How can you measure employee engagement after a change?

Engagement represents the willingness of employees to expend their personal energy in service of organizational objectives. This form of engagement is characterized by a identification with the company’s values and a proactive approach to contributing towards the collective success. It is a critical component of execution capability, ensuring that the energy and commitment of the workforce are effectively channeled into achieving strategic goals and driving organizational performance.

To measure employee engagement after a change, you can use surveys to ask employees how they feel. Look at data like how often people are absent, how many leave, and how well they work. Talking to employees and seeing who joins new projects can also give good clues.

You can measure employee engagement after a change by conducting pulse surveys, analyzing KPI's like productivity and retention, holding focus groups for feedback, and monitoring employee participation in company initiatives. Additionally, regular one-on-one check-ins can give insights into how employees are adapting to the change.

Measuring employee engagement post organisational change gives a crucial 'line in the sand' on how employees are feeling. To give the most accurate picture though, ensure your survey or listening process is fully aligned with your organisational context, to measure what matters most for both your people and the business. Doing so will ensure you have highly relevant and more actionable results, and can more readily spot issues and focus areas.

In this instance, consider the root - if you're looking to change something, what will be the impact of the change. When you're measuring what the impact might be, employee engagement should be considered then, and in discussion with the 'change makers'. This will help determine goals to ensure engagement strengthens rather than weakens.

As a former Communications and Engagement Program Manager, I found journey maps to be a highly effective tool for measuring engagement throughout change. This visual mapping allowed me to track the employee experience before, during and after change. Some tips when using journey maps are: 1) Identify key touchpoints like trainings, onboarding, and meetings. 2) Map emotions, challenges, and satisfaction levels pre and post-change. 3) Gather feedback via surveys, focus groups, and interviews. 4) Analyze data to identify trends and areas for improvement. Using journey maps, I gained a comprehensive understanding of the employee experience, facilitating effective communication with leadership and enhancing overall engagement during change.

Agreed. Let’s say, you've been gathering plenty of feedback about your current benefit program through exit interview surveys. As a result, the leadership decides to enhance the plan to better suit employee needs. You can then assess whether this change has impacted retention rates or changed the response in exit interviews. Another way to measure engagement is by comparing survey results before and after the change. Monitoring and measuring engagement should occur throughout the entire employee journey. Also, receiving direct feedback from employees is another way to determine the effectiveness of engagement initiatives.

The choice of measurement method should be relevant to the change and/or the goals set out. People often think of the measurement tool first (i.e. 'let's send out a survey') because it's a 'good idea'. But it's just an idea without a plan!

Triangulation—using several methods—is best to give your organisation the confidence that the change can be attributed back to the change event rather than something else. What's more, if the change is planned, e.g., an intervention, rather than unplanned, e.g., a pandemic, it would be best to consider a control group, if possible. Moreover, I would always encourage a genuine mix of methods that can shed light on different aspects of the change process, e.g., how much, why, when, who, etc.

Make sure you understand the change in engagement is due to the change or not. Engagement can decline and improve, and with change managed effectively engagement can improve - focus on communication and change management strategies, the engagement data tracking shouldn't be too different with change or without.

A really big thing when it comes to analysing results is having the tools and capability to separate the key signals among the data - the priority action areas you need to focus on first to affect engagement. This is commonly somewhere where managers can struggle, so consider what support you can give them at this stage. Moreover 'closing the loop' after measuring engagement is all-important. Having asked people to give their time and share opinions, you need to share back with them what the results showed, planned next steps and actions, and ideally a timeline for implementing change.

It's also helpful to involve employees, especially senior leaders and managers, in the process of taking action after you gather initial results. They are the most in-tune with how employees are handling change and can provide direct and comprehensive feedback on what actions to take that will ensure smoother iterations and follow-ups after change.

Sounds obvious this, but often forgotten. If you're measuring something, it's pointless unless you do something with your results. Doing something could just be communication, it doesn't always mean re-writing the rule book (... although sometimes, it might, and you should prepare for what that something might be) Change in one place usually requires change in another!

One key success factor is to understand where people are in a change curve, which is not always easy. For example, once you begin to communicate about a change, you can expect perceptions to decline because you just raised the bar and set new expectations. One useful approach in most instances is to look at scores by Job Level over time. You can expect leaders to move through a change curve ahead of others. By judging the lag to the rest of the organisation, you can analyse how well you're doing.

Conduct small focus group discussions to gather in-depth feedback on the change's impact. Next, monitor employee behavior and interactions to identify changes in morale. Other methods include having stay interviews with high-performing employees to get clarity on factors that contribute to their engagement. Finally, monitor employee pulse through engagement surveys to analyse job satisfaction.

Whether it's a survey, focus group, 121 interactions or whatever you choose, do it before change and then post change, to compare and contrast engagement before and after. Try for non anonymous feedback where possible, making it easier to take action or address and fears around change, or even better match positive requests with your actions, to show employees you're acting on their feedback post change.