How do you connect Employee Engagement to KPIs?

1 Define your KPIs

The first step to connect employee engagement to KPIs is to define what KPIs are relevant and meaningful for your organization. KPIs are quantifiable metrics that reflect your goals, objectives, and priorities. They can be related to financial, operational, customer, or employee outcomes. For example, some common KPIs are revenue, profit, customer satisfaction, retention, turnover, absenteeism, productivity, quality, and innovation. You should choose KPIs that align with your vision, mission, and values, and that are SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound.

2 Assess your employee engagement

The next step is to assess your current level of employee engagement and identify the factors that influence it. Employee engagement is the degree to which employees feel committed, motivated, and connected to their work and organization. It can be measured by using surveys, interviews, focus groups, or other methods that capture the voice of your employees. You should also consider the drivers of employee engagement, such as leadership, communication, recognition, feedback, development, culture, and well-being. These drivers can affect how employees perceive and respond to their work environment and expectations.

3 Map your engagement drivers to your KPIs

The third step is to map your engagement drivers to your KPIs and analyze how they relate to each other. This means identifying the causal relationships between the factors that affect employee engagement and the outcomes that reflect your performance. For example, you can use a correlation analysis to see how engagement drivers such as recognition, feedback, and development correlate with KPIs such as retention, productivity, and quality. You can also use a regression analysis to see how much variance in your KPIs can be explained by your engagement drivers. This can help you understand the impact of employee engagement on your KPIs and vice versa.

4 Set your engagement goals and actions

The fourth step is to set your engagement goals and actions based on your analysis and insights. This means defining what level of employee engagement you want to achieve and what actions you need to take to improve it. Your engagement goals should be aligned with your KPIs and reflect the gaps and opportunities that you identified in your mapping. Your engagement actions should be specific, actionable, and realistic, and address the root causes of low or high engagement. For example, if you want to increase your retention rate and you found that recognition is a key driver of engagement, you can set a goal to increase the frequency and quality of recognition and implement a recognition program or system.

5 Monitor and evaluate your progress

The final step is to monitor and evaluate your progress and adjust your strategy as needed. This means tracking and measuring your engagement and KPI data over time and comparing them with your baselines and targets. You should also collect feedback and input from your employees and stakeholders to assess the effectiveness and impact of your engagement actions. You should use data-driven and evidence-based methods to evaluate your results and identify what works and what doesn't. You should also celebrate your successes and learn from your failures and continuously improve your employee engagement and performance.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?