Measuring employee engagement metrics: A complete guide

As a decision-maker, you know that the corporate world has come a long way in the past few decades—from being consumer-oriented to paying equal attention to their employees. The major shift was due to the realization of employees' role in the organization's growth.

One of the crucial outcomes of paying equal attention to employees was from the advent of employee engagement tools, as it helps one measure how employees feel about their workplace culture and provide an emotional and mental connection to the employees towards their teams and organization.

Engaged employees work harder,  care about their company's performance, are more productive and make sure their efforts make a difference. According to Forbes, 21% of highly engaged teams show greater profitability than others. So an engaged employee works more for the company's overall growth than a paycheck.

With that said, let’s dive deeper into how you can measure employee engagement and understand what are some of the crucial employee engagement metrics you have to factor in, while measuring engagement.

Table of contents :-

1. What are employee engagement metrics?
2. Why should you measure employee engagement metrics?
3. How to measure employee engagement metrics?
4. Why should you measure employee engagement metrics in hybrid work?
5. Key employee engagement metrics for the hybrid work environment?
6. What to do after measuring the employee engagement metrics?

What are employee engagement metrics?

Employee engagement metrics are indicators that HR and people leaders use to measure and track to determine how engaged their workforce is at the workplace.

These measurements and metrics include a breakdown of an employees' emotions towards the organization and several other themes, including personal wellness, job satisfaction, workplace relationships, and employee recognition, into trackable numbers so that we can create an employee engagement strategy to take tangible actions to sustain or improve the overall workplace engagement.

But how do we measure all these complicated metrics and still arrive at an accurate score?

This is where strategies like sending employee engagement surveys comes into the picture.

Using employee engagement survey tools as a part of measuring employee engagement metrics helps one to provide insights more efficiently with science-backed analytics and templates.

And since the surveys are anonymous, employees can respond more transparently on how they feel about their team, manager, management and much more.

Harvard Business Review surveyed more than 500 business executives, where 71% agreed that employee engagement is crucial to achieving the company's overall goal, implying that engaged employees are likely to have a competitive advantage.

So, it is safe to say that employee engagement metrics of your organization is a proper indicator to understand the current state of employees at your organization and to take necessary actions and design suitable interventions.

Why should you measure employee engagement metrics?

Measuring employee engagement metrics is essential to track and improve your employees’ performance and improve their retention; since engagement and productivity is directly related to each other.

Creating an environment where your workforce is happy empowers them to contribute more towards the organization. Thus measuring and improving engagement with various activities will positively impact the company's:

• Profit
• Customer experience
• Innovation level
• Productivity
• Employee well-being and retention

According to Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), only 34% (of 57,022 part-time and full-time employees) feel engaged at the workplace, while 16% agreed that they are actively disengaged.

Thus, it's safe to say that  measuring employee engagement metrics and taking actions based on that to improve your engagement score is essential for an organization's success.

According to HRDIVE, disengaged employees can cost up to $550 billion to companies annually.

Companies must use data-driven insights that complement the engagement surveys and enable the managers to play an active role in improving employees' satisfaction, well-being, and engagement.

How to measure employee engagement metrics?

Certain things are easily quantifiable, like how many miles you would walk daily or how many glasses of water you drink daily, but measuring employee engagement can be complex. It combines employees' satisfaction, commitment, happiness, and motivation, which are more challenging to measure.

The post-pandemic world has changed employees' preferences towards their organization ever since companies' have started inculcating hybrid working.

These factors lead to changes in their engagement with their organization, where employees could have been highly committed to their jobs, but also be burnt out, or be satisfied with the job but have yet to receive feedback from their manager and peers about their work.

Holistically, if you see this scenario, it's all about the internal communication, which got affected due to this Hybrid work setup. And if and if we miss measuring this employee engagement metric about internal communication, we can’t improve it and create a great experience for your employees.

So, no single employee engagement metric can tell everything about your employees. To prepare a good dashboard to measure your employee engagement, you will require a handful of metrics to learn more about employees and to conclude informed decisions.

CultureMonkey's employee engagement software helps a people leader like you to scale your business and provides your employees with the opportunity to reflect and share their feedback, which will allow you,  to measure the employees' pulse, evaluate their survey results, and take required action based on their feedback, all within one engagement tool.

CultureMoneky's employee engagement surveys are research-oriented and also 100% customizable, allowing you to add your own voice to every employee survey question.

Pro Tip : Looking to run employee surveys to measure the engagement metrics of your remote/hybrid employees? Try our 50+ professionally built employee engagement survey templates and get started with your first survey today.

Now let's look at the top 9 employee engagement metrics, that you need to measure in 2022 :-

Annual engagement surveys

Annual engagement surveys will help gain feedback and track your organizations’s employee engagement, performance, and morale as it measures your employees' commitment, passion, and motivation for their job responsibilities in your company.

These annual surveys are long but widely used, despite how many HR professionals try to break them down.

According to Business Insider, 73% of 2,099 respondents who answered regarding their employment plans are considering leaving the organization, and more than a quarter of Americans said they would feel comfortable quitting without a new job lined up.

