is what you were saying earlier about AI and how that is changing everything. And I think, particularly when you were talking about, do we need this role anymore? Is this role kind of changing? You know, AI is having a kind of significant impact in lots of different parts of the things that we’ve been talking about, isn’t it?
13:38
Dr. Roz Cohen
It is. HR leaders need to be thinking about, how can you use AI in order to enhance the work that we do with people versus pushing it away for fear that it’s going to be a replacement. So what are the ways that we can be looking at technology to help enhance the work that we do versus, you know, this fear? Oh, no, I’m going to. I’m going to lose my job because I’m a recruiter. And AI is really quickly able to screen resumes and help determine what the right group of candidates would be.
14:17
Matt Alder
As a final question, if we sort of look ahead, everything that’s developing, I mean, how do you think the relationship between hiring practices and employee engagement is going to evolve? What should organizations be thinking about and planning for right now?
14:32
Dr. Roz Cohen
I just had a conversation about this the other day, and were talking about the skills that are going to be needed in HR in order to be able to not manage, but to enhance the work that we’re doing with this new technology and with the way the world is going and There are a couple of things that were talking about. One is the coaching and mentoring aspect of hr. How do we really help people do and be their best? That’s not going to be an AI kind of not going to be able to be replaced by AI because there’s a human element to that is always going to be needed. How do we upskill our HR teams to ask the right questions in a human way that is not robotic?
15:21
Dr. Roz Cohen
How are we going to help our HR teams in look at the strategies that need to be there to help people connect better to the business? So there’s a lot of the coaching and mentoring pieces that I think we’re missing within HR teams that we need to continue to enhance to upskill our employees.
15:43
Matt Alder
Roz, thank you very much for talking to me.
15:46
Dr. Roz Cohen
Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate the time.
15:49
Matt Alder
My thanks to Roz. You can follow this podcast on Apple Podcasts on Spotify or wherever you listen to your podcasts. You can search all the past episodes at recruitingfuture.com on that site. You can also subscribe to our weekly newsletter, Recruiting Future Feast, and get the inside track on everything that’s coming up on the show. Thanks very much for listening. I’ll be back next time and I hope you’ll join me.
