Case Study: Fostering Team Engagement in A Global, WFH Environment [2025 Update]
In a world that’s become exponentially smaller with workforces connected by fibre lines, faces projected via pixels, and voices too often on mute, creating a sense of community that ensures employees don’t feel isolated has never been more important.
In our Work-From-Home (WFH) environment and many of our teachers living on their own, it’s vitally important that our teams don’t feel unsupported and disengaged.
Fostering connection has always been a key focus for us, even when we were still in person centre-based, and remained a priority when our business transitioned to an online, fully remote model in January 2020. This was when we started measuring our employee engagement.
At this point in time, before Covid forced organisations to embrace remote working, there wasn't yet much research available on industry averages for online teams and how it affected employee engagement. So, we set ourselves a target of 20%.
This improved gradually month-on-month, year-on-year, so by the time we kicked off our Ubuntu quarterly focus in July 2023, it had peaked at 34%. Throughout that quarter, we highlighted teacher and team engagement as a core business focus, and saw incredible results! But the truly exciting part was that engagement continued to grow organically since then, from 48% by the end of September 2023, to 73% in 2025.
The Data: Record Employee Engagement In Numbers
According to Gallup, global employee engagement declined to 21% in 2024 - dropping the second year in a row for the first time in 12 years. This disengagement is estimated to cost the global economy $436 billion in lost productivity.
How do we compare? During Q3 of 2023, we reached some key milestones in our own employee engagement rates, more than doubling our engagement rate by the end of September 2023 compared to what we had measured for January that same year.
What has our engagement journey looked like, and how has it continue to grow since then?
- 2021 - In January we had recorded an 18,7% engagement rate, and by December that year we had increase that to 26,5% and doubled individual attendances to initiatives.
- 2022 - Our engagement rate peaked at 32,6%, with a 275% increase in total attendances by engaged employees.
- 2023 - Engagement almost doubled as a result of the quarterly focus, peaking at 48%, a 47% increase YoY and a new benchmark record. We exceeded our 40% target.
- 2024 - Carrying the moment from the tail end of the previous year, our engagement rate increased to 66% organically and averaged out at 51%. That means at least half of our team was consistently engaged throughout the year!
- 2025 - By having brought awareness to the benefits of actively engaging with personal development initiatives, Q1 has settled at 70% as an average.
There is a direct line between how engaged and connected teachers are and the quality of lessons they deliver. When teachers are happy, healthy and thriving, that positive energy and passion translates into exceptional learning experiences for every student.
Why Do We Value Team Engagement?
Here’s why employee engagement is crucial for creating a positive culture, work environment and satisfaction rate. More engaged employees lead to:
- Improved Satisfaction and Retention. Job satisfaction is a critical factor in retaining talent and reducing attrition.
- Overall Enhanced Wellbeing. Team members who feel engaged are generally happier, less stressed, and experienced improved mental and physical health.
- Stronger Team Collaboration. They are that much more likely to collaborate effectively with their colleagues, which leads to more cohesive teamwork and better problem-solving.
- Unprompted Innovation and Creativity. More motivated, empowered and trusted to contribute new ideas, which can drive business growth and competitiveness.
- Higher Productivity and Quality Work. Passionate employees take initiative, put in extra effort, and take pride in what they do. This results in increased output and customer satisfaction.
- A Positive Company Culture. It fosters an inclusive workplace, which can attract top talent, introduce diversity, and enhance the organization's brand and image.
- Lower Absenteeism . They are less likely to call in sick or take unplanned time off, which helps to maintain consistent productivity.
- Alignment with Organizational Goals and Values . They buy in and support the company's mission and goals, leading to a more unified, loyal and focused workforce.
- Adaptability and Resilience. They are more adaptable to change, resilient, likely to embrace change, and work collaboratively to overcome obstacles.
- Ethical Behavior. They will act in the best interest of the organization, reducing the risk of unethical conduct.
Our team is built on inspiring minds who dedicate themselves to enlightening others. When we foster connections within our own community, we're living our mission of bringing people closer together, one meaningful interaction at a time!
Our 2023 Q3 Focus: “Ubuntu, I Am Because We Are”
We communicated our employee engagement quarterly focus with an Ubuntu theme, conveying the relatability and connectedness that brings our global team together.
The Ubuntu philosophy is the belief in a universal bond of sharing that connects all humanity; that a person is a person through other people and that we express an appreciation for each other's traditional beliefs. In this, community is one of the building blocks for a thriving society.
We celebrate having team members across 69 different countries, each bringing their unique cultures, perspectives, and experiences to the organization. When we create platforms for people to share their authentic selves — their traditions, stories, and talents — we build the kind of inclusive environment where everyone feels valued and truly engaged.
Throughout the quarter we wanted to honor our global community that represents our multi-faceted yet complete sense of diversity. With so many unique cultures, traditions, dishes, languages and personalities, we wanted to learn more about the different places in the world where our employees are based. We wanted to create a platform where everyone could share those pieces of themselves, bringing this colorful tapestry of our team directly into our homes.
We launched various initiatives that our teams could participate in, including a cookbook that encouraged submissions of unique cultural and family recipes, an Insider’s Guide where we got first-hand glimpses into hometowns all across the world, a challenge for our fitness community to share photos of their playgrounds, all of this culminating in a wonderful display of skill in our first ever company talent show.
Throughout this journey, our personal development engagement increased as we wove a universal bond that bridged our differences and celebrated our global community, which has helped us grow – personally, and as a team.
Conclusion
What truly excites us is the teachable spirit and dedication to excellence of our life-long learners. The drive in our teachers to always improve their skills and knowledge, to invest in themselves to provide quality learning experiences to their students.
Through our professional development courses on the Inspire Academy, we create opportunity for our teams to continuously upskill, improve performance, and develop careers through targeted training and stimulating resources. This not only benefits their own growth, but drastically improves performance and valued contribution.
Our personal development initiatives through the Evolve program exist to serve the mental, emotional and physical wellbeing of our teams. We focus on all aspects of the human experience that do not include job/role specific performance and is designed to inspire a more engaged team that is healthier, happier and more connected than they were before joining the company.
Eager to experience the results of improving employee engagement within your organisation? Contact us, we can help.