Most successful CEO’s and HR Directors will agree that staff are their most valuable asset! When you invest your time, money and energy in recruiting and training the right people, you want that talent to stay within the organisation, and tell people what a great company you are to work for. What’s more, a workplace culture that fosters your organisation values, creates a diverse (and celebrated) workforce and allows people to enjoy their roles will make a huge difference to your business performance.
We know that employee engagement matters more now than ever before. There has been a recent wave of industrial action across a number of sectors with many staff campaigning for better conditions and pay this year. We also have the ‘great resignation’ and ‘quiet quitting’ to consider which you can read more about here.
Improving employee engagement is an obvious priority for many businesses right now as its impact on productivity, retention, and the success of an organisation is directly linked to the happiness of your team.
If you’re wondering whether there’s stats to back up this claim, fear not. A study by Gallup’s research reveals that the most engaged teams show 41% lower absenteeism, 10% high customer metrics and 21% higher profitability*.
Want more evidence? Let’s look at Deloittes ‘Mental Health and Employers – the case for investment’ Report in March 2022. This reported that 28% of employees either left in 2021 or were planning to leave their jobs in 2022, with 61% citing poor mental health as the reason they are leaving*.
With this in mind, let’s explore what employee engagement is, how to measure it, and what next!
Employee engagement is ‘the involvement and enthusiasm of employees in the workplace’. Some staff members may be ‘disengaged employees’ which means they are psychologically unattached to their work and company. Expect to see these staff sleepwalking through their workday out of a sense of duty, putting time – but not energy or passion – into their work. This has a negative effect on their performance but can also adversely affect other members of the team and overall morale.
Adversely, when you have a group of engaged employees, the energy and enthusiasm can be powerful and when you can feel that tangible atmosphere, you know you’re getting it right!
There are lots of ways you can monitor Employee Engagement but it’s best if you collect data to drive your decisions and employee engagement strategy.
We would recommend an employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS) which ideally should be performed quarterly as a pulse survey to give you the chance to react to any feedback received. A simple Survey Monkey could help you collate this data and calculate your eNPS Score.
This employee engagement measure is based on the Net Promoter Score usually used to survey customers. It’s a simple one-question survey: On a scale of 1 to 10, how likely is it you would recommend this company as a place to work?
The eNPS should be anonymous and you should carry out this survey at least every six months and track trends over time. By measuring employee engagement and having a working group to meet up after each survey, you will find a huge increase in focus in terms of ways to improve your engagement culture.
The results will enable you to identify three groups: those who are engaged (scoring 9 or 10), those who are passively disengaged/neutral (7 or 8), and those who are actively disengaged (6 or lower).
The ‘net’ element comes from subtracting the number of actively disengaged from the number of engaged (ignoring the passively disengaged). It is quite sensitive as an employee measure because the overall survey size is generally low – but this is good as it can highlight changes in engagement.
To gain more insight, you can add additional questions such as ‘What one thing do you like most about working here?’ or ‘What one thing can we do to improve?’. You can now track this data as a comparison to look for trends and provide feedback to staff. Closing the feedback loop is an essential part of the process and it’s useful to create ‘You said: We did’ narrative around results so staff can see that their feedback is valued and acted upon.
Focus Groups are a great way to receive anecdotal feedback and ideas. You could also introduce a ‘suggestion box’ where staff can drop ideas in a box to improve culture. Implement one new suggestion each quarter and offer some recognition to the staff member who made the suggestion.
It’s a good idea to create an employee engagement strategy if you haven’t already got one. Use this to create meaningful data driven KPIs and set out a series of actions that can be taken over the next 12 months and beyond to help keep focus on this important area.
If you would like some more information about how we can support you with your employee engagement strategy, please get in touch with us by dropping an e-mail to hello@smile-box.co.uk.
Here at Smile Box, we’re confident we can help support your employee wellbeing culture and mental health!
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