How to correctly measure Employee Engagement

Categorised in: Employee Engagement

There is arguably nothing that should be more important to your business than Employee Engagement. It can be defined as the strength of the connection staff feel towards their job and place of work, and it can a determining factor in levels of productivity and Talent Retention. Indeed, because of this, companies need to be aware of their employees’ engagement levels. And one of the best ways to do this is to simply measure it!

How do you quantify Employee Engagement?

Well, when we say “simply”, many businesses find that measuring their employee engagement is a significant challenge. This is because, as our definition suggests, engagement levels are emotion-driven and highly subjective. Understandably, it means that it becomes difficult to quantify how staff actually view their job.

The other issue is that Employee Engagement is something that has to be Sustainable. What we mean by this is that staff satisfaction levels can change over time based on a variety of reasons. As a result, even if a business does have an idea of how engaged their workforce is, it could increase or decrease faster than you realise.

Some concepts to consider

These obstacles mean that, when aiming to measure employee engagement, you need to consider some of the factors that may affect such a complex emotional feeling. Subsequently, we recommend that you think about the following concepts before trying to quantify anything:

• Employee Wellbeing – are your staff happy with their work and do you offer mental health support?
• Opportunity – do you offer opportunities for internal progression and Staff Training?
• Benefits Programs – is there a rewards scheme in place that shows you value your staff?
• Alignment & Transparency – is each part of your company moving in the same direction, and are business processes such as Payroll easily accessible for employees?

Designing Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

With these concepts in mind there are some effective KPIs that can be utilised when measuring employee engagement. These include:

Surveys

An easy way to judge satisfaction is to just ask your staff! Making anonymous surveys that cover important topics such as value at the workplace, work-life balance, and the other concepts discussed above can be insightful. In addition, covering areas such as diversity and inclusion is vital, as these are influential when it comes to overall employee happiness and in building a creative, and thus engaging, workspace.

Retention rates

Looking at how often you need to recruit new staff and how frequently employees are absent can reveal a lot about engagement. Whilst it does vary, an annual turnover rate should be less than 10% for most companies.

Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS)

Originally designed for customers, gathering an NPS can be useful for employee engagement as well. It works by asking staff, on a scale of 0 to 10, how likely they are to recommend working at your company to friends of family.

Typically, it’s considered ‘detracting’ if a score is a 6 or below, and ‘promoting’ if it’s a 9 or 10. Then to work out your overall employee NPS, you subtract the number of detractor scores from the promoter scores, and then divide it by the number of participants. A poor score is one that is below 0 and, the more positive a score is, the higher your engagement is likely to be.

You can discover how HIVE360 can Boost your Employee Engagement with our Engage App Here, or Contact Us for help and advice!