Eager to increase employee engagement?

Start with an inspirational quote. Check out our list of the 30 top employee engagement quotes to motivate your team and energize your workplace.

1. “To win in the marketplace you must first win in the workplace.” - Doug Conant, CEO of Campbell’s Soup

2. “When people are financially invested, they want a return. When people are emotionally invested, they want to contribute.” - Simon Sinek

3. “Your number one customers are your people. Look after employees first and then customers last.” - Ian Hutchinson, author of People Glue

4. “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit.” - Aristotle

 5. “Business and human endeavors are systems... We tend to focus on snapshots of isolated parts of the system. And wonder why our deepest problems never get solved.” - Peter Senge, author of The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of the Learning Organization

 6. “A group of people get together and exist as an institution we call a company so they are able to accomplish something collectively that they could not accomplish separately – they make a contribution to society, a phrase which sounds trite but is fundamental.” - David Packard, late co-founder of Hewlett-Packard

7. “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

 8. “On what high-performing companies should be striving to create: A great place for great people to do great work.” - Marilyn Carlson, former CEO of Carlson Companies

 9. “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. It goes without saying that no company, small or large, can win over the long run without energized employees who believe in the mission and understand how to achieve it.” - Jack Welch, former CEO of GE

10. “This is the only country in the world where today’s employee is tomorrow’s employer.” - Marco Rubio

11. “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

12. “Culture is about performance, and making people feel good about how they contribute to the whole.” - Tracy Streckenbach interview, Clear Goals Matter More than Mission, The New York Times

13. “People want to know they matter and they want to be treated as people. That’s the new talent contract.” - Pamela Stroko in Tanveer Naseer’s blog post How Leaders are Creating Engagement in Today’s Workplaces

14. “Employee engagement is the art and science of engaging people in authentic and recognized connections to strategy, roles, performance, organization, community, relationship, customers, development, energy, and happiness to leverage, sustain, and transform work into results.” - David Zinger, Let’s Co-Create an Employee Engagement Charter, The Employee Engagement Network

15. “Employees engage with employers and brands when they’re treated as humans worthy of respect.” - Meghan M. Biro, Your Employees are Engaged...REALLY?, Forbes

16. “Connect the dots between individual roles and the goals of the organization. When people see that connection, they get a lot of energy out of work. They feel the importance, dignity, and meaning in their job.” - Ken Blanchard and Scott Blanchard, Do People Really Know What You Expect from Them?, Fast Company

17. “Engaged employees stay for what they give (they like their work); disengaged employees stay for what they get (favorable job conditions, growth opportunities, job security).” - Blessing White’s The State of Employee Engagement 2008

18. “TURNED ON people figure out how to beat the competition, TURNED OFF people only complain about being beaten by the competition.” - Ben Simonton, author of Leading People To Be Highly Motivated And Committed

19. “Always treat your employees exactly as you want them to treat your best customers.” - Stephen R. Covey

20. “It’s sad, really, how a negative workplace can impact our lives and the way we feel about ourselves. The situation is reaching pandemic heights – most people go to work at jobs they dislike, supervised by people who don’t care about them, and directed by senior leaders who are often clueless about where to take the company.” - Leigh Branham and Mark Hirschfeld, Re-Engage: How America’s Best Places to Work Inspire Extra Effort in Extraordinary Times

21.“Highly engaged employees make the customer experience. Disengaged employees break it.” - Timothy R. Clark, The 5 Ways That Highly Engaged Employees are Different

22. “Dispirited, unmotivated, unappreciated workers cannot compete in a highly competitive world.” - Francis Hesselbein, Hesselbein on Leadership

23. “Everyone enjoys doing the kind of work for which he is best suited.” - Napoleon Hill

24. “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

25. “Throw yourself into some work you believe in with all you heart, live for it, die for it, and you will find happiness that you had thought could never be yours.” - Dale Carnegie

26. “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

27. “When people go to work, they shouldn’t have to leave their hearts at home.” - Betty Bender

28. “I consider my ability to arouse enthusiasm among men the greatest asset I possess. The way to develop the best that is in a man is by appreciation and encouragement.” - Charles Schwab

29. “Your work is to discover your work and then with all your heart to give yourself to it.” - Buddha

30. “The only way to do great work is to love what you do.” - Steve Jobs

As you can see from our list of employee engagement quotes, engagement isn’t just a nice-to-have morale metric - it can either make or break your business’ productivity and profit margins. After all, engaged employees are efficient employees!

Want more ways to maximize your employee engagement? Download The Essential Guide to Employee Engagement to learn why employee engagement can have such a big impact on your bottom line and learn how to keep your valuable employees engaged!