At successful organizations, employee engagement drives productivity, satisfaction, and overall performance. Engaged employees are focused, bring positive attitudes to work, and exceed expectations. However, despite its importance, many organizations don’t know how to tell if their employees are truly engaged. Without proper measurement and tracking, leaders cannot fully harness the benefits of an engaged workforce, leaving potential productivity and innovation untapped. By understanding why employee engagement matters and how it can be effectively measured, leaders can ensure a thriving workplace.
What is employee engagement?
“Employee engagement is defined as the level of enthusiasm and dedication an employee feels toward their job” explains Melanie Sanders, Senior Consultant at The Diversity Movement. “It’s determined and demonstrated by how employees feel and think and act as well as their emotional connection to their team.” In the day-to-day, this translates into employees who are focused and reliable, meet or exceed expectations, communicate effectively, seek out new opportunities, and are easy to work with.
Aside from being great colleagues, highly engaged employees generate 18% more in sales, are 14% more productive, and are 4.6 times more likely to feel empowered to perform their best work. Companies with engaged employees also have 41% lower absenteeism rates.
How to measure employee engagement
Given the business benefits of employee engagement, leaders should track metrics to ensure employee morale remains high year-over-year. These measurements should be multifaceted and holistic, so leaders can gauge not only levels of engagement but drivers of engagement and disengagement. One-on-one interviews and company-wide surveys should be complemented with observations of the direct outcomes of employee engagement.
One-on-one interviews
There are several sources of individual or small-group feedback leaders should assess: focus groups, stay interviews, and exit interviews. In focus groups, you can conduct “listening sessions,” defined as informal interviews with five-10 employees present. During listening sessions, open-ended questions are asked to solicit authentic feedback from employees. To ensure employees feel safe to share their honest input, it’s best that supervisors and HR are not present and sessions are conducted by a third-party consultant. To gauge engagement in a listening session, the facilitator can ask questions such as “How interested are you in your work at [organization]?” or “Can you describe your relationship with your direct supervisor?”
Stay interviews are semi-structured conversations, usually between a manager and each of their direct reports. They allow employees to express how and why their current role makes them want to stay at the company, how they would like to advance in their career, and what opportunities outside the organization could entice them to leave. These conversations are driven by the employee and provide insight into their individual experience at the organization. If the employee has a trusting relationship with their manager, these interviews can help leaders determine what might cause employees to engage or disengage.
Similar to stay interviews, exit interviews provide insight into an employee’s experience. However, these are done within an employee’s last few days at the organization. While exit interviews can be conducted with those who are terminated and those who resign, the latter will give leaders a better idea as to what is driving folks out. These interviews provide invaluable insight into changes the organization can make to better retain top talent.
Surveys
Company-wide surveys collect massive amounts of data on employee engagement. The results are also easily quantifiable, and progress can be tracked year-over-year. However, there are key considerations leaders should keep in mind before deploying a survey.
First, be sure to check and double check the questions on the survey. You want to make sure you aren’t asking leading questions or introducing bias into the survey. Keep language clear and unambiguous, with a single focus per question. Be sure that ranking scales are consistent throughout, so errors aren’t made. And, remember, assessing responses to open-ended questions is time-consuming and challenging, especially with large workforces, so use these sparingly.
Second, make sure you have several touch points throughout the year, rather than just an annual survey. “You have to measure across a lot of different encounters, so you don’t get false positives,” says Donald Thompson, CEO of The Diversity Movement. “You don’t want someone who’s having a bad day, and that’s the only time you’re asking for their feedback. A couple of times a year, you need to be deliberate about getting employee feedback, so that you’re getting the full sense of how people are feeling across a lot of different circumstances or situations.”
Finally, make sure that you are tracking progress year-over-year. Annual engagement is critical, but so is the difference in engagement between measurements. If engagement is increasing, are there certain initiatives this can be contributed to? Or, if engagement is decreasing, what trends do you see in the data? Are certain departments less engaged than others? Was there a large company reorganization around the same time as the decline? Use the deltas in the data to figure out what is or is not working at your company.
Outcomes of employee engagement
There are several direct outcomes of employee engagement that can also be used as a gauge: turnover, retention, absenteeism, and utilization of company benefits and resources. Because employee engagement leads to reduced absenteeism and increased retention, it’s safe to correlate these measures with employee morale. You can also look at less direct benefits such as productivity, collaboration, and innovation. When these results are high, employee engagement is likely high as well. While these outcomes are correlational, when paired with interviews and surveys, they can be strong indicators of engagement.
Understanding and measuring employee engagement is vital for any organization aiming to optimize performance and retain top talent. Employee engagement, characterized by enthusiasm, dedication, and emotional connection to work, is correlated with several key business drivers. Leaders must adopt a multifaceted approach to gauge attitudes about work. By continuously assessing and addressing the drivers of engagement and disengagement, organizations can foster a motivated, empowered, and effective workforce, driving business success and sustainability.
To learn more about conducting listening sessions, read our article Listening Sessions: A Critical Part of Your DEI Audit. And for more details on conducting valid surveys, read Fighting Survey Fatigue: How to Get the DEI Information You Need.
Kaela Sosa is co-founder and Manager, Curriculum and Programming at The Diversity Movement. Her expertise includes psychology, gender identity and sexual orientation and racial identities. Kaela has written and spoken about a range of topics: active allyship, the inclusive talent lifecycle, disability etiquette, LGBTQ+ inclusion and inclusive language. At The Diversity Movement, she leads the development and execution of learning programs, including digital learning, online courses, certificate programs and certification opportunities. Connect with or follow Kaela on Linkedin to learn more.
