How to Measure Employee Engagement Properly

We’ve explored the reasons why having highly engaged employees matters to the success of your team. We’ve discussed tips and tricks leaders can use to enhance the level of engagement their teams currently have. But, the question remains, how do leaders track and measure employee engagement properly?

Today we dive deeper into the importance of understanding employee engagement, offering tools and best practices for leaders to implement in their organizations.

Utilize Surveys

Understanding your employees’ sentiments and gathering insight and feedback into your processes is essential to creating a strong and productive workforce. When employees feel valued and heard, they are more likely to be engaged with their roles. One way to quickly and easily gather responses from your employees is by using employee engagement surveys. These surveys offer employees an opportunity to talk anonymously without fear of retribution and offer a perspective into daily work activities that leaders usually lack. Some surveys that you can implement within your company to assist with measuring employee engagement include:

Pulse Surveys — Pulse surveys are a quick, easy-to-use method to analyze the sentiment of your team. These short surveys can be done at any point in time and are best used when the results enable actionable change in real time. Employers gain benefits from the quick response time and the ability to provide feedback instantly.

Employee Engagement Surveys — These surveys can be used to analyze the sentiment of your team directly. ClearCompany offers an employee engagement template, making it easy for organizations to collect data and analyze the results of their findings. These surveys are great for gathering insight into what components of the employee experience need adjusting.

Employee Wellbeing Surveys — Wellbeing surveys shed light on the mental and emotional well-being of your employees. In today’s business environment, ensuring your teams feel connected and supported can mean the difference between a siloed and disengaged department and one that is collaborative and highly productive. Employee well-being surveys allow leaders to discreetly ask questions that are not often discussed within the public sphere.

Onboarding Surveys — Many people underestimate the influence that the onboarding experience has on employee engagement levels. A poor onboarding experience can lead to highly unmotivated employees and can even increase your turnover rate significantly. Implementing surveys to gauge the level of satisfaction with your current onboarding process will help you determine whether you are doing a good job of introducing your new hires to the team.

Custom Surveys —Sometimes, there are specific questions you need to ask of your team, and a templated survey doesn’t quite get you the data you are looking for. ClearCompany can help you to create a custom survey to send to your employees so that you can ensure you are gathering the answers you need and analyzing the correct data.

Track and Analyze Metrics

Employee engagement can be difficult to measure if you are unsure of what metrics to track. However, most industry experts agree that there are two main metrics to consider. Below we break down each metric and identify ways to track them within your organization:

Absenteeism. When employees habitually fail to perform their duties or responsibilities, they exhibit absenteeism. In companies with low engagement levels, the rate of absenteeism is significantly higher than in organizations that have highly motivated and engaged employees. The higher the rate of absenteeism in your organization, the more costly it becomes. Finding ways to track absenteeism in your organization can be instrumental in creating a highly engaged and productive workforce. With a robust performance management system and project tracking tools, leaders can visualize trends in their workplace and address issues before they become roadblocks. In fact, organizations with engaged employees have seen a reduction in absenteeism by 41%. Some questions that can help identify whether an employee is exhibiting signs of absenteeism include:

• Is [your employee] having multiple instances of unexcused or unplanned absences?
• Has [your employee] been missing deadlines more frequently?
• Does [your employee] seem removed or disconnected from the rest of your organization?

Turnover. Every organization is familiar with turnover and the costs associated with hiring new employees. Did you know that in our modern workplace, the true cost of turnover can be up to 2x the annual salary of an employee? The time and money spent replacing your human capital can quickly eat away at your budget. Organizations with low employee engagement levels often see higher levels of turnover, leading to increased costs and less time spent working strategically. When looking to track exit surveys, employers should consider:

• Utilizing exit interviews or surveys. Exit surveys offer you a chance to understand why an employee has left their role. These interviews or surveys can provide useful insights into the overall employee experience and culture of your organization.
• Implementing workforce planning and forecasting tools. ClearCompany’s Workforce Planning Software enables data tracking and encourages transparency in information. Leaders and various departments can access data in real-time to make quick decisions. With enhanced insights and metrics, leaders can ensure they are prepared for future adversity.

Measuring employee engagement within your organization doesn’t need to be tricky. With the proper tools and knowledge of what data to collect, your team can feel confident in its ability to analyze your employees’ engagement levels. Still not sure where to start? ClearCompany can help! With decades of experience in assisting employers in supercharging employee engagement, ClearCompany provides the support and software that companies need to help manage their teams, even from afar. To learn more, reach out to one of our experts or sign up for your free demo today.