Measuring Employee Engagement And Engaging Employees
Employee engagement is often confused with employee satisfaction, employee happiness or even employee salary. In reality, employee satisfaction and employee engagement are two different concepts. A satisfied employee is not necessarily highly committed or willing to go an extra mile for the company. Employee engagement does not even mean employee happiness as an employee might not be working harder or performing very well if he is only happy and not engaged.
Global studies reveal that only 12% of the employees leave an organization for more money so expectation of a higher pay does not have to do with employee engagement.
So what is employee engagement then?
Employee engagement is when employees feel emotionally connected to the company and its mission. This means that engaged employees really care for the company and are highly committed to make it reach its goals.
The 2017 Global Workforce Report indicates that just 13% of all Indian employees actually feel engaged at work. This is a very low figure considering that employee engagement is directly related to not only higher performance but also better business outcomes. According to Kenexa research, companies with engaged employees have five times higher shareholder returns indicating that business returns are closely connected to employee engagement.
Measuring metrics of employee engagement
Now that we saw why engagement is important we need a measure of engagement to track the current pulse of the company. If you want to improve something you need to measure it. The HR department is constantly looking for ways to increase the productivity and satisfaction of employees.
According to CultureQ, the most prevalent strategies to effectively oversee and drive representative commitment are drafting worker commitment surveys(55%), making culture panels and events (29%), and offering employee resource groups (20%).
An engagement survey helps to connect the work and performance of an employee to the organisation’s goals. It helps to know what is wrong. The data from these surveys is also important to find how team morale can be built.
For designing an engagement survey you need to first identify a goal. It can be to improve work culture, enhance employee performance or simply retention. These goals are company-specific and you need to pick out an area that needs work in your own company.
Next, you need to align your survey to these goals by keeping in mind certain metrics while designing the survey.The most important metrics are:
-Feedback
-Recognition
-Alignment to the company’s goals
-Relationship with colleagues and managers
Building Engagement Strategies
The work doesn’t end at sending surveys. You need to build an action plan to see higher performance levels. The results of the survey need to be properly analysed to arrive at strategies for implementation. Very often managers dictate the strategies before even discussing the results of the survey with their employees. This is not the right approach as employees need to be made part of the process to make them actually feel as an important part of the organisation.
Once the results are discussed, the areas that need to be targeted should be identified. You should take opinions of all employees with regard to the relevant strategies. It is very tempting to ask a few senior leaders to come up with strategies by themselves but what you should really be doing is asking the employees as they are the ones who are not engaged and only they might know why.
After this you will see a smooth implementation of these strategies as employees were involved at every step. Since the employees came up with the strategies they will be passionately involved in the implementation. Involving associates in deciding strategies also makes them feel valued and their morale is much higher.
To conclude, it should be noted that measuring engagement and engaging employees is not a ritual to be conducted only once at the end of each year. It is a continuous and ever-evolving process as employee moods and trends change each day. Therefore, a strategy devised for the entire year may not work on each and every day. There are many tools and ways to help you track and measure employee engagement each day to give you an average of how an employee felt during an entire month. This can help you get better insights to devise plans for engaging employees.