The Importance of Measuring Your Employee Engagement
Do you honestly know how your employees feel about working for you? Are they happy? Motivated? Excited? Or deep down are they struggling, with the mindset to find a new role?
Although complex, understanding your employees’ emotions and perception of your company is a vital factor to maintain a successful, engaged workplace.
Now I understand how this can sometimes be overlooked as it doesn’t create instant results for your company, however, your employees’ feelings will affect your business long-term and whether future hires will want to join you. Ultimately, it will make or break your reputation!
What is employee engagement
Employee engagement is a feeling – It is how well aligned and connected your employees feel. Now this cannot be quantified or put into a spreadsheet… it’s qualitive data. It’s real life.
Although difficult to measure, it’s something that every human does daily which is building and maintaining relationships, therefore you’d think that constructing an engaged workplace would be easy right? Well it can be difficult, especially in a large organisation, to align everyone’s values and desires.
However, as difficult as it can be, your employees are the lifeblood of your company, and if they aren’t happy, cracks will start to show! Click here to gain a greater understanding of what your current level of engagement says about your dynamics.
Why you should focus on and measure employee engagement?
Now I know what you’re going to say, something else to invest your time in…. However, this is much more important than you think and will influence the way your employer brand is observed from an internal and external viewpoint.
Additionally, the benefits of strengthening your engagement levels will not only create a positive and efficient workplace, it will also help with your turnover!
“Companies who invest in employee experience are four times more profitable than those who do not.”
In a world where your culture is of high importance when attracting potential hires and clients, you need to ensure that you have a full understanding of your current value, and if needed, how to make improvements and progress your workplace from this.
What is your current strategy?
Have a good think – What is your current strategy when it concerns engagement? Do you even have one?
Well it all starts from your recruitment style and the type of employees you bring onboard. If you’re attracting the wrong type of candidates, that should be a clear indication that your culture isn’t up to scratch.
After hiring your employees, what efforts do you go to, to make them feel involved and a key part of your workplace?
How you can measure it?
Now you understand why it is important to focus on your engagement, here is how to measure your current activity.
As stated above, feelings cannot be collected, put into a table, analysed and condensed into a single answer, there’s so much more depth to it than that. Therefore, one of the best ways you can measure and gain a greater understanding of your employee’s views is to speak to them. As obvious as that sounds, it’s the best way to understand their honest perception.
Spending some time observing the workplace from their shoes is a good place to start as you’ll gain a greater understanding of their day to day experience.
From there, communicating both verbally and in written form will provide you with a deeper insight. As there are a diverse range of emotions that could be experienced, research suggests how using 10 benchmark metrics will work best to define your level of employee engagement. Click here to view each metric in depth and the type of findings they will provide you with.
This research can be carried out through multiple routes, including one-to-one meetings and anonymous surveys, to exit interviews – it’s all down to what works best for you!
How to communicate your findings and make improvements
Once you have collected your findings and to make the most out of this activity, the next appropriate step is to communicate those results back to your team. This step is recommended as you can then make changes based on your current engagement levels.
This phase is vital if you’re looking to increase your employees experience and refine your employer brand. Remember, your current and previous employees will express their experience on platforms such as Glassdoor, therefore, showing them that you are interested in improving engagement will be highly valued.
Ways to make improvements from your findings
Understanding that improvements need to be made is the first hurdle, the next is implementing engagement strategies into your daily workload to tackle those weaker areas. The type of areas you can focus on are:
• Goal setting: Giving your employees a purpose and a goal to reach is found to significantly increase their engagement levels and desire to progress the company.
• Communication: Although very self-explanatory, communication is one of the easiest ways to improve engagement levels in your workplace. Employees crave an open structure, therefore, providing an open-door policy with regular valuable communication will improve many areas of your company.
• Start with leadership: If you’re looking to improve the engagement of your whole company, one of the best ways to kickstart this process is by focusing on leadership styles. From there, you’ll have a greater understanding of why your culture may be experiencing a lack of engaged employees. Click here to read on about these key areas.
Although a difficult process to go through, understanding your current level of engagement, measuring it and making improvements based on your results will not only boost your employee’s motivation and performance, it will also refine your employer brand and how you are viewed in the marketplace.
Additionally, bringing a positive vibe to your workplace will increase your retention rate, attract greater talent and boost your bottom line.
If you’re looking for further details regarding the effectiveness of measuring your engagement levels and how this can improve your company, feel free to contact us on [email protected]
