10 employee engagement metrics every manager should measure

As a manager or HR professional, employee engagement should be at the top of your priority list. But do you know how to go about actually measuring employee engagement, or what to keep an eye on, more specifically?

There are several metrics you should measure to assess your team’s engagement levels, and each one is essential to the larger employee experience puzzle. These pieces come together to paint a portrait of how your employees feel and how invested they are in their roles and within the company.

Since we know a thing or two about the best ways to measure employee engagement, we've outlined the 10 metrics and several key sub-metrics you should keep tabs on and how each one contributes to team performance and the larger employee experience.

What are employee engagement metrics?

Employee engagement can best be described as a person's commitment to their day-to-day work and their investment in their organization. To measure employee engagement and better understand their people, managers, business leaders, and HR professionals use 10 fundamental employee engagement metrics.

These metrics provide insight into several themes that matter to your team, including employee feedback, job satisfaction, personal wellness, relationship with their manager or peers, and employee recognition.

How to measure employee engagement

Knowing which employee engagement metrics to measure is one thing, but it’s equally important to get the hang of how to best assess them. One of the most crucial things to remember when measuring employee engagement is that you do it consistently over time. If you only gauge how your employees feel once in a while, you’ll end up with a disjointed picture of your team's sentiment only on that particular day or week, with no sense of how those feelings have evolved over time and how they fit into your team's collective employee experience.

So how do you keep up with your team’s engagement level without adding to your workload? Employee engagement tools like Officevibe help you understand how people feel with a simple, two-minute weekly pulse survey sent automatically to every team member. The algorithm covers 10 metrics on an ongoing basis, so the data you collect allows you to stay on top of budding issues and track trends over time.

10 employee engagement metrics (and 10 sub-metrics) to watch

1. Relationship with manager

Now, this is an engagement metric you definitely want to measure, and one you have a direct influence on. People want to feel supported, understood, and appreciated by their managers. Nurturing a healthy relationship with your employees is fundamental to the success of your team and organization, but this takes trust, open communication, and close collaboration. If you notice your score on this metric slipping, follow these four simple steps to build better relationships with your employees.

2. Feedback

The importance of giving consistent feedback to your employees cannot be overstated. It helps your people grow and builds an engaged and productive workforce. While knowing how to give feedback will help you better understand your team's communication styles and comfort levels, it's equally important to ask for feedback from your people to increase employee engagement. By implementing a continuous feedback loop, managers and employees can share their thoughts openly and without judgment to build a stronger, more collaborative team dynamic.

3. Personal growth

Employees want to feel challenged at work and see a clear path forward for their professional development. This means working to sharpen their skill sets, having autonomy in how they complete their work, and feeling a sense of purpose in the tasks they’re completing. According to recent Officevibe data, only 60% say they have a clear plan for their professional growth.

Measuring employee sentiment around their personal development at work helps you build an environment where they can thrive. This means better performance and fosters a workplace with highly engaged employees. When you know where people want space to challenge themselves, and where they need support, you’ll be able to set up the conditions for everyone to do their best work and evolve in their roles.

4. Relationship with peers

Effective collaboration is essential to your team members forming a united front. When teamwork is off, performance suffers, so building strong peer relationships is a must to improve engagement and achieve collective success.

Having a strong foundation of trust and understanding helps people work better, together. When you track this metric, it helps you spot any important fluctuations that could indicate something is awry. From there, you can work with your team to get them back to performing at their best.

5. Wellness

Offering support and resources for the well-being of your employees is a non-negotiable as a manager or team leader. By monitoring the employee wellness metric, you can spot issues or challenges that people might not feel comfortable bringing up in a one-on-one meeting or in their employee engagement surveys. From here, you can provide your team with appropriate services or resources, and work towards cultivating a positive and healthy work environment. This will help reduce the risk of workplace stress and burnout, absenteeism, and high employee turnover.

6. Recognition

Your team members need to know that their contributions count in the grand scheme of things. Employees also want to feel valued for the work they do, and to know that their peers and manager see and appreciate the effort they put into their daily tasks. Offering your people kind recognition messages is one of the most low-cost, high-impact ways to boost employee retention. Yet, only 66% of employees are content with the frequency at which they receive recognition. You can make your people feel seen and start improving employee engagement by asking simple but poignant employee recognition survey questions like:

• Is the recognition you receive meaningful?
• Do you know which behaviors receive recognition?
• Is the recognition for additional effort sufficient?

7. Company alignment

To reach broader company goals and ensure team alignment, employees must first be aware of their organization's main objectives and how they fit into the bigger picture. Knowing where your team stands on larger company goals helps you spot areas where things are unclear before employee engagement starts to slip. If people don’t understand the company's strategic direction, schedule some time with them to explore it more thoroughly. Or if team members don’t feel a personal connection with the values, you can build team values together that will have more impact in their day-to-day.

8. Happiness

Every manager wants their team to be happy. While general happiness obviously relies on a number of factors in and outside of the workplace, the point of measuring happiness at work is to assess those that are work-specific. Do people have a good level of work-life balance? Are they supported as they deal with their day-to-day affairs? Do they enjoy the work they do?

There are many things managers can do to support a happier, healthier team and inclusive work environment. Checking in regularly in one-on-one meetings on happiness levels helps you better understand each employee’s experience. From there, you can find ways to make people feel happier throughout their work day.

9. Satisfaction

Job satisfaction generally means people’s satisfaction with their role within the team or company, the physical and technological setup, and their compensation. Employee satisfaction is a key engagement metric to watch out for because it includes important topics like:

• Do people feel they’re in the right role, and on the right team?
• Are they well-equipped to do their work?
• Do they think their pay is fair?

To keep employee satisfaction high, you can work with your team members to set individual goals so they can develop their skills and establish clear career pathways. If your team needs additional resources, you can act as a liaison to help get them what they need to do their best work and keep your employees engaged.

10. Ambassadorship

Last but not least, ambassadorship gives you a great idea of whether employees are true advocates of the company, as an employer, and for its services. When an engaged employee goes from “I like my job” to “everyone should have an employer as great as mine,” it helps you retain (and attract) the best talent to your team.

Why is this metric important for managers? Because you have a big impact on how employees feel about their organization. And the more advocates you have on your team, the better they’ll perform. Tracking ambassadorship and asking the right employee Net Promoter Score questions help you spot what employees love most about working at your company, and where there’s room to strengthen that loyalty. That way, you have a lower employee turnover rate and continue to develop your team.

More than a score: Beyond employee engagement metrics

The main purpose of measuring engagement on your team isn’t getting your engagement score up to 10/10. There are major benefits to keeping your employees engaged, and monitoring how people feel over time helps you spot fluctuations and understand the impact of workplace changes.

While it's important to track these engagement metrics, what you do with your employee survey results and feedback is arguably the most important step to improving employee engagement and boosting team happiness. Make sure you communicate results and subsequent decisions to your team and ultimately create realistic employee engagement action plans.

At the end of the day, engaged employees are happier, more loyal to your organization, and perform better in their daily tasks. Start taking the pulse of your team today with Officevibe's employee engagement solution and elevate your entire employee experience.