31 Employee Engagement Quotes to Inspire your People

Whether you're building a talent slide deck and need a quote, are looking for something to inspire your team or want a new nugget of wisdom to chew on, we've built a list of our top Employee Engagement related Quotes from the top minds in leadership.

1. “To win in the marketplace you must first win in the workplace.” - Doug Conant, CEO of Campbell’s Soup
2. “Your number one customers are your people. Look after employees first and then customers last.” - Ian Hutchinson, author of People Glue
3. “When people are financially invested, they want a return. When people are emotionally invested, they want to contribute.” - Simon Sinek, author
4. “Employees who believe that management is concerned about them as a whole person – not just an employee – are more productive, more satisfied, more fulfilled. Satisfied employees mean satisfied customers, which leads to profitability.” - Anne M. Mulcahy, Former CEO of Xerox
5. “The way your employees feel is the way your customers will feel. And if your employees don’t feel valued, neither will your customers.” - Sybil F. Stershic, Taking Care of the People Who Matter Most: A Guide to Employee-Customer Care
6. “Always treat your employees exactly as you want them to treat your best customers.” - Stephen R. Covey, author and speaker
7. “Research indicates that workers have three prime needs: Interesting work, recognition for doing a good job, and being let in on things that are going on in the company.” - Zig Ziglar, author and speaker
8. “Appreciate everything your associates do for the business. Nothing else can quite substitute for a few well-chosen, well-timed, sincere words of praise. They’re absolutely free and worth a fortune.” - Sam Walton, Founder of Walmart
9. “The only way to do great work is to love what you do.” - Steve Jobs, founder of Apple
10. “There are only three measurements that tell you nearly everything you need to know about your organization’s overall performance: employee engagement, customer satisfaction, and cash flow.” - Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric
11. “Employee engagement is the emotional commitment the employee has to the organization and its goals.” - Kevin Kruse, author, Employee Engagement 2.0
12. “It all came down to employee engagement. It all came down to recognition. It all came down to leadership, which led to every sailor feeling ownership and accountability for the results. You can ask a team to accomplish a mission but you can’t order excellence.” - Mike Abrashoff, Commander USS Benfold (retired)
13. “Accept the fact that we have to treat almost anybody as a volunteer.” - Peter Drucker, consultant and author
14. “To build a culture of engagement it is important to incorporate training on intrinsic motivation and employee engagement into management development programs.” - Kenneth Thomas, author
15. “Employees engage with employers and brands when they’re treated as humans worthy of respect.” - Meghan Biro, TalentCulture CEO and author
16. “Highly engaged employees make the customer experience. Disengaged employees break it.” - Timothy R. Clark, consultant
17. “Dispirited, unmotivated, unappreciated workers cannot compete in a highly competitive world.” - Francis Hesselbein, leadership expert
18. “When people go to work, they shouldn’t have to leave their hearts at home.” - Betty Bender, author
19. “You manage things; you lead people.” - Rear Admiral Grace Hopper
20. “You’ll attract the employees you need if you can explain why your mission is compelling: not why it’s important in general, but why you’re doing something important that no one else is going to get done.” - Peter Thiel, Venture Capitalist
21. "If you hire people just because they can do a job, they’ll work for your money. But if you hire people who believe what you believe, they’ll work for you with blood, sweat, and tears." - Simon Sinek, author
22. "When employees join executives in truly owning the responsibility for business success, an exciting new sense of teamwork takes hold." - Punit Renjen, CEO of Deloitte
23. "Creating a strong company culture isn’t just good business. It’s the right thing to do, and it makes your company better for all stakeholders – employees, management, and customers." - Julia Hartz, co-founder, and CEO of Eventbrite
24. "Employee Engagement is about the willingness of people to be responsible for more than their own job. People who are engaged go the extra mile." - David Ducheyne, author and speaker
25. "The greatest leader is not necessarily the one who does the greatest things. He is the one that gets the people to do the greatest things." - Ronald Reagen, former US president
26. "Every company has a culture. The question is whether it’s the culture that you want. Is it the culture that is going to be able to deliver great guest experiences?" - Shane Green, author and business consultant
27. "Create caring and robust connections between every employee and their work, customers, leaders, managers, and the organization to achieve results that matter to everyone in this sentence." - David Zinger, employee engagement expert
28. "Employees aren’t just workers, they’re the backbone of the business, and that makes them more important than the boss any day of the week. Good Employees = Good Business." - Kilroy J. Oldster, author
29. "When leaders throughout an organization take an active, genuine interest in the people they manage when they invest real time to understand employees at a fundamental level, they create a climate for greater morale, loyalty, and, yes, growth." - Patrick Lencioni, author
30. "Employee loyalty begins with employer loyalty. Your employees should know that if they do the job they were hired to do with a reasonable amount of competence and efficiency, you will support them." - Harvey Mackay, businessman, and author
31. "Of the top 10 sources of innovation, employees are the only resource that you can control and access that your competitors cannot. Employees are the one asset you have that can actually be a sustainable competitive advantage." - Kaihan Krippendorff, business strategist, and keynote speaker

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