L&D owning performance: Why focusing on managers can solve engagement for good

The first blog in this series established why L&D must own performance while the second outlined what must change for L&D to take ownership. The third and final blog in this series tackles a critical but often overlooked reality:

Platforms don’t change behaviour. Managers do.

Employee engagement remains one of the largest unresolved challenges in organisations

Recent research highlights this starkly. McKinsey’s HR Monitor 2025 research points to employee experience, including engagement and retention, as a strategic priority for organisational performance, yet most companies are still far from making meaningful progress on it. Enhancing engagement is seen as key to long-term success, but implementation remains inconsistent.

Deloitte’s 2025 Global Human Capital Trends survey finds that trust and confidence in performance management systems are seriously eroded, with the majority of workers and managers lacking trust in the processes meant to gauge and improve performance.

Meanwhile, global engagement data from Gallup shows that in 2024, only about 21% of employees reported feeling engaged at work, with manager engagement dipping even more sharply than individual contributors. This disengagement carries the huge risk of massive organisational costs.

So, what does this mean?

Engagement isn’t a nice-to-have. It is a strategic performance driver.

Why traditional approaches fail

Most organisational efforts to boost engagement focus on:

• Platforms and dashboards
• Pulse surveys and sentiment tools
• Stand-alone development frameworks

But here’s the reality: these approaches measure activity, not the behaviours that drive engagement and performance.

Engagement is behavioural, not transactional. Employees feel engaged when:

• They experience psychological safety
• They trust their leaders
• They receive candid, constructive feedback
• They see clear growth pathways
• They feel their contribution matters

These are relational and behavioural signals, not metrics you can track on a dashboard.

Managers are the system through which engagement becomes performance

You can invest in every learning platform available, yet still see disengaged teams. Platforms alone do not create sustained behaviour change — managers do.

Research consistently shows that managers shape the everyday experiences that influence:

• Psychological safety
• Team norms
• Coaching and feedback culture
• Performance accountability
• Career development conversations

When managers are engaged and capable, their teams are far more likely to be engaged, productive, and aligned. When they are not, disengagement spreads rapidly.

Building manager capability around engagement, development, and feedback is non-negotiable if L&D wants to own performance.

What owning performance actually enables

When L&D takes ownership, not by controlling people, but by supporting the conditions in which performance emerges, two powerful things happen:

1. Engagement becomes measurable

By measuring the leading signals that matter (confidence, behaviour change, coaching uptake), engagement shifts from a “feel-good” metric to a performance indicator directly tied to business outcomes.

Many engagement strategies fail because measurement stops at the dashboard. Without connecting measurement to action and accountability, engagement remains a hollow metric.

2. L&D becomes the connective tissue between strategy and experience

When learning, development, feedback, and performance converge:

• Experiences are consistent
• Learning is relevant
• Outcomes are connected to business results
• Employees are motivated in ways that drive performance

This aligns perfectly with McKinsey’s call for integrated approaches to talent, technology, strategy, and performance, not isolated “efficiency” solutions.

In short: when L&D owns performance with a relentless focus on behaviour and experience, the engagement problem doesn’t just get addressed, it gets solved.

Platforms support. Managers deliver

This means:

• Coaching conversations matter more than completion badges
• Structured 1–2–1s matter more than dashboards
• Psychological safety matters more than survey scores
• Feedback loops matter more than annual reviews
• Behaviour change matters more than content consumption

Managers aren’t a distribution channel for learning. They are the system through which engagement and performance happen.

Let’s be clear: This isn’t for comfort seekers

Owning performance is not a band-aid exercise. It replaces:

• Control with accountability
• Comfort with consequence
• Outputs with outcomes
• Platforms with behaviour

That’s why most organisations talk about engagement, but very few solve it.

But if organisations do what the first and second blog posts set out…

If organisations:

• Secure executive alignment and accountability
• Focus relentlessly on outcomes, not activity
• Obsess over manager capability and behaviour
• Connect tools into a seamless performance ecosystem

Then they don’t just address engagement, they solve it. Not with surveys or platforms, but by building the conditions that drive engagement, performance, and business results, all at once.

The real test for L&D leaders

The question isn’t: Can L&D improve engagement?
The question is: Is L&D willing to own performance — and all the hard work that requires?

If the answer is yes, everything changes.
If the answer is no, engagement stays a challenge, and performance gains remain out of reach.

Watch the full episode of Mind the Gap with Karen Hill and Harry Chapman-Walker here.