Poor employee performance is one reason employers wish to calculate employee engagement levels. But engagement isn’t always easy to quantify, as it’s often linked to emotion and a range of different measures.
In fact, you could be carefully setting out all the steps to creating an engaged workplace, but perhaps, your measuring isn’t quite right.
Why should you measure engagement?
Most research indicates that engaged employees lead to higher profit and increased growth as involved and engaged employees are more productive, energetic and creative. And what’s more, according to Gallup, highly engaged workplaces see a 41% lower absenteeism rate.
They do their work because they want to, not because they have to.
According to William Kahn from Boston University, personal engagement at work is “…the harnessing of organisation members’ selves to their work roles; in engagement, people employ and express themselves physically, cognitively, and emotionally during role performances.”
In other words, engagement happens when employees’ personal selves are aligned with what they do in their work.
By committing to measuring engagement, your employees will feel like you genuinely care about their happiness in the company, making a conscious effort to ensure that they are happy and engaged at work.
That’s why we’ve set out 5 simple ways to calculate employee engagement levels in your business effectively.
1. Define your engagement
The reason why employee engagement is often difficult to measure is because it is hard to define. Some companies define engagement as employee happiness, and others consider job satisfaction or company loyalty.
The thing is, engagement in itself is complex.
In order to calculate your engagement, you need to define what engagement means to your company. Is engagement happy employees, focused employees or hard work and dedication?
You can define your company culture by observing whether your employees are emotionally invested in your company. To analyse this, look at how your employees behave, with a sense of pride, belonging and purpose, their confidence in leadership, and where they see themselves progressing within the company.
2. Find your metrics
Once you know what goals you are basing it on, you need to know how you are going to measure it.
Will you use feedback, recognition, happiness levels, office relationships, growth, satisfaction or wellness as metrics? Think about what combination of metrics will best determine your engagement levels – metrics that are aligned to your definition of engagement.
3. Ask the right questions
A survey is a great way to measure your engagement levels and get answers from all departments. When using a survey, make sure to ask the right questions, ones that directly relate to the engagement metric you are using.
It’s very important that you use a variation of qualitative and quantitative research. Mix your survey questions up to allow employees to choose between quick answers and personal, quality answers. This will allow employees to speak up about things that are bothering them, or things they might want to change. They’ll feel that a survey is a place where their voice can be heard, even if it is anonymous.
It’s worth considering a pulse survey too, as this will allow you to get the most feedback throughout the year. It’s a shorter, more frequent survey that can be done monthly or quarterly. And on top of the questions, you’ll be asking on paper (or digitally), try one-on-one conversations too.
It will be more casual and you might get more understanding from someone that’s speaking, as opposed to writing.
4. Use software to help
You can’t do it all on your own.
A platform, such as bountiXP can help you measure engagement and keep an ongoing record of employee recognition, engagement and happiness. We’ll help you recognise and reward your employees in a meaningful way, and then manage and measure an employee’s engagement to deliver better results.
5. Follow up and repeat
Once you have some answers, it doesn’t stop there.
After you’ve calculated your engagement, you need to communicate the results and communicate ways of improving.
Following up will then need to become a consistent and repeated process every couple of months. A great way to follow up is also through your continuous pulse surveys.
So there you have it.
You can continue with your hard efforts to improve employee engagement, by following these 5 steps carefully to calculate your engagement levels correctly.