You’re struggling to engage your employees. How can you use statistics to turn things around?

Statistics can significantly enhance employee engagement by highlighting progress and impact, quantifying achievements, setting goals, fostering a culture of recognition, tailoring engagement strategies, and presenting data in context. By highlighting the positive impact of employees on the company's goals, quantifying achievements, setting goals with transparency, identifying high performers, and benchmarking individual performance, organizations can create a sense of ownership and direction for their employees. Additionally, utilizing data to identify disengaged employees and tailor recognition programs based on employee preferences can help address the root causes of disengagement.

Common Employee data collection approaches include official HR documents, performance management, employee surveys, time tracking and attendance data, and learning management systems. Official HR documents include information like name, date of birth, address, job title, salary, and benefits enrollment. Performance management data includes metrics related to output, quality, deadlines, and customer satisfaction. Employee surveys provide valuable insights into employee engagement, satisfaction, and company culture. Time tracking and attendance data monitor employee hours worked, breaks taken, and project activity. LMS data assess training program effectiveness and identify areas for support.

Define objectives and questions, and gather data from sources like HR information systems, performance reviews, employee surveys, and payroll records. Clean and prepare the data by identifying and correcting errors or inconsistencies. Choose appropriate analysis tools, such as spreadsheets or statistical software, and use descriptive statistics to summarize the data. Hypothesis testing and correlations can be used to assess relationships between variables or test hypotheses. Data visualization can help communicate findings effectively. Interpret and communicate results clearly and concisely, focusing on relevant insights. Take action based on the analysis, developing recommendations for HR practices, training initiatives, company policies.

To effectively interpret employee data, follow these steps: 1) Understand the data source, 2) Analyze the data types, 3) Analyze the data using measures like central tendency and variability, 4) Analyze the data using thematic analysis, and 5) Consider the context, including external factors like company changes, industry trends, and demographics. Benchmark the data and segment it by age, gender, and department to identify differences in experiences. 6) Combine the data using triangulation to strengthen interpretations. Visualize the data using charts and graphs, and focus on actionable insights by translating findings into actionable recommendations for improvement.

There is so much more to statistical analysis than merely producing numbers. The real value of survey results lies in uncovering the true underlying dynamics that shape workplace morale and productivity. E.g. imagine survey results show that many employees are dissatisfied with their work-life balance. This insight is informative, but the true insight lies in understanding why the imbalance exists. Through investigation we may discover that some team workload demands are higher than others due to inefficient processes or poor resourcing. Armed with this information we can develop targetted interventions that are sustainble such as resource allocation adjustments or process/workflow optimisation.

It's important to also use statistics to measure if the remedial measures taken to improve employee engagement have been effective. Asking the same questions before and after measures are taken and identifying changes can help tailor the actions taken.

Collecting data and using statistics is useful tool to get an initial overall picture of what employees value at their workplace, what motivates them, what works well and what needs to be improved, and ultimately reasons of low engagement, with some caveats i.e. if the right questions are asked and the organisation/upper management truly wishes to find out why employee engagement is low and take corrective actions. Be mindful though to follow up with one-to-one interviews or focus groups, to further explore the reasons of low engagement and get feedback from the employees on how to bring meaningful change. Sometimes, employee engagement surveys are just a box-ticking exercise, which can cause even lower employee engagement.