Most companies think they know how engaged their employees are. They run annual surveys, check boxes on performance reviews, and call it a day. Noah Pusey spent the past decade proving them wrong. As CEO and President of Ripple Analytics and a published author, He has worked with organizations of all sizes to show them what real engagement looks like when you actually measure it properly.
Move Away From The Annual Review
You can’t walk into most boardrooms without hearing someone defend the annual performance review. Pusey isn’t convinced. “That system is outdated and not really effective,” he says. “It’s static, subjective, and often disconnected from what’s actually happening day to day.” Performance reviews were built for a world where everyone worked the same hours in the same office. Those days are long gone. Teams now operate across cities, time zones, and flexible schedules. Some employees haven’t met their coworkers in person for months. Checking in once a year makes about as much sense as getting a weather forecast once a year and hoping it stays accurate. “True engagement requires real-time insight, not once-a-year feedback,” Pusey explains. At Ripple, the traditional annual review was replaced with continuous feedback that reflects how performance and collaboration evolve week by week.
Measure Engagement Through Relationships
Ask employees how they feel about work and you’ll get one kind of answer. Watch how they actually work together and you might hear a completely different story. Traditional surveys miss that gap entirely. “They rarely show how those feelings translate into interactions and collaboration,” Pusey explains. Ripple takes a different approach by tracking behavioral data within team relationships. The platform observes how people communicate, cooperate, and support each other in the flow of daily work. It’s the difference between asking someone if they’re a good driver and watching them parallel park. “When you measure relationships, you measure culture, and that’s where true engagement lives,” Pusey says. It reveals what’s really happening inside the organization, not just what people think is happening.
Turn Data Into Action
Collecting information doesn’t solve problems. Pusey learned that the hard way. “Measurement means little without actionable insights,” he says. Companies can drown in data and still have no idea how to address their engagement issues. Ripple changes that by turning feedback into something leaders can actually use. It highlights where engagement is strong, where it’s slipping, and what specific actions could make a difference. That’s where the real transformation happens. “When leaders act on that data, engagement turns from a metric into greater productivity and profitability, and perhaps most importantly, higher retention,” Pusey explains. Engagement stops being another number on a dashboard and becomes a living part of how the business operates.
Nobody doubts that engagement matters anymore. Everyone knows it drives retention, productivity, and innovation. The challenge is figuring out how to measure it when teams are spread across states, time zones, and schedules. “Whether remote, hybrid, or traditional, engagement is everything,” he says. Annual reviews made sense when work was simpler, but they’re outdated for today’s challenges. By the time problems appear in an annual review, they’ve already been growing for months. Real-time feedback catches them early, when action can still make a difference. Pusey’s approach at Ripple Analytics is grounded in a simple truth he repeats often: “You can’t manage what you don’t measure.” The key is to measure in a way that reflects how people actually work today. Companies that do this see stronger results across the board. Those that don’t keep wondering why their engagement scores look fine while their best people keep walking out the door.
Connect with Noah Pusey on LinkedIn to explore how data-driven engagement transforms workplaces.
