Measuring employee engagement - Need for a holistic approach ?

Much has been studied and discussed about employee engagement and its positive impact on organizational outcomes. Gallup for example suggests a 20% or better boost to productivity and profitability for companies with high engagement. Having said that, such companies are hard to find. Gallup reports that a meagre 13% of the global workforce is engaged in their jobs. Similar results have been found in other studies as well.

Notwithstanding a keen interest in the subject and good intentions most organizations are unable to keep their employees engaged. One of the reasons for this state of is the way engagement is measured and reported. The most prevalent system used is the quintessential engagement survey that solicits response from employees on a set of questions based on a rating scale. Individual responses to the questions are then aggregated and reported at a department, location and business level maintaining confidentiality of respondents. While the frequency of survey and questions asked vary from one organization to another, the presuppositions and approach used remain largely the same. Despite being a convenient and easy to understand tool that provides managers with a pulse of employees, this method suffers from a number of drawbacks:

• Perception Vs Reality: The response to these survey tools give employers with a measure of employee attitudes and their perception of how engaged they consider themselves to be. Although it is a useful input but the actual engagement on the job could be poles apart from what they perceive it to be
• Confirmation Bias: This cognitive bias effects decision making where employees tend to disregard evidence and make choices based on their previously held beliefs or values. In the present context employees are more likely to select choices that resemble their notions of workplace and organization
• Recency Bias: Employees are likely outweigh recent events by extrapolating them into the future which impedes judgment. This is another bias that signals significant deviation from rationality in judgment and can impact employee choices. Recent events in an employees’ professional , personal life can unconsciously influence responses on the engagement survey
• Dated Results: For engagement scores to be useful, it needs to be live and current. This is more important in the current business environment where things are very dynamic. However companies generally rely on external vendors for conducting these surveys that specialize in creating standardize tools and also ensure an unbiased platform. Many a time results from these vendors take weeks to reach companies which attenuates their overall value
• Cross-cultural, job variations: Studies have shown that engagement levels vary from country to country, depend on type of industry, nature of job, etc. Even within the same organization, there are variations – support roles tend to have lower scores when compared to other functions. Unfortunately, most companies tend to ignore cross cultural, inter departmental, job variations while measuring and interpreting engagement levels of their workforce
• Data Visibility: To maintain confidentiality of individual respondents and encourage honest responses, results are aggregated and analyzed only at group / organization level. While from a design perspective it may seem like the right thing to do, it becomes an onerous task from managers to deep dive and devise specific action plan to improve their scores. Often this leads to counter-intuitive actions like – managers trying to boil the ocean , undermining the issue by labeling it as a “understanding” problem of respondents, or worse coercing team members for a favorable response
• Genuity of responses: Are employees voicing genuine feedback or just mirroring responses that their employers want to hear? Though this may seem extremely cynical, possibility cannot be overruled. Albeit this may indicate larger cultural issues within organization , relying on engagement scores as an indicator for this cohort would be silly and pointless

The interplay of above factors among others in varying degrees culminate into an outcome that is often incomplete, inaccurate representation of reality. As a result, no decision can be taken solely on the basis of these metrics – be it performance appraisal, promotion or finalizing investment on any workforce welfare / development program. Often leaders lose confidence in the reliability of these tools with the result that the process ends up being confined to just a HR priority. According to a 2017 Dale Carnegie study, “Just 26% of leaders surveyed say that (employee engagement) is a very important part of what they think about, plan and do every day”.

Given this context, what should organizations do differently to create measures that are simple to use and understand but at the same time reliable and effective? 

Rather than determining only lag measures, organizations should focus on leveraging lead variables that predict higher engagement.

To start with, let’s revisit the whole engagement paradigm and understand at a conceptual level what employee engagement really means. According to William Kahn, one of the pioneers of this concept “engagement happens when employees’ personal selves are aligned with what they do in their work”. In engagement people employ and express themselves physically, cognitively and emotionally during role performances. In a workplace this translate into behaviors like – higher discretionary effort, collaboration, eagerness to learn, better networking, socializing, generating new ideas, etc.

The table below depicts the behaviors associated with engaged and disengaged employees:

When these behaviors and associated measures are read in conjunction with survey results, things get interesting. We are finally able to measure actual engagement and check variations from self-perceived engagement scores. For eg, a response to the question “Do you feel motivated at work?” , on a scale of 1-5 by itself does not indicate much . However, when it is interpreted along with other lead indicators the same result becomes very insightful.

Studies have shown changes in behavioral pattern when people start feeling disengaged that gradually evolves manifesting in possible exit from organization. Employee engagement is a complex concept as multiple factors impact the outcome – organizational culture, values , leadership style , just to name a few. These levers can be broadly classified under two heads – organizational and managerial. They influence the way people behave, perceive their jobs and future prospects within the organization. The below figure depicts a framework that can be used for as a reference for measuring engagement:

The field of people analytics offers organizations an exciting opportunity with tools that can analyze and provide data around measures which predict direct engagement. This data can then be transformed to anonymous dashboards for organizations to take necessary action in real time. The patterns that emerge from this data would allude to strengths as well as opportunity areas. Employers then have a chance to proactively action on identified areas before they escalate. This would solve many problems – identifying & controlling regretted attrition, nip in the bud potential ER issues, provide inputs for learning & development and most importantly give actionable feedback to managers to better lead their employees.

To illustrate the power of people analytics, let’s consider an example. One of the burning problems facing organizations today is figuring ways to improve collaboration. People analytics offers reliable and valid methods to not only measure but connect collaboration networks with individual and team outcomes. Organizational network analysis plots the connections of employees within and outside team using network maps that reveal how formal organizational structures translate to informal interactions – Who’s isolated? Who’s in the pick of things? How much collaboration is optimum? 

The building blocks of network maps – network size, strength, range, density & centrality can be plotted against individual outcomes – performance, satisfaction, commitment, burnout, turnover, etc. These details afford organization with measures to design suitable interventions such as – eliminating silos, reward & incentivize performance, minimizing employee overload, reducing red tape and network inefficiencies, etc.

Academic literature and qualitative data have suggested the need for greater focus and value of employee engagement. But it’s just the beginning. The time is set to unlock the immense potential of your employees by leveraging technology - understanding what really drives them and removing bottlenecks in realizing their goals.