Firstup Research: Many Engaged Workers Still Eye Exit Plans
6 min read
Engagement scores have long been treated as the primary proxy for workforce stability — the assumption being that engaged employees stay, and disengaged employees leave. New research from Firstup challenges that assumption with data that should significantly recalibrate how HR leaders think about retention strategy. The State of Employee Engagement Report: North America — a survey of 3,093 US and Canadian workers across corporate, manager, and hourly roles — finds that even among workers who consider themselves engaged or highly engaged, nearly half are still likely to seek a new job within the year. Corporate employees self-reporting as engaged: 43% are job-hunting anyway. Managers: 46%. Hourly workers: 40%. The finding demolishes the operational reliability of engagement as a standalone retention signal and points to a different root cause — communication breakdown — as the mechanism connecting apparent engagement to actual exit behaviour.
Engagement Without Information Is Not Stable
The report's central argument is that engagement and information access are not the same thing — and that organisations have been measuring the former while neglecting the latter. Despite most workers receiving updates from their employers at least once a week, 61%–67% of respondents across all roles have missed an important policy or procedural update. Half of managers and hourly workers say their employers simply do not have an effective way to share information with them. When employees must work to stay informed — actively hunting for updates rather than receiving them clearly and reliably — the cognitive and emotional burden accumulates into something that can quickly shift from engagement to frustration, and from frustration to departure.
The business impact of this informational failure is measurable and broad. 43% of corporate employees and 37% of managers report spending three or more hours per week searching for basic information they need to do their jobs — a direct productivity drain that compounds across every role in the organisation simultaneously. Miscommunication drives stress across 40–45% of respondents in all role categories, productivity loss in 32–40%, missed policies in 29–35%, and safety impacts in 9–12%. Critically, approximately one in four employees across roles say miscommunication makes them want to look for a new job — making communication quality itself a direct driver of voluntary turnover intent, independent of engagement scores.
"This disconnect means that engagement alone is no longer a reliable signal of workforce stability. Organizations must do more to deliver critical information in a consistent, targeted, and measurable way, especially to the frontline. When employees have to work just to stay informed, engagement can quickly shift to burnout and loss of productivity, not loyalty."
— Bill Schuh, CEO, Firstup
The Frontline Communication Gap: Where the Crisis Is Most Acute
The data consistently shows that the communication breakdown is most severe — and most consequential — for hourly and frontline workers. The divergence between frontline and corporate employee experiences is stark across multiple dimensions. Strong communication drives engagement for 52% of managers and 49% of corporate employees — but only 35% of hourly workers. Among disengaged hourly employees specifically, 75% feel their employer does not care about their wellbeing — a finding that explains how disengagement becomes departure intent: it is not simply the absence of positive feeling, but the active presence of a belief that the organisation is indifferent to them.
The frontline AI access gap compounds this problem in a way that will become increasingly consequential as AI tools reshape communication efficiency in white-collar roles. Hourly workers are actually more likely than corporate employees to believe AI could improve workplace communication — 42% vs 30% — yet 60% of hourly workers have never used AI at work. The primary barrier is not skepticism or resistance. Across nearly every age group, the barrier is simply access. Organisations investing heavily in AI communication tools for knowledge workers while frontline teams continue to operate without comparable infrastructure are widening an already significant equity and effectiveness gap in their workforce.
The Manager Layer: Trusted but Overloaded
The report's findings on the manager layer reveal a specific structural failure that sits between executive communication intent and frontline communication reality. Managers are, according to the data, the most trusted source of information for their teams — more trusted than HR functions, more trusted than senior leadership, more trusted than company-wide channels. Yet 70% of managers face challenges communicating effectively with hourly teams. Only 29% feel confident that their current communication approach keeps workers compliant.
This combination — high trust and low effectiveness — is the definition of an overloaded communication layer. Managers are the conduit through which strategic messages, policy updates, safety information, and operational guidance must reach frontline workers. When that conduit is carrying more load than it can handle, the consequences ripple through the entire workforce: information arrives late, inconsistently, or not at all; frontline workers feel uninformed; compliance exposure accumulates; and the managers themselves experience the burnout that comes from trying to meet communication expectations without the infrastructure to do so reliably.
"Frontline managers are carrying a disproportionate share of communication load, and it's causing a ripple effect on employee morale and the bottom line. AI holds great promise to help address the issue — improving communication, productivity, and efficiency — yet the hourly workers most affected by these communication breakdowns are the least likely to have access to the right tools. To bridge these gaps and drive critical business outcomes like retention and safety, organizations need to prioritize putting the right technology into every worker's hands."
— Bill Schuh, CEO, Firstup
What Employees Actually Want: Clear, Consistent, and Nearly Universal
One of the report's most practically useful findings is its clarity on what employees want beyond pay — and the degree to which those wants are consistent across roles and demographic groups. Across corporate employees, managers, and hourly workers, the top requests beyond compensation are the same three: they want their employers to show they care (50–52%), improve communication (43–48%), and provide better tools (38–47%). The uniformity of this finding across role types is significant: it means the retention challenge is not segmented by function or seniority in the way that most retention strategy frameworks assume. The interventions that would most reduce voluntary turnover intent are the same across the workforce — caring, communication, and tooling — and they are all infrastructure investments rather than compensation adjustments.
For HR leaders evaluating where to invest in retention and engagement infrastructure in 2026, the Firstup data provides a specific and actionable answer: the returns from improving communication reach and reliability — particularly for frontline and hourly workers — will outperform the returns from further investment in engagement measurement tools that report on a problem they cannot themselves solve. An engaged worker who cannot reliably receive the information they need to do their job is already partway out the door, whether or not their survey score reflects it yet. Explore the latest HRTech Articles for the latest tech trends in human resources technology.
Key Takeaways
- Firstup's State of Employee Engagement Report North America (3,093 US and Canadian workers) finds that nearly half of self-reported "engaged" employees — 43% of corporate staff, 46% of managers, 40% of hourly workers — are still likely to seek a new job within the year, breaking the engagement-retention assumption that underpins most workforce stability strategies.
- 61%–67% of respondents across all roles have missed an important policy or procedural update; half of managers and hourly workers say their employer has no effective way to share information — making communication infrastructure failure the primary identified driver of exit intent, independent of engagement scores.
- Managers are the most trusted information source but 70% struggle to communicate effectively with hourly teams; only 29% feel confident their communication keeps workers compliant — a structural overload that creates a gap between executive intent and frontline reality.
- Hourly workers are more likely than corporate employees to believe AI would improve communication (42% vs 30%), yet 60% have never used AI at work — with access, not skepticism, as the primary barrier across nearly every age group.
- Across all roles, the top requests beyond pay are identical: show you care (50–52%), improve communication (43–48%), and provide better tools (38–47%) — a uniformity that points to infrastructure investment, not compensation adjustment, as the highest-return retention lever available to HR leaders.