Learn How to Measure Employee Engagement With These Simple Strategies

Employees are your business’s lifeblood — that’s why tracking and measuring employee engagement is so important. Engagement levels affect everything from individual well-being and customer satisfaction to productivity, turnover, and beyond. Low engagement levels can even damage profitability by causing you to spend more than needed to find and onboard new employees. 

So what are the best ways to measure employee engagement? And how can you use this information to lift engagement levels? Read below for strategies that will help you gather insights — and best practices that will enable you to put those insights to work.

4 Ways to Measure Employee Engagement

There are several ways to measure employee engagement. Use the techniques below to gather the qualitative and quantitative engagement data you’ll need to drive meaningful change.

1. Send Out Annual Employee Engagement Surveys

Employee engagement surveys are a powerful tool because they allow you to measure and improve employee engagement. In the RapidBee platform, for example, you can easily create pulse surveys designed to assess engagement levels. Try posing survey questions about things like:

• Overall job satisfaction
• Manager effectiveness
• Work-life balance
• Benefits and compensation
• Communication
• Transparency
• Learning and development opportunities

The potential questions that you can ask are virtually limitless. High satisfaction rates indicate more engaged employees, while lower scores point toward an area that could be improved upon to build satisfaction and engagement.

So how do these surveys help build engagement? It’s simple: They give employees a place to air out concerns safely. Even better, enacting meaningful changes based on feedback received demonstrates that you value each individual’s input. Ultimately, this process helps employees feel like they matter, creating higher engagement rates and a deeper personal investment within your company. 

2. Provide a Space for Employee Feedback

Surveys are one way to collect employee feedback — but they shouldn’t be the only method deployed. Most companies send out engagement surveys as a scheduled way to check in. However, your employee engagement strategy should also include a space where people can provide feedback whenever an issue arises.

While feedback may not provide you with a metric or a direct measurement of employee engagement, it will give you valuable insights into what could be contributing to disengagement. Whatever method you use to collect feedback, be sure to analyze it and create action plans designed to address the common concerns that crop up across everyone’s comments.

When it comes to collecting feedback, RapidBee offers a solution for this, too. Within the platform’s Performance Management section are tools to give and request feedback. It’s easy to make sure that feedback goes to the right person — and the platform makes it just as easy to analyze that feedback to understand where improvements can be made.

3. Schedule Face-to-Face Time

Meetings are the perfect time to measure employee engagement rates, but the insights won’t come in the form of metrics or benchmarks to target. Instead, it’s all about listening and taking note of individual concerns as they arise. 

Throughout the employee lifecycle, there are plenty of opportunities to schedule meetings. Add the following to your employee engagement strategy:

• When onboarding new team members, schedule one-on-one meetings partway through the onboarding process and after onboarding is complete. Ask about their overall satisfaction with the process and whether it helped them settle into the new work environment and get off to a great start.
• Schedule one-on-one meetings monthly or every other month. Use these sessions as an opportunity to give and receive feedback, and to keep yourself in tune with employee engagement levels plus their wants and needs.
• Be sure to conduct exit interviews — and ask about the exiting employee’s engagement throughout their stay with your company. What did they enjoy? What could have been better? What, specifically, could have helped build engagement?

Take careful notes, compile findings, and if you can alleviate employee concerns, be sure to follow up and let them know. Along the way, you’ll gather qualitative data, develop a greater understanding of employee engagement levels, and contribute to a company culture that promotes transparency and makes employees feel genuinely valued.

4. Track the Right Employee Engagement Metrics

When it comes to quantitative data, there are several key metrics and KPIs that you can use to track engagement. Consider the following:

• Employee net promoter score (ENPS): When you send out annual pulse surveys, be sure to ask how likely they are to recommend your company to others on a scale of zero to 10. Detractors are employees who score from zero to six. Promoters are those who give ratings of nine and 10. Higher ENPS scores indicate higher levels of engagement.
• Employee retention rates: This measures the number of employees who stay with your company at the end of a specific period. High retention rates over longer spans of time indicate satisfied, engaged employees.
• Employee satisfaction levels: When you send out surveys, be sure to poll employees about their satisfaction with various aspects of their job and your company. These survey results will help you pinpoint what needs to be improved to build higher levels of employee engagement.
• Employee absenteeism rates: Dissatisfied and disengaged employees dread coming to work and are more likely to take days off. High absenteeism rates can indicate serious issues with employee satisfaction and engagement.
• Employee turnover rates: Similarly, workplaces where disengagement and dissatisfaction are high tend to be referred to as “revolving doors.” If your company has high turnover rates, several areas likely need improvement to create a better employee experience that keeps people engaged.

Best Practices for Interpreting Employee Engagement Data and Driving Change

Measuring employee engagement is only part of the battle. The next step is to follow through by accurately interpreting your collected information, then using it to drive meaningful change. The best practices below will get you started.

Analyze Trends and Patterns

One employee raising a specific concern may be an outlier. However, when many say the same thing, that becomes a pattern requiring attention.

When analyzing feedback and employee engagement measurements, always look for common concerns, trends, and patterns. Compare engagement levels across different departments, roles, and demographics to discover specific problem areas. Be sure to track engagement trends over time to determine whether past employee engagement initiatives have led to improvements.

Get Deeper Insights With Data Segmentation

Marketers rely on data segmentation to better understand their target audience — and human resources professionals can adopt similar practices to better understand the employee experience among different groups. 

Segmenting employee engagement data requires you to group individual data profiles according to shared characteristics. For example, you can segment data by department, employee performance levels, educational backgrounds, age groups, or length of tenure within your company. From there, you can examine segments to see how concerns or engagement levels differ from one group to another.

Benchmark Against Industry Standards

Engagement rates can vary quite highly from one industry to the next. For example, the modern restaurant industry is experiencing record low engagement rates for various reasons. Meanwhile, in other industries, engagement is far higher. 

That’s why it’s crucial to identify engagement benchmarks for your industry. With this knowledge, you can compare your company’s engagement rates to national or global averages, enabling you to set realistic goals for making improvements.

Measure Employee Engagement With the RapidBee Platform

With RapidBee, you can easily gather feedback and send out annual employee engagement surveys. Pair this information with insights gathered from face-to-face meetings and engagement metrics, then start analyzing trends and patterns to discover what needs to happen to bring engagement levels up. 

Ready to discover how RapidBee can help promote your organization’s success? Request a demo — and be sure to ask about engagement surveys and feedback tools that you can use to create a better work environment.