Key measures of employee engagement for sustainable growth

A happy employee is your company’s most valuable asset. 

High engagement drives productivity, retention, and ROI, meaning your whole company can focus on doing the best work possible.

But this success doesn’t happen by itself. Engaged employees need to feel supported and motivated to do their best work. If they don’t, productivity suffers.  

HR leaders need to understand the drivers behind key measures of employee engagement to effectively improve it. Here’s a summary of the key metrics you should track to enhance the workplace experience, employee engagement, and productivity.

Why measuring employee engagement matters

A happy employee is one that’s ready to go that extra mile, leading to higher productivity, boosted morale, and increased retention. In fact, research shows that, if the global workforce were fully engaged, the economy would add over $9 trillion in productivity. 

When employees aren’t engaged, it can stem from a series of issues with culture, including poor management, overwork, or unclear opportunities for career development. Monitoring how happy employees are can tell you about what your workplace excels at — and what it’s missing. 

Measuring employee engagement benefits your business by:

• Identifying disengagement before it impacts performance or retention
• Improving employee productivity and satisfaction 
• Fortifying company culture by aligning engagement strategies with employee feedback
• Enhancing employee retention rates, reducing turnover costs
• Streamlining data-driven decision-making for HR and leadership

Laying the groundwork: What to do before measuring engagement

Tracking employee engagement confirms that your company culture is strong, with employees feeling supported and motivated to succeed. Here’s everything you need to consider to measure engagement.

Define what engagement means in your company’s context

An engaged employee in one organization could be something completely different in another. What does engagement mean to your business? What activities or actions make someone engaged? Knowing this lets you design a strategy addressing those specific metrics. 

Set clear objectives for measurement

Employee satisfaction leads to various organizational benefits, but which of these truly matter to business success? Understand what you want to achieve with higher engagement to orient your engagement strategy, whether that’s improving productivity or retention. 

Align teams on participation   

Developing a successful employee engagement plan requires participation from the entire company, from interns to the C-suite, to facilitate the program. Proving the benefits of higher engagement for employees and executives alike will help get the program off the ground. 

Select the right methods and tools

HR teams should look for employee engagement measurement tools to easily track customized metrics. For some companies, measuring engagement in one-on-one meetings might help employees feel heard and give specific insights about team dynamics. Other organizations might be too large for HR to meet with everyone, making surveys a better choice.

Workleap’s Officevibe allows HR leaders to rapidly create baselines, structure engagement management, and receive real-time updates. Your methods should match the information you’re hoping to collect, and Officevibe can make that happen.

Decide on measurement cadence

A central part of an engagement strategy is the frequency of data collection. If you’re choosing to survey employees to learn about engagement, you might opt for short monthly questionnaires with longer semi-annual reports to avoid overwhelming teams. 

Proven methods to measure employee engagement

Organizations have a range of survey and non-survey methods to measure employee engagement. 

Here’s a quick overview of your best options.

How to measure employee engagement with survey-based methods

Survey-based methods provide quantitative data that tracks employee engagement over time. Most surveys can be anonymous, which means employees can share their thoughts anonymously, leading to more honest results. Your main options are:

• Pulse surveys: A pulse survey is a short, direct questionnaire that is usually sent regularly. It asks about job satisfaction, manager support, or any other rapid-response questions that could impact engagement.
• Targeted questionnaires: Use targeted questionnaires to collect more specific employee engagement data. Workload, stress, work-life balance, recognition — ask specific questions that warrant long-form responses. 

With Officevibe, you can easily send out pulse surveys to your employees. Request and send feedback, gather data, and automatically receive data-driven insights in a flash.

How to measure employee engagement with alternative methods

While surveys provide useful data, you can enrich that with qualitative information. Here are some alternatives to use in tandem for added context:

• One-on-one interviews: Catching up with employees and routinely asking them about how they feel is always a great idea. Personable interactions make workplaces stronger and help teams feel supported. But know that not every employee will feel comfortable being totally honest. Offering some anonymous options is key to unbiased answers. 
• Focus groups: Asking a team or a selection of employees about workplace culture gives a representative overview, which can help identify high-level trends and sentiments.
• Observation: Although it’s not data-backed like other methods, managers can often tell someone is feeling a little off based on performance or participation. Managers should observe their teams to spot any differences in behavior or attitudes.
• Behavioral data: Behavioral analytics can reveal sudden changes in employee interaction, engagement, or productivity.

Key metrics and KPIs to track

Measuring employee engagement has benefits for employees and employers alike. Strong employee satisfaction metrics offer proof of happy employees, and engaged employees directly improve progress toward organizational KPIs and company success.  

Examples of employee engagement metrics to track

Your business can ask about any of the following employee experiences as a core part of your engagement strategy:

• Feedback and recognition: The quantity and quality of feedback and recognition initiatives impact engagement. Employees receiving lots of high-quality feedback and recognition are more likely to be engaged.
• Relationship with manager: Managers can make or break employee engagement. Tracking satisfaction with managers is an important way to give context to employee success.
• Relationship with peers: How close your employees feel with their peers impacts their enjoyment at work. Those who have a “best friend” at work are 27% more likely to report feeling satisfied with their place of employment. 
• Happiness: Happiness is a broad employee experience metric that gives insight into work-life balance, stress, job satisfaction, and more. 
• Satisfaction: Employee satisfaction measures how fulfilled an employee feels by their work.

Organizational KPIs to track

Organizational KPIs are wider metrics that reflect or are influenced by employee engagement:

• Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS): To determine your eNPS, ask employees how likely they are to recommend your company to a friend on a scale of 1-10. Measure it over time to see if employees are feeling better or worse about the work environment. 
• Retention rate: A low retention rate often signals poor employee engagement. HR teams should track employee retention and turnover to see if there are departments with particularly high departure rates and investigate the cause. 
• Absenteeism: Employees who frequently miss work could lack motivation and engagement. Absenteeism is a rare trait in engaged employees and always warrants a closer look.
• Development program participation: Rejecting opportunities for growth in a role can reflect disinterest in advancement with the company.
• Survey participation rate: For some companies, insights into employee engagement relies on surveys. Low employee engagement survey participation itself could reflect apathy.

How to analyze and act on engagement data: What to do after measuring engagement

Measuring employee engagement is one thing, but acting on that information is another. Turn that data into insights that enhance employee satisfaction with these tips.

Step 1: Interpret the results

After sending out your surveys, review survey responses, collect behavioral data, and read through additional notes. At this stage, you want to understand employee engagement. What do the numbers say? Is engagement high or low, and can you quantify it? 

Step 2: Spot patterns

After you have some fixed figures, it’s time to review those numbers over time. Are there any changes to employee engagement since the last surveys? Can you link those changes with other factors?

For example, if you’ve noticed a dip in employee recognition and engagement, those things may be connected. 

Step 3: Prioritize issues and set improvement goals

Based on your findings, rank by priority. Setting clear, quantified improvement goals can help make them a reality. Stick to achievable targets with a clear pathway for change. 

Step 4: Communicate findings

Share your data with employees. Take your findings, translate them into insights, and show employees what you’re going to do about them. It sounds simple, but outlining how you’re looking to improve engagement shows that you’re actively trying to make the workplace better for everyone.

Step 5: Implement changes and monitor progress

Implement the engagement strategy plan you outlined before collecting data. You’ll always need to refine your strategy, tweak initiatives, and restructure policies over time based on what the numbers actually show. 

Give your employees insight into the whole process so they know that improving the employee experience is a priority for the company. 

Step 6: Close the feedback loop

A major part of measuring employee engagement is asking your employees how they’re doing. Always close the feedback loop by checking in and staying transparent about new initiatives to show employees that their voices matters and their feedback shapes strategies. 

Embedding engagement into your long-term strategy

Achieving success in an employee engagement improvement plan requires data-driven insights and a long-term strategy. 

Officevibe is an all-in-one solution for measuring employee engagement, identifying trends and giving you insight into employee sentiment. With easy-to-use dashboards and the ability to quickly send out pulse surveys, you can centralize engagement data in one place for easier analysis.

See how Officevibe can champion employee engagement in your organization by booking a demo today.