Your Engagement Survey Is Lying to You. Here's What to Measure Instead.

Looking at the Data: In the Southeast, 73.8% of employers believe their employees feel moderately or extremely connected to company leadership. Only 56% of employees say they do. That 18-point gap isn't an outlier — it's the most consistent finding across TriNet's 2025 State of Work data for Florida, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi. Marcus Mossberger argues the gap exists because most leaders are not looking to understand employee engagement more deeply.

The data: an 18-point perception gap is the Southeast's most consistent finding

TriNet's 2025 State of Work report surveyed 111 employers and 80 employees at small-to-medium businesses across Florida, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi. The headline finding:

The gap between employers and their teams shows up on connection, hours, work/life balance, and overall satisfaction. Employers consistently see a better workplace than their employees experience. The question we should be asking is “why?” - and how can owners and operators understand what is contributing to the gap in engagement.

Why the gap exists: the survey isn't measuring what leaders think it is

Most engagement surveys ask employees to self-report on a 1–5 or 1–10 scale. The data that comes back gets aggregated, dashboarded, and presented to leadership. By the time it reaches the executive team, the data can look like it is showing the full story.

Mossberger's argument is that it isn't.

“On any kind of self-reported survey like that, you have to take it with a grain of salt. What you really need to do is look at the data. What does the data tell you about the engagement of your workforce? How do you measure discretionary effort? Are they picking up hard-to-fill shifts in your organization? Are they taking discretionary classes in your learning management system? Are they referring people to the organization? Are they going above and beyond in what they're doing? That's how you know they're engaged.” - Marcus Mossberger

Three structural problems with self-reported engagement data:

• The respondents most likely to fill out the survey are the most engaged ones. Disengaged employees are also disengaged from the survey. The survey can be an early indicator, but it does not tell the full story of your organization.
• The questions ask about feelings without context. "I feel valued at work" produces a number. It doesn't identify a specific behavior, a workflow change, or a decision.
• Aggregation hides the variance. A team with two thriving employees and two checked-out ones averages to "fine." Leadership reads "fine" and moves on, but the two employees might already be ready to leave.

“I'll frame it this way—and I stole this shamelessly from somebody else, so don't think I'm clever because I'm not. You cannot connect the dots until you collect the dots. You need to help the data before you can even start to predict what’s going to happen and prescribe appropriate actions.” - Marcus Mossberger

The dots Mossberger is referring to are not just the average “engagement rate” from an annual survey. He is talking about the operational data that runs a business: How often a manager meets one-on-one with a direct report? How long does it take HR to respond to an employee question? How often does an employee volunteer for cross-functional work? Whether or not high performers get new responsibilities or have their roles reevaluated?

What to measure instead

Mossberger's framework swaps self-report for observation. Connection and engagement aren't feelings to be surveyed, they are patterns that can be tracked during the daily operations of a business.

For Southeast business owners running on lean HR teams, this doesn't mean you need large-scale  software to track your metrics. It means picking three or four operational signals and watching them monthly:

• Manager 1:1 cadence and rescheduling rate. A rescheduled 1:1 can be a leading indicator that either the employer or the employee is not prioritizing those relationships or employee development. When this becomes a reoccurring issue, it is important to look at the larger signals.
• Promotion and stretch-assignment ratios. Who's getting a new scope or projects? Who is asking for more responsibility? Who's been doing the same thing for 18+ months?
• Voluntary cross-team participation. Who's volunteering for working groups, who isn't, and whether that's changing.

None of these data points require a survey. They can all be observed in the regular business operations, and all of them produce information a leader can act on and have an impact on their business.

Why this matters for small and medium size business operators in Florida, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi

The Southeast region's data points to a specific operator risk:

• Leaders are confident their teams are connected. The teams disagree. If you run a Florida or Georgia business and you've been told engagement is fine, the State of Work data says there's a meaningful chance it isn't and it may require further attention.
• The 18-point gap is the Southeast's most consistent finding. It shows up across leadership connection, hours, and satisfaction. The gap is only the start of the story. The question to ask next is “Why?”
• Hours are part of the same story. 41.4% of Southeast employees say they're overworked. Only 28.5% of their employers think so. Overwork is one of the things that can be slowest to surface, but is a measurable outcome to pay attention to.
• Operational signals are cheaper and faster than survey programs. SMBs don't need to invest in enterprise analytics to act on this — they need to define three or four signals and pay attention.

How to put this into practice

For Southeast SMB operators looking to close the perception gap:

1. Pick three operational signals you can pull from existing tools (calendar, messaging channel, HRIS, project management). Don't add more tools, use what you already have and build from there.
2. Set a monthly review. 30 minutes, leadership and HR together. Look at signal direction, not absolute levels, and start to ask “why.”
3. Stop using the engagement survey as the answer. It’s the first piece of the puzzle, just one input, but it should weigh less than what people actually do.
4. Audit who's responding and encourage participation. If your survey response rate drops below 70%, the population you're reading is likely not representative.

What's next for Southeast SMBs

The 2025 State of Work data makes the Southeast's pattern legible: leadership and employees are looking at the same workplace and reporting different realities. Closing that gap doesn't start with a survey. It starts with leaders and HR being curious about the signals and digging deeper.

Read the full Southeast regional report from TriNet's 2025 State of Work

See how TriNet supports Southeast SMBs with HR analytics and people operations

FAQ

Are employee engagement surveys accurate?

They're directionally useful but structurally biased. Self-selection (engaged employees respond more), aggregation (averages hide variance), and the gap between sentiment and behavior all limit how actionable survey data is. Remember, they are a starting point, not the final answer.

Why do leaders overestimate how connected their teams feel?

Three reasons: leaders typically interact more with engaged employees (selection bias), survey response rates skew toward the engaged (sampling bias), and aggregated dashboards smooth over the variance that actually matters. The result is a clean number that misrepresents the underlying reality.

What's the leadership perception gap in Florida, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi?

TriNet's 2025 State of Work data shows 73.8% of Southeast employers believe their employees feel connected to leadership, while only 56% of employees say they do — an 18-point gap that holds across the four-state Southeast region.

How should small businesses in the Southeast measure employee engagement?

Move from self-report to observation. Track manager 1:1 cadence and rescheduling rate, promotion and stretch-assignment ratios, internal response times, and voluntary participation in cross-team work. These signals are already present in tools the business uses and don't require a survey to surface.

What's the connection between engagement surveys and turnover in Florida and Georgia SMBs?

Survey scores typically lag turnover risk by 3–6 months because the employees most likely to leave are the least likely to engage with the survey. Operational signals, particularly skipped 1:1s, reduced cross-team participation, and asking for new responsibilities, or no longer volunteering for new projects, can identify risks earlier.

Do SMBs need expensive people-analytics software to act on this?

No. Most of the operational signals worth tracking — meeting cadence, response times, stretch-assignment patterns — are already present in calendar tools, messaging channel, and existing HRIS systems. The work is defining which signals to watch and being purposeful about understanding your teams.

What's the relationship between overwork and disengagement in the Southeast?

TriNet's 2025 State of Work report found 41.4% of Southeast employees report being overworked while only 28.5% of employers believe their teams are. Overwork is one of the clearest predictors of disengagement and retention risk, and the perception gap on hours is one of the most direct contributors to the broader engagement gap.