How to Measure Employee Engagement: Key Metrics
It’s no secret that retaining frontline workers has become a top priority for businesses. And as an internal communicator, it’s most likely on your radar too.
We all know that losing skilled and experienced employees not only leads to a loss of productivity but also incurs additional costs in terms of hiring and training new employees. To combat this issue, businesses need to take proactive measures to keep their employees engaged and satisfied.?
But how do you even begin to measure employee engagement and what metrics should you use? We tell you below!
Establishing a Baseline Metric for Employee Engagement
Establishing a baseline employee engagement metric is an important first step in measuring and improving employee engagement within your organization. Without a baseline, it can be difficult to know whether your efforts to improve engagement are having an impact.?
You will need to conduct an employee engagement survey to establish a baseline metric. Organizations often find it challenging to conduct employee engagement surveys, especially when an easy way to communicate with employees does not exist in the first place. Companies may also struggle with budget or internal bandwidth to execute large-scale surveys.
Consider looking at your electronic NPS (eNPS) scores as a baseline. NPS surveys consist of a single question: "On a scale of 0 -10, how likely are you to recommend us as a place to work to a friend or family member?" Note that a score of -20 to +20 is considered normal, and any score of?40+ is considered excellent.
Since eNPS surveys are only one question, we typically see higher participation rates than longer employee engagement surveys. If you don't have a direct channel of communication with all employees, especially frontline workers, consider implementing the eNPS survey on tablets, computers in break rooms, and timekeeping terminals or sending them by SMS to your employees.
Many of the most common HR systems (HRIS and HCM solutions) will include eNPS or employee engagement survey functionality. Consider leveraging these tools to gather baseline metrics.
Measuring Employee Engagement Through Surveys
Employee satisfaction surveys are among the most common metrics used to measure employee engagement. These surveys typically ask employees about their job satisfaction, their level of engagement with their work, and perceptions of their employer.?
The results of these surveys can provide valuable insights into the level of engagement within your organization, as well as areas that may require improvement.?
When conducting employee satisfaction surveys, asking specific, targeted questions is important. By asking targeted questions, you can better understand what drives employee engagement in your workplace.
Keep in mind that surveys provide valuable data points at a single point in time. Therefore, it is essential to commit to running surveys or polls regularly – at least twice per year – to observe trends and mitigate one-off variations that could skew results.
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The Speakap employee app offers a Poll functionality that is efficient for obtaining answers to specific questions. For a more detailed question and data set, you can use a survey tool like SurveyMonkey that fully integrates with the Speakap employee app.
Other Metrics for Measuring Employee Engagement
In addition to measuring engagement through surveys, there are other metrics you can use to establish a baseline for employee engagement. These include employee turnover rates, absenteeism rates, or participation in training and development programs.?
Partner with your HR department to gather key data sets for tracking, including:
By tracking these metrics over time, you can gain a better understanding of the overall level of engagement within your organization and identify areas that require improvement. Once you have established a baseline metric of employee engagement and identified areas that need improvement, it's important to implement targeted strategies to address these issues.?
However, it's important to remember that we want to isolate variables to establish causality, so it's best to implement one idea at a time and measure its impact on key metrics.?For example, if the baseline metric shows that employees are dissatisfied with their workload, you could implement a flexible work schedule that allows employees to adjust their work hours to better suit their needs.?
After implementing this idea, you would then measure the impact on key metrics such as job satisfaction, productivity, and absenteeism rates.?
If the flexible work schedule resulted in an increase in job satisfaction and productivity, and a decrease in absenteeism rates, you could conclude that the strategy was effective in improving employee engagement. However, if the results are mixed or negative, you may need to adjust the strategy or try a different approach altogether.?
By implementing one idea at a time and measuring its impact on key metrics, you can establish causality and gain a better understanding of what strategies are most effective in improving employee engagement within your organization.?
Conclusion
Establishing a baseline employee engagement metric is an essential first step in improving engagement within your organization.?
With time and effort, you can create a more engaged and productive workforce that is better equipped to meet the challenges of today's fast-paced business environment and decrease your frontline worker turnover rates.?