When it’s your responsibility to manage others, it is easy to fall into the trap of simply assuming your employees are happy.
If they’re on time each day, get on well with others in the team, have a chat at the coffee machine, and meet their deadlines – you could be forgiven for thinking everything is hunky dory.
But employee happiness doesn’t always mean they are engaged.
Employee satisfaction is a useful metric but it has its limitations. The potential drawback is that employees are happy because they are coasting, getting by with doing the bare minimum.
Employee engagement, on the other hand, can be defined as when workers’ goals and values are aligned with that of an organisation.
And it’s something you should keep on top of. Because engaged employees are more productive and committed to the success of the organisation.
Impact on retention
Zenefits [JN1] has reported that 63.3% of US companies believe it’s harder to retain employees than it is to hire them.
When it’s easier to get them through the door than it is to stop them walking out of it – a retention strategy is of paramount importance.
To do that, you first need to identify what your employees think by running employee engagement surveys.
How to measure employee engagement
You can measure employee engagement by running a survey that looks at all the key areas of engagement.
These include:
- Satisfaction with job role
- Relationship with manager and colleagues
- Opportunities to present ideas and contribute to the wider business
- Views on the organisation’s commitment to good causes
- Feeling valued and that their work makes a difference
The answers to questions on these topics will give you a clear picture of their engagement.
The big question
Would you recommend working here to a friend?
If the answer is no – you can expect that employee won’t be around for too much longer.
Organisations should strive for employees to become brand ambassadors. This means being proud of where they work, enjoying where they work, and respecting who they work with and for.
Ways to keep employees engaged
Business leaders can keep employees engaged by implementing a culture of openness, transparency, autonomy, and recognition.
You can foster these environments by ‘cascading’ information down through management about the business each week or month. Such as sales, digital marketing metrics, new hirings, standout employee performances, upcoming plans for the business etc.
Without this, how can you really expect employees to be that engaged if they don’t know how the business is performing? And by extension – whether their role even makes a differenceor not?
It also helps drive team spirit. If this information is given during weekly team meetings, with time for discussion and social interaction between each item, the team will be closer and employees more connected with their environment.
Ultimately, this openness and transparency and performance and organisational goals will gain the employees’ respect – helping them to feel part of the cause.
And by giving employees the autonomy to manage their workload and get the job done as they see fit, they will have a greater appreciation for the organisation’s culture. Of course, employees must recognise they have an obligation to meet deadlines and hit targets. But if they can reach that point by doing it their own way, with minimal interference, that will go a long way to boosting morale.
It’s also important to recognise good work and commitment.
Measure employee engagement at regular intervals
As leaders in the survey and research world, we’re well placed to see some of the mistakes people make when planning their research project. One of the biggest misconceptions is that you should only run a survey once.
The feedback you get could be full of praise, full of criticism, or somewhere in between.
But the only way you can understand your performance for sure is by running a survey regularly.
How else will you know if the changes you make in response to the feedback will make a difference?
It can also help you pinpoint just where something changed. For example, if your third and fourth employee engagement surveys start to provide you with concerning feedback, you might be able to identify that this coincided with a hiring freeze – which led to existing employees becoming overworked.
You may also identify that there is a common point where employee engagement dips, perhaps following 3 years of service.
If that’s the case, you can devise a strategy to keep employees engaged beyond that. Whether it’s training, expanding a role, promotion, or simply paying those employees more attention.
It should be noted that employee engagement surveys and generally anonymous – so the above would only apply if the employee waives their right. This would usually be done via a tick box that says they are happy to be contacted to discuss the feedback they have given.
The insights you can gain over time could be invaluable to better employee engagement and improving your retention rate.
The hard work only needs to be done once
The most time-consuming aspect of running a project is the setting up of the survey.
Designing the questionnaire and writing the questions, setting up your database of email addresses (for online surveys) and configuring the reports.
But when you have done it once – you don’t need to do it again as long you are using a capable survey platform!
So although it may be daunting to think about running a survey at regular intervals, it actually requires very little extra effort than running it just the once.
And the gains you’ll get over time are far greater.
[JN1]https://www.zenefits.com/workest/employee-turnover-infographic/
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