Learn how to engage employees by analyzing the 9 engagement archetypes

Employee engagement is a frequent topic in people management, especially as new generations join the workforce bringing a philosophy of life based on personal satisfaction and self-fulfillment.

But how do you engage employees? And how relevant is engagement to organizational performance?

Gallup tracks the topic at global scale. In the State of the Global Workplace 2026opens in a new tab report, with 2025 data, 20% of workers worldwide are engaged. In Brazil the figure is 32%, against 30% in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Engagement also shows in results. In Gallup’s 2020 meta-analysisopens in a new tab, which covered 112,312 teams in 96 countries, the most engaged quartile of teams had 23% higher profitability, and 18% higher productivity in sales and 14% higher in production, than the least engaged quartile.

To find out how to engage employees, many companies look for the motivations behind this behavior. But they treat personal satisfaction as if it were an engagement indicator, and that oversimplifies things.

Others run organizational climate surveys with engagement questionnaires, asking employees how engaged they feel and how much effort they put into their tasks. The answers tend to be biased, because employees respond with what they believe the company wants to hear.

To address this limitation, an article in Harvard Business Reviewopens in a new tab argues for a broader approach, based on 9 engagement archetypes.

What are the main archetypes for working on engagement?

Understanding behaviors and perceptions is not always simple. Archetypes make this reading more intuitive for managers and for employees themselves, who can recognize a behavior that is sometimes unconscious and improve it.

Each archetype combines two axes: behavior (destructive, neutral or constructive) and perception (negative, indifferent or positive). This way, the company finds the engagement lever each profile needs.

1. Saboteur (destructive behavior, negative perception): the presence of a saboteur indicates something is wrong with them or with how the organization treats its employees.
2. Cynic (neutral behavior, negative perception): like the delinquent and the wanderer, rarely engages with work, due to a lack of maturity and self-criticism.
3. Delinquent (destructive behavior, indifferent perception): does not give work its due value, a “rebel without a cause”.
4. Wanderer (neutral behavior, indifferent perception): does not settle into jobs, prefers to jump from one to another and is rarely motivated.
5. Martyr (constructive behavior, negative perception): has growth potential. Works very hard, but complains too much and needs to improve self-esteem. It is in archetypes with constructive behavior, like this one, that the company should concentrate its resources.
6. Bulldozer (constructive behavior, indifferent perception): also does everything for the company, but needs to develop leadership skills to become a star and move away from operational work. Whether they want that or prefer to stay where they are remains to be seen.
7. Spoiled child (destructive behavior, positive perception): believes they already know everything and do not need to learn or help colleagues, or be helped by them. Needs to learn to work in a team and value others.
8. Below potential (neutral behavior, positive perception): needs to understand a larger reason behind what they do and feel they are building something of value, in order to take a more constructive stance and give their best.
9. Star (constructive behavior, positive perception): is not born ready. A star is one of the previous archetypes that was trained and motivated. Has a sense of leadership, high self-esteem, works well in a team and is always evolving and studying.

Why use archetypes to measure engagement?

The classification helps explain what leads people to give their best at work.

Instead of rating engagement as high, medium or low through questionnaires of doubtful results, the approach leads each employee to identify with a character and lets the manager hold the same view.

This makes it clear to everyone how each person behaves, what motivates them and which measures to take to raise engagement.

Identifying the archetype is the first step. What changes engagement is the follow-up that comes next: feedback, 1:1 meetings and a development plan for each person. The performance and development management solution of Stratws brings performance reviews, feedback, 1:1s and development plans into one routine, so each employee knows what to improve and the manager follows that progress.

To go deeper, download the free infographic O alto custo do baixo engajamento dos colaboradoresopens in a new tab (in Portuguese).