So, the popular format of distributing annual employee engagement metrics would help you obtain a macro, data-driven and detailed understanding of your workplace engagement.

Pulse survey

The pulse survey is a short and specific and quick survey format containing a very specific set of questions sent to employees on a regular basis to gain their views on work-life balance, workplace relationships, communication, and the overall work environment.

Pulse surveys can help an organization in multiple ways; for starters, they are more frequent than annual employee engagement surveys. The pulse survey can be weekly, monthly, or quarterly, making them a standalone or a specific learning guide to prepare the yearly surveys.

According to PointerPro, the average survey response is just 30%, which is quite challenging for employers when creating a survey. Here's where the pulse survey comes in handy.

The pulse survey is effective mainly because it is short, so the employees will be able to handle the questions and allow you to take necessary actions and prepare engaging surveys.

Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS)

Employee net promoter score is an easy-to-implement system that helps track employee engagement metrics and measure their impact on the company culture.

The employee net promoter score displays how the employees feel about your company, similar to NPS, which measures customers' satisfaction.

Since eNPS is less complex, with a 0–10 scale for the questions, the participation rate for the survey will be higher and measuring E-nps would also help you to find out how likely are your current employees in referring their friends or family to your organization, thereby cutting down your hiring costs.

Professional development

The sole purpose of professional development is to obtain information regarding the growth expectations of  your employees in the workplace. These employee engagement metrics will help employers guide or plan future actions for both the company and the employees.

According to LinkedIn's Workplace Learning Report, 94% of employees will stay longer with their company if it invests in their careers, which is fair to ask.

So, with the help of a professional development survey, an organization can upskill their employees' while retaining them to attain the business goals.

Work-life balance

Work-life balance is all about how good your employees are able to manage their professional and personal life. As an employer, it's your responsibility to ensure that your colleagues maintain a healthy work-life balance and consider it seriously as a significant metric amongst your employee engagement metrics, no matter how excited and involved they are about their work.

Conducting work-life balance surveys generally helps you to reduce employees' stress and prevents workplace burnout, as you give them a chance to open up about their issues and assure them that they’ll be resolved promptly.

Chronic stress is one of the primary health issues in the workplace, leading to consequences like chronic aches, hypertension, digestive troubles, and heart problems.

According to Apollo Technical, 72% of Americans consider work-life balance while searching for a job.

Thus, a company that prioritizes work-life balance helps employees from physical health issues, makes employees heard, and attracts new hires, which is a win-win-win!

Recognition

Employee recognition is one of the most important employee engagement metrics directly linked to retention. When you recognize your employees, you make them see that their company values their contribution, making them feel heard by the management.

These gestures will help you build an emotional connection with your employees and motivate them to stick with you for a long time. According to Glassdoor, 53% of employees admit that they will stay longer with their company if they feel more appreciation from their boss. So, employee recognition is an excellent source of uplifting them and will play a critical role in employee retention.

Survey participation rate

The survey participation rate represents the percentage of the respondents to the employee survey sent by the management. While distributing new surveys, employers often want to know the approximate response rate, but typically, the response rates are highly influenced by multiple factors that are challenging to forecast.

But, being aware of recent survey participation rate metrics and the key influencing factors will help to establish some simple and realistic expectations for knowing the employee engagement metrics. 1-On-1s

1-on-1 meetings are a vital component of a successful feedback model and is an employee engagement metric that has a significant influence on your overall employee engagement score.

They allow employers to have uninterrupted time to review performance, discuss projects, remove blockers, and make employees feel heard on a personal level.

As per Hyper Context's survey with 200+ managers across 30+ industries, 94% of managers are conducting 1-on-1s, where 75% discuss the growth and development of the company.

With proper preparation and a collaborative agenda, 1-on-1s encourage employees to feel engaged, energized, and better equipped to perform their jobs well.

Professional relationships quality

Professional relationship quality is one among the most critical but essential employee engagement metrics. It is a connection between two or more people in a workplace that is typically more formal than relationships outside work.

Professional relationships build diversity, respect, trust, mindfulness, interrelatedness, effective communication, and varied interaction. These characteristics help to have a better chance of operating a successful business.

Why should you measure employee engagement metrics in Hybrid work?

"People are more productive working at home than people would have expected. Some people thought that everything was just going to fall apart, and it hasn't. And a lot of people are actually saying that they're more productive now." – Mark Zuckerberg

Let's keep it real; with increasing video communication and awareness of work-life balance, the hybrid workplace model seems here to stay for a long time. Still, employee engagement is a core for every business's success, and the event of employees' engagement dropping off is the biggest nightmare for your growth as an organization.

The concept of employee engagement reflects the emotional commitment of employees to their organization and its goals. And now, employees are starting to love the hybrid work culture due to the convenience that allows them to perform at a high level of engagement.

However, not every organization experiences the same; according to McKinsey & Company states, 58% of executives report employee productivity improvements, but some feel the productivity has not changed.

So, to stay on top of all your preparations and keep the hybrid nightmare events to a minimum, you need to keep monitoring the employee engagement metrics for the hybrid.

Key employee engagement metrics for the hybrid work environment?

The hybrid model combines the flexibility of working from home and the benefits of an on-site environment for the employees, but you need to ensure that your staff will be as productive in remote work as they are in the physical office.

According to Upwork, 37% of employees might consider looking for a new job if they can't work remotely, so changing the hybrid to entirely on-site is not an option.

The following four employee engagement metrics would help you monitor your engagement for better hybrid work productivity of your employees -

Leadership effectiveness indicators

The leader’s effectiveness in communicating with their teams has a significant impact on their team’s ability towards attaining the company's goal. Thus, the organization's leaders should pay equal and close attention to hybrid employees through key employee engagement metrics.

According to Business Wire, 71% of employees are more productive when they feel well-connected to their colleagues. It's similar to when the engine stops working and the wheels won't move forward. With no effective and empathetic leadership, the organization will cease to move.

Employee behavior indicators

Employee behavior indicators help managers and employers assess employees' competencies in hybrid.

Competencies are key roles that include teamwork, responsibilities, commercial awareness, decision-making, communication, and more, which eventually lead to employee engagement.

As per Gallup's report, 51% of employees are disengaged and are psychologically unattached to their company and work. So, it's crucial for leaders to often use behavioral indicators as employee engagement metrics for identifying the presence or absence of employees' competency.

Early outcome metrics

Early outcome metrics measure the business and operational outcomes that reflect the organizational impact and performance to provide a site of calculating possible results. Early outcome metrics help to make informed business decisions, fundamentally informed guesses, and risks involving relying on past methods and data.

Early outcome metrics help to make informed business decisions, fundamentally informed guesses, and risks involving relying on past methods and data. According to Forbes, data has limitless potential for delivering better outcomes, agility, business transformation, and faster decisions.

So, "knowledge is power" when it comes to knowing potential data, and it's crucial to maintaining a thriving data culture. The following are some ways to calculate the early outcome metrics.

• Using the data of productivity tools.
• Calculating employee participation in development opportunities.
• Estimating the number of escalation challenges compared with self-directed solutions.
• Frequent distribution of promotions to figure out whether there is a different distribution than before.
• Well-being of employees through engagement surveys that need more frequent pulse surveys.

Lagging results impact metrics

Lagging indicators in employee engagement metrics take time to measure the long-term trends, and in many cases, the lagging metrics are the best to assess the impact of the efforts since it takes time for the changes to take effect.

They are hard to alter since lagging indicators often are high-level metrics like revenue that impact multiple departments within a company, and small projects might not make a measurable impact. Though a lagging indicator might be the best to measure the outcome of your effort, sometimes it can be problematic.

According to Economic Times, 78% of companies monitor their employees through software to track their online activities and performance. But lagging indicators won't be able to track and make any ongoing adjustments.

So monitor your organizational performance through leading outcome metrics, as they can measure—productivity, profitability, revenue, retention, and absenteeism to identify trends and patterns to keep you on track so that you hit the company's strategic objective.

What to do after measuring the employee engagement metrics?

Measuring employee engagement metrics is only the first step. You must commit to continuously improving engagement as a people leader. After measuring the employee engagement metrics, it's time for you to communicate and work to improve things irrespective of the workforce is on-site or hybrid.

Be more transparent

Organizational transparency matters as it helps the best people be more engaged. Keeping things secretive in a company makes employees less trusting, and they probably are less likely to stick around.

According to Forbes, 50% of employees feel there is a lack of company-wide transparency. But when an organization is more transparent, it encourages employees' engagement, promotes company culture, and fosters a type of comfort where employees can freely communicate.

Improve for employees

Companies must often innovate and evolve to stay on the trend, which also goes for employers. In order to stay relevant and sharp, employers must constantly grow to meet the employees' necessary needs and valuable feedback.

According to Lorman, 34% of employees left their previous job due to a lack of career development opportunities.

So, making results of employee engagement metrics a priority within your company culture ensures your teams are well-informed on industry trends and best practices and equipped with new skills.

Repeat the process

Employee engagement metrics are just the beginning, as they outline the company culture. Improving employee engagement is always an ongoing process with no endpoint. As the company grows, so do its operations and workforce complexity.

So after sharing, discussing, and implementing the action plan, use the data and repeat the process.

Conclusion

Modern employee engagement has changed tremendously in recent years due to environmental complexities and technology-aided workplaces.

So, it's up to you! As engaged and motivated employees are more productive. Adapting and boosting their engagement levels through employee engagement metrics and other modern engagement methods will help to spot and resolve issues early.

With CultureMonkey's employee engagement survey software, you can make your employees' voices heard, value your employees' productivity, increase workplace engagement, reduce attrition, maximize business outcomes, and improve workplace culture.

So, as a people leader, boost and adapt to modern employee engagement and here is where CultureMonkey's research-oriented employee onboarding survey stands tall.

CultureMonkey's employee engagement platform enables you to send relevant and personalized survey questions per your specific and individual requirements.

Make sure you strategically approach your employees working across locations and benefit from the deep insight that emerges as you add layers to your employee engagement through multiple employee engagement metrics.