Employee engagement is an important factor in ensuring the success of an organization. If employees are positively and actively engaged, it means better retention rate, increased productivity, and more importantly, better customer service. If an employee is engaged in his/her work and is passionate about it, or cares about it, he/she will be better at what they do and display better productivity. Opposed to this, employees who are not engaged, disengaged, or disinterest in their work will not only perform average, but also run the risk of bringing down the productivity of the team.

This is why measuring employee engagement is very important for any organization. This article will offer some tips on how to track it using various methods.

Ways to Track/Measure Employee Engagement

Set a goal

To increase engagement, you first need an end goal. Are you aiming for a change in the office culture? Or are you looking to improve retention rates? Do you want to manage employees and their skills more efficiently? Is your aim to transform the organization into a dynamic, high performing one? Setting this goal will make the following process a lot easier.

Establish metrics

Once your goal is set, establish the metrics of the goal. For example, you want to achieve an 80% retention rate this year, or increase customer satisfaction to 90%, decide on this. If the goal is intangible, like improving the office culture, then break it down to exactly what changes you want to see in the near future.

Generate a survey

Communicate your intention to make changes to your employees. Be specific and yet vague; let them know exactly what you intend to do without stating any figures. Giving out numbers might put them in a fix about how to go about the process. Just let them know about your plan.

What should an engagement survey cover?

A survey that measures employee engagement must cover three major things –

1. How satisfied your employees are with their jobs?
2. Are their professional goals matching those of the organization?
3. Do they see a future at this organization? If so, what do they visualize?

These three things will give you a fair idea of how engaged each employee is with their job.

Now how you make the questions is subjective. It could be rating metrics on a scale of 1-5, making multiple choice answers, descriptive answers, the choice is yours. Whatever you choose, make sure that it’s easy to understand the level of engagement near accurately from the answers.

Ensure regular, transparent feedback

Ask your employees for a transparent and honest feedback. Assure them that their answers will in no way threaten their employment. Regularly taking feedback from employees will give you an idea of whether your methods are working, and if there is any change in engagement levels with time. This will also give you the chance to take timely action in any case.

Analyze the managers

Sometimes, a bad manager can also bring down the engagement level of the team. If a team manager does not possess the knack to effectively handle employees or has low job engagement him/herself, it can affect the entire team. Productivity and retention are two aspects where managers also play an important role. It’s hence a good idea to take a look at manager performances and engagement as well.

Exit interviews

Exit interviews are a very good idea if you want to know why an employee is leaving. This can be helpful for ensuring that others don’t follow suit soon. Many times, getting the exact reasons isn’t easy. Employees don’t want to say negative things about an organization that they are quitting, or most of them might just say they got better opportunities. Try to dig deeper into these answers to arrive at some hardcore facts. Even if a few employees manage to give you this information, it is helpful to know the reasons for loss of engagement.

Try Gamification

Gamifying concepts to achieve results is not new, albeit not as popular. It has been known to get much better results and positive outcomes as compared to other methods, and the same goes for employee engagement as well. It generates a positive response and employees are known to partake more.

Talk to your employees

Open and honest conversations on a regular basis might help you get an idea of how engaged your employees are. This takes some people reading skills, but asking qualitative and quantitative questions will make it easier for you. Talk to employees individually; ask them how they feel about the job, their thoughts on what works and what can be changed, how they would like a particular aspect to be, or what their idea for better productivity is (and what may be getting in the way). This, combined with exit interviews, will give you a personal and individual account of the situation.

Parting thoughts

Increasing employee engagement starts from the top. If employees feel empowered, heard, and cared for, then they will invest more of themselves in the job. If left to their own devices without a goal or anyone to take an interest or participate in their duties, they will soon become demotivated and eventually be disengaged from their jobs. The aforementioned techniques will help you arrive at an estimated level of engagement, which will help you plan a further course of action.