To Flourish at Work, Employees Need Four Freedoms

Are you flourishing at work?

If you are like most American workers, probably not.

According to Gallup’s most recent employee engagement survey, just 31% of U.S. and Canadian employees were actively engaged at work in 2025 — unchanged from the year before and down from a peak of 36% in 2020.

At the same token, roughly 17% are actively either disengaged or checked out on the job. According to Gallup, these statistics correspond with lower productivity, satisfaction and thriving, and even lost revenue.

For Laura Morgan Roberts, associate professor of business administration at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business, that statistic begs a deeper question: what would it take for people not just to be engaged but to flourish at work?

Roberts, who studies leadership, positive identity and organizational behavior, argues that engagement rises and falls not only with economic cycles or job markets, but also with what happens inside organizations — especially in the daily practices of managers.

“We've seen up close the numerous career changes, shifts and organizational restructuring that have taken place over the past six months,” she says. “But we also know that a great deal of employee engagement, performance and well-being is shaped by what happens inside the organization, regardless of what job you have. The manager, in particular, has an outsized impact on the employee experience and organizational outcomes.”

The Four Freedoms at Work

Roberts’ research points to what she calls the “four freedoms at work” — the freedom to be, become, fade and fail — as the building blocks of a workplace where people feel connected, capable and purposeful.

“There are organizational and leadership practices that can help create a climate in which people feel more engaged, and that means they feel more connected to their authentic selves, their coworkers and their employing organizations,” says Roberts, who leads the Women in Leadership Program and Servant Leadership courses offered through Darden Executive Education & Lifelong Learning.

The four freedoms at work reflect pathways to flourishing, based on her research in positive psychology and asset-based organizational development. Specifically, Roberts has focused on questions of positive identity development at work, and how we build and sustain positive relationships.

1. The freedom to be

“The first of the four freedoms at work is the freedom to be,” Roberts explains. That means the freedom to be your authentic self.

When we think about authenticity, she says, we often think about things like our emotional expression and self-disclosure. “What we tell people about our feelings, about our opinions, about our dreams and desires, and even some of our fears and anxieties,” she says.

High-quality connections require that people “feel free to be able to share some of those personal aspects of self” and that others “recognize, acknowledge, affirm us and our authentic selves in the ways that we see us ourselves.”

When employees feel forced to perform a persona that clashes with their values, the costs are real. Those who feel they are “having to fake it just to make it” often experience “higher levels of anxiety and depression, if they feel like they are living out of alignment with the aspects of their culture and their values that are most important to them.”

There are a number of different ways people might tap into the freedom to be. “It's connecting values and culture,” says Roberts. “It also is about expressing a divergent or a different point of view. And that can be hard to do. It can be really hard to go against the grain, to be the dissenting voice.”

For leaders, the implication is clear: psychological safety is not a soft perk. It is foundational to engagement and well-being.

2. The freedom to become

Engagement is not only about authenticity; it is also about growth. The second freedom is “the freedom to become.”

Becoming is not vague self-actualization. “We want to feel that in the context of our work, we’re able to tap into our best self,” says Roberts. “When we’re tapping into our best self, we are activating our strengths in ways that help to maximize our contribution and that strengthen others.”

To be free to become is to embrace progress by recognizing that “I might not be there yet. I don’t have to be perfect, but I feel like I’m on the right path. I feel like I’m on a growth trajectory that’s important to me.”

Organizations can foster this freedom through development practices such as 360 performance evaluations, mentoring, executive development and celebrations of career milestones.

3. The freedom to fade

In the wake of burnout and shifting generational expectations, Roberts identifies a third freedom: “the freedom to fade.”

Freedom to fade acknowledges employees’ desire for flexibility and boundaries — the ability to “set the terms, set the hours, set the place, and then think about how they want to calibrate or modulate their own engagement at different points in their career.”

Practices such as remote work, family leave, mental health benefits and even four-day workweeks can help “create the space for people to set some healthier boundaries for themselves.”

People in higher power positions tend to have more flexibility, while those with less power or authority (e.g., hourly workers) have far less freedom to fade at work, despite health or caregiving responsibilities. It is important for managers and employees to communicate openly and to actively negotiate for this flexibility, while ensuring that everyone’s commitment to their role and team is maintained, deliverables are timely, and work is distributed fairly.

4. The freedom to fail

Finally, flourishing demands experimentation. How do we create the environment where we can actually explore, innovate, experiment, fail? But learn from that failure?

Too often, organizations operate as if “failure isn’t an option.”

But in dynamic environments, learning is impossible without risk. The challenge is to build “some grace into the system, where we can live and learn through second chances.”

Here again, equity matters. Roberts notes that “everybody doesn’t have the same access to freedom.”

Those with higher status often have more latitude to dissent or recover from mistakes, while outsiders may find that “failures can be career-ending.”

If leaders want innovation, they must ensure that the freedom to fail is not reserved for the powerful few.

Beyond Zero-Sum Thinking

Perhaps the most challenging aspect of Roberts’ framework is the mindset shift it requires. Many leaders instinctively view freedom as a tradeoff: if one person gains flexibility or voice, someone else must lose control.

Many people assume: “The more comfortable I am, then the less beholden I am to your rules,” she explains. “If I'm pursuing my desires, then I may be undercutting your needs. If I'm pursuing my needs, I may be extracting and taxing your resources.”

But flourishing depends on reframing freedom as, at least in part, mutually reinforcing. While tensions are real — “It is a paradox” — there are “opportunities for me to tap into more of these freedoms in ways that don’t take away from your freedoms, but in fact, can help to liberate you as well.”

That reframing is practical, not philosophical. When employees feel connected to their authentic selves, to one another and to meaningful work, engagement becomes a byproduct of the four freedoms rather than a singular target.

In a moment when fewer than one in three workers report being engaged, Roberts’ research offers a roadmap. Flourishing is not a perk to be layered on after performance goals are met. It is a function of daily leadership choices — choices that expand or constrain the freedoms people need to thrive.

The data may signal stagnation. But inside organizations, the levers for change remain firmly in leaders’ hands.

To view Professor Roberts’s interactive webinar hosted by Executive Education & Lifelong Learning, see: “Four Freedoms: Creating Conditions that Allow Teams to Flourish.