What are the best practices for measuring employee engagement and satisfaction?

Many organizations choose to conduct an annual employee survey. While this is useful information, it is not necessarily 'usable' information. Why? Because it's a snapshot in time. And if you immediate implement a new initiative to address results, you won't know if you were success ful until a full year later! What's the alternative? Make your assessment data as "real-time" as possible. Don't give your survey to ALL employees in the same few-day span. Instead, institute tiered data collection. A diffferent, random subset of employees is asked to take the survey every couple weeks. You can then assess results on an iterative, rolling basis. This will allow you to assess results of new initiatives in a more immediate way.

One of the common pitfalls in assessing employee engagement and satisfaction is to stick to the now traditional ??annual review?? or even ??quarterly review??. This review is mostly seen by the employee as a way to negotiate bonuses or higher base salary, which means that he will not void other concerns that might in the short time mid-term create deeper miscontentment. Therefore, ideally there should be a mix of regular interactions with the employees and more global assessments such as the annual review.

It is very difficult to avoid bias when drafting questions yourself. And even when you try hard not to be biased or leading towards a foregone conclusion, employees might still be suspicious. One suggestion can be to use templates that you can buy from specialised sites. There are plenty of sites and no need to promote one in particular but you enough to Google ??questionnaires templates for employees engagement?? to find what you need at a reasonable cost.

Anonymity is key obviously. But more importantly, consistency is crucial. If Employees are regularly submitted to surveys and they see that nothing ?negative?? happens to them even if they voice criticism, they will tend to be more transparent over time. The ??one-off?? survey out of the blue is the one that will raise suspicions or fear, even if you explain very clearly the purpose. Let’s not forget that more than words, actions are more impactful and repeated actions even more.

To ensure accurate measurement of employee satisfaction - confidentiality is imperative. If people do not feel comfortable, they will not be confident to give honest feedback that is critical. This can result in data that is polluted which cannot derive the correct results. In addition to confidentiality, a high response rate ensures that a larger proportion of the company’s thoughts are represented and can be used more effectively to implement positive change. Hosting a silent survey and allocating a specific time in everyone's schedule to complete the task might make it easier to encourage honest mass participation.

I hosted a silent survey meeting for a company a few years ago, and the Firm Owner was amazed at the data shared by the employees. I remember sharing that employees are willing to share more when they don't feel like they will "get in trouble or, worse, be fired" for sharing feedback. Consider that if they are sharing real feedback, they desire to see improvements made in the organization.

Ultimately, performance and retention are the best measurements for employee satisfaction. Other KPIs are less reliable research shows.

One point of caution here. Interpreting results is not a very straightforward task. Whatever ??satisfaction?? or engagement you are looking in employees, there will always be those who are in only for the salary or because they find it comfortable. The important feedback is from those who are able to get out of their comfort zone. That’s the most valuable one.

The worst thing that you could do is not to do anything. Even if all the employees want something impossible to implement, you still have at least to come with an answer / explanation. And for the surveys and all the efforts and resources and time put into measuring employee satisfaction to be useful and helpful, you need to be ready to change, adapt and or adopt new things, take decisions or think differently.