Top 3 Ways to Measure Employee Engagement
Employee engagement is essential to any productive, positive work environment. Simply showing up and running through the day-to-day does not equal active engagement. According to Gallup, 51% of employees are actively looking for new job opportunities. With an increasingly competitive workforce, it’s important now more than ever to ensure employees are engaged.
To measure engagement, first, identify the method you want to use. List trackable goals with benchmarks to clearly monitor improvements (and failures). These goals may include gaining a higher employee participation rate during company events, increased discussion and productivity in meetings, or other specific instances or events you can pinpoint and measure. Once you’ve identified how you’d like to gauge employee engagement, there are three top ways to measure success.
Ask and You Shall Receive
One of the easiest ways to measure engagement is by conducting a company-wide survey. Be thoughtful about the kinds of questions asked and the types of responses you wish to receive. Open-ended questions may create too much room for interpretation. Therefore, decide if “yes/no” or multiple choice questions will provide more accurate data and paint a better picture of the current temperature of the company. Also, determine how often you want to conduct surveys to get a “pulse check” on engagement. Once a quarter? Once a year?
With the data received, begin an action plan with deadlines to target areas of improvement and then, communicate progress to your employees.
Track Professional Growth Goals
Employees look to leaders of an organization for direction, accountability, and follow-through. When these aren’t available, it creates chaos and disruption throughout the entire company. All too often employee engagement dwindles when people are not in the positions best suited for them.
Outline specifics of what is expected from your employees at different stages of their career growth within the company. How do their responsibilities change as they are promoted? How do expectations shift? Clear professional growth goals provide an easy measurement of success and engagement.
Schedule Individual Meetings
Employee surveys are one way to gather the information necessary to make cultural changes within a company. However, some employees may feel more comfortable talking through challenges on a one-to-one basis. These individual meetings can also uncover areas of opportunity to help an employee feel more comfortable and dedicated in his or her role.
In general, employees like to feel part of the bigger picture, the greater success. When you only allow them to see or experience one piece of the puzzle, they are not going to be as invested in the project or process than if you give them transparency and insight into the overall goals. It empowers people to know their work matters. Think of different ways to allow employees the opportunity to showcase their talents, create new solutions and strategies, and feel like they make a difference.
The more an employee disengages, the more likely they’re looking for a new job, unhappy in their current role, or indifferent to the outcome of the work or position at the company. This kind of behavior has a negative effect on team morale and imposes a challenge to the company culture overall.
Conducting surveys, tracking employee goals, and scheduling individual meetings, all provide ways to measure employee engagement from a company-wide level as well as a case-by-case basis. By implementing these measurement tools and actively responding, it will help to increase employee retention rates and boost company culture.
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