Fostering a culture to support and promote employee engagement has lasting effects on the organization’s success. Just like in a romantic relationship, employees need to feel supported and valued by their organization. Employee engagement speaks to the employees’ level of commitment to the organization and how connected they feel to the mission, vision, and values. High engagement rates create a workforce that is more likely to go the extra mile and stay with the organization longer. Additionally, since employees feel more connected to the objectives, they are more likely maintain customer and client relationships longer. Excellent customer service is easier to provide when you enjoy the place you work and want to be there. Engagement metrics is just another HR metric that can help your team be effective.
Measuring employee engagement
There are a few HR metrics and tools that can give you an idea of your organization’s employee engagement rate. The most common and straight forward method is to send a survey to all employees that asks questions specifically related engagement. Since this has become such a hot topic, there are many vendors that administer the survey to your employees for you. They will provide researched questions and incorporate questions specific to your organizations culture as well. Collecting and analyzing survey results can also be an administrative burden, which a vendor could alleviate. Make sure to fully vet any potential vendors to ensure their survey aligns with your organization’s goals.
If a survey is not feasible, looking at your HR metrics could give insight as well. Engaged employees tend to stick around, so high retention rates tend to indicate high engagement. Hopefully, you have an HR dashboard where you can easily pull this metric. If not, pause here and read our blog on how to calculate your retention rate. Statistics 101 tells us correlation does not necessarily mean causation, but when speaking about engagement, it gives us a place to start.
High retention rates should prompt you to start asking why people are sticking around. Ask questions about what they like most about their job or if they feel valued or supported. These would be considered stay interviews and can be most beneficial when conducted with high performing employees. Alternatively, if your retention rates are low, that means people are not sticking around. You should be completing exit interviews with the resigning employees. It will be important to find out why people are leaving so that you can address those issues. Stay interviews are more proactive, while exit interviews are reactive. It never hurts to do both if your HR team has the capacity to do so.
Engagement solutions
First and foremost, any engagement initiative should address any opportunities brought to light in either the engagement surveys or the exit/stay interviews. Not following through on promises is almost guaranteed to negatively impact your engagement. Ensuring you had leadership’s buy-in and commitment to implementing solutions can help avoid that.
Try getting creative with your solutions. Employees will always want higher pay and more affordable benefits, which may not always be a realistic deliverable. But, you can create alternative solutions like a spot bonus or recognition program. Companies have begun to implement unique recognition programs where employees earn company bucks that can be redeemed for various prizes. It can be something as simple as company swag, like a water bottle, or something intangible, like extra PTO. Just make sure to have a variety of options to please most employees.
Employees want to be happy about where they work and feel supported. Valentine’s Day comes once a year, but effective employee engagement can have long lasting effects. Sign up for a free demo of our HR dashboard to get your HR metrics quickly so that you can start implementing strategies today.
