Measuring Employee Engagement

Measuring employee engagement is a complex activity in an organization as finding employees feelings and emotions is not an informal of way further organization conduct a survey and collecting data, measuring and analyzing to find out the level of employee engagement and which will help to take further strategic actions (Robinson et al, 2004). Engaged employees always committed and deliver over and above the exceptional level, in generally engaged employees perform 1.3 time more than not engaged employees hence organizations put more policies and practices to evaluate employee engagement as engaged employees give the high performance, low attrition and crucial competitive advantage (Vance, 2006).

In recently most of the organizations are conducting surveys to determine how employees are engaged and committed in the work, further organizations struggle to put the correct measurement and ingredients on survey to get to know the staff who are totally engaged and who are not (Vance, 2006).  

There are some more methods that organizations are following which are one to one chat, focus group chat, skip level chat and exit interview however most of the organizations are conducting annual surveys and based on that taking strategic decisions to improve engagement (Lailah et al, 2014). Most of the reputed companies are conducting the surveys in annually with required questionnaires through online further if the survey become more length employees respond level is low and survey should include biographical Characteristics(gender, ethnicity, age group), Job characteristics(Manager, General Manager, Senior Manