Tips and Tricks for Motivating Disengaged Employees in 2025

We often encounter situations where a few employees show complete disinterest in their work. Motivating employees who feel disengaged from their workplace can frequently feel like an uphill battle.

With just around 25% of the workforce being engaged globally, disengaged employees can be a real issue for an organization. Their lack of motivation and drive to perform at work can actively hinder growth and cause a loss of productivity and revenue for the company.

In this article, we discuss who disengaged employees are and how to identify them. We also provide common solutions that you can implement to reach out and motivate disengaged employees, helping them get back on track and improving their dynamic in the workplace.

In this article, we discuss a few great ways you can introduce an element of fun to your office. From organizing simple team lunches to organizing elaborate themed parties, this will give you great ideas to bring back the smile on your employees' faces when they step into the office.

This can be of great use to you if you are an HR representative or a manager looking to increase employee engagement and satisfaction. This will ensure increased employee retention rates that will benefit the organization in the long run.

Let’s begin then.

Understanding Disengaged Employees

Let us begin by understanding who exactly a disengaged employee is. Employees who lack commitment to their jobs as well as the organization can be categorized as disengaged. They are indifferent toward the company and lack the drive and motivation to put in additional effort on the job.

Disengaged employees are often apathetic to the goals and aspirations of their company. They tend to spread negativity in the workplace and actively rebel against certain company policies. They may also exhibit poor workplace behavior and lash out from time to time due to a lack of satisfaction with their position.

Disengaged employees can have a serious negative impact on the work culture of an organization. It can kill the motivation of other engaged employees and lead to an overall reduction in productivity. This can actively affect the company’s growth prospects and morale in the workplace

Identifying Disengaged Employees

Many employers often struggle with identifying disengaged employees before it is too late. As a result, irreversible damage can be caused to the organization if such employee behavior is not identified early and acted upon. Here are some of the most common indicators that your employees are actively disengaged.

• Absenteeism: Disengaged employees can be physically or mentally absent from the workplace. They are often irregular in the office and lack the motivation to show up on time for meetings and appointments. Even if they are present, they can mentally check out by randomly staring into the air or failing to follow instructions to complete their tasks.
• Lack of initiative: Disengaged employees do not like to do more than what is required of them. They do just enough to justify their job but often hesitate or reject taking up newer challenges and volunteer roles in the office.
• Constant workplace conflict: Disengaged employees can also be disgruntled by their situation in the office. This affects their interactions with other colleagues negatively. They often tend to spread rumors and pass on the blame for their mistakes. This can lead to negative buildup within the group that can flare up into a major issue in the future.
• Prone to mistakes: When employees are disengaged, they exhibit reduced attention spans and loss of focus. This leads to an increase in simple and avoidable mistakes during daily tasks and activities that affect productivity and progress.
• Easily distracted: Disengaged employees tend to take long bathroom breaks or engage in long non-professional phone conversations. They tend to divert their attention from work tasks easily and instead focus on other non-essential tasks. This often causes them to miss out on crucial steps that ensure the proper completion of the task.
• Tendency to make excuses: When things go wrong, disengaged employees often step back and fail to take responsibility for their actions. They tend to find someone or something to pin the blame on instead of communicating the actual reasons that prevented them from slipping up in the first place.
• Lower productivity levels: Disengaged employees can often take longer than usual to complete simple tasks. They find it difficult to adhere to deadlines and often struggle to complete tasks to their maximum ability.
• Poor communication with managers: Disengaged employees often lack rapport with their managers. They tend to be afraid of those above them in the corporate hierarchy and fail to engage in productive conversations about situations or obstacles that hold them back.
• Avoid team participation: Disengaged employees often remain aloof in the workplace. They do not socialize or participate in fun at-work activities that help build rapport among team members. They also contribute minimally to group projects and prefer to be left alone.
• Negative attitude: Disengaged employees often harbor a negative sentiment towards their colleagues and the company. They disregard company policies and exhibit poor behavior towards customers and colleagues alike.

  Disengaged employees tend to show one or more of these behaviors in the workplace. It is crucial to identify these symptoms of disengagement early and formulate a plan to help motivate such employees. This will reduce stress levels in the organization, increase productivity and help them align their career growth with that of the company.

Strategies for Motivating Disengaged Employees

Let us now discuss a few ways that you can adapt to motivate employees who may feel disengaged from the workplace. This will help you better understand the root causes of their situation and help you make the necessary changes to convert them into loyal and productive employees.

Open Communication

Employees often lose track of or distance themselves from an organization due to poor communication. This can lead to a sense of mistrust which can build up into an actively disengaged employee over time.

While trying to reach out to these employees, it is important to address the existing challenges openly. This will help you understand what made these employees disengaged in the first place and help you find the right tools and resources to motivate them.

Another way to foster an environment of open communication is by having regular team meetings and check-ins with your team members. This will give employees the chance to express their problems and obstacles, allowing you to intervene before it is too late. It also allows you to observe employee behavior and identify symptoms of disengagement.

As a team leader or manager, encourage employees to give feedback to each other in a professional manner. This will help build up a rapport within the team and help motivate employees who have been feeling disengaged recently.

Professional Development Opportunities

Every employee works for an organization because they believe it is the right place to grow their career. When they see the lack of development professionally, they lose interest in their jobs, making it harder to motivate such disengaged employees.

Find out what aspirations your disengaged employees have from a career perspective. This will help you understand how to align them with the overarching goals of the company and provide resources to help them develop new skills and grow into their roles.

You can also initiate mentorship programs and training sessions that allow employees to learn from senior executives. This helps them get a unique perspective about the company and may generate a newfound interest in doing well at their jobs.

Eventually, it comes down to how you can support disengaged employees in growing their careers. They must realize that they need to take ownership of their prospects knowing that they have your organization as an ally to empower them in their career.

Utilizing Employee Engagement Tools

Considering employee engagement can increase retention levels by up to three times, various tools have been developed for this purpose. They help track and measure the improvement shown by disengaged employees over time.

Tools like Motivosity and Kudos help leaders and managers connect with employees showing symptoms of disengagement. They help you track employee morale and use personalized tests to help you get better insights into how they actually feel.

Such engagement software also provide useful ways to appreciate employees who have made efforts to become more engaged. It allows managers to send reward points and gift them with perks like gift cards, discounted subscriptions and other custom rewards. This helps motivate employees who feel disengaged and helps them bring their careers back on track.

Encouraging Employee Feedback

The last method to motivate employees who are disengaged at work is by creating a good feedback system. Employees lose interest in their jobs because they feel like they are in a rut and there is no way out of it. Creating an active feedback system where managers listen to their problems and take action can positively reinforce their enthusiasm at work.

To enable employees to share and receive feedback, you can use feedback templates that help you ask the right questions. Schedule regular sessions where you can share positive criticism and listen to suggestions from their end to improve their work situation as well.

Listening to their feedback can often give those higher in the hierarchy a better understanding of the ground reality. This will help you make the right changes that further employee development and growth, which reduces the chances of them becoming disengaged in the future.

Conclusion

Disengaged employees are not a lost cause as many of you might think. With the right strategies and effort from the company, you can help them get back on track and convert them into loyal and focused members of the organization. This allows you to improve the productivity and growth of the company as a result.

Understanding which employees are disengaged and the reasons behind it is critical to help you create a solid plan to motivate them. By fostering open communication, encouraging feedback and creating rewards programs that encourage employee engagement, you can retain them and make them invaluable members of your team.

If you are looking for corporate swag options to motivate and engage your employees, then head over to Swageazy’s extensive catalog. You can choose from a wide variety of corporate gifts and packs to help your disengaged employees get out of their rut and become active contributors at the workplace.