Measuring employee’s engagement right

The last couple of weeks has seen us talking about employee engagement, what it is and what it is not. In these times nobody wants to deal with a disengaged employee. I have been there as an employee before. I just showed up, did what I was told, did not care about the outcome and kept it moving.

If you are feeling like that even as you are reading this, have a discussion with your boss. If you are in HRM and you feel like this, it is time to find out who else is feeling like this.

The start point is knowing what your organisation is doing well and where you can improve. Knowing how to measure employee’s engagement is the starting point for evolving your engagement strategy.

This is not easy because it can be a little nebulous. It is not concrete and is influenced by many factors. How different organisations engage employees differs because of the uniqueness of each one. Measuring it helps you understand how to engage employees in a way that works best for your organisation.

Reminding you that the definition of Employee Engagement is the strength of the mental and emotional connection employees feel toward their place of work.

This has to be measured because what is not measured cannot be managed. You must know what is engaging or disengaging employees in the first place. Measuring employee engagement helps you gain insight into what your employees think your organisation does well and areas to improve.

Read also: Developing and sustaining employee engagement (present continuous)

We must measure to identify strengths, problem areas and hidden truths. Regular measuring helps to tackle issues before they become problems. You can also use engagement data to showcase what is going well and connect weaker teams or departments to stronger ones.

Measuring helps to build trust. Requesting feedback from employees shows that you care about their opinions and how they feel at work and that desire to listen wants to create the best experience possible.

Measuring brings transparency because the data give everyone the clear picture and the opportunity to help contribute to a better organisation.

Measuring helps you to understand the trends and what is happening by location, team, over time, or compared to industry benchmarks. This keeps a pulse on how and where the organisation is (or isn’t) progressing.

The greatest importance is to develop a good engagement strategy. Surveys are good but what happens after the survey closes. You should not design a survey without a clear engagement strategy.

Always good to decide on the impact you want the survey to have, then work back from there.Who will be accountable for following up on these survey results? Who will take action because of these survey results? What does that action look like?

An engagement survey is a designed measurement mechanism with several important components. Consider these elements when measuring engagement in your organisation.

Determine engagement outcomes that are survey questions that represent the behaviour or feelings of an engaged employee. These questions typically measure perceptions of organisational pride, intent to stay, and advocacy. This reveals the current state of employee engagement within the organisation identifying targets that organizations should maintain or improve.

Engagement drivers ( what is important to employees ) are actionable survey questions that determine levels of employee engagement. For example, ask employees to rate their opinions of, teamwork, trust in leadership and co-workers, career development, communication and change management, confidence in the future, Individual needs like pay, value and recognition. Ensure your survey covers a variety of topics that impact engagement.

Drivers help organisations understand what impacts engagement so they can put the right programs in place to improve.

Analysing the drivers, identifies which ones have the biggest impact on your organisation. Through a drivers analysis, you might discover that employees who rate a certain driver more favourably are likely to be more engaged.

I have done the research and brought this half to you so that you can know how to measure engagement right. If you do not do the right thing, you can do a lot of harm. In the present time it is a good employee’s market. There are many people who can work but everybody is trying to get the very best in the market.

The second part will be published next week. Try to have a good weekend. Begin to find ways to change your lifestyle so that the hardship of fuel scarcity does not affect you. A good thing is that many people are getting to bed earlier. This is a very good outcome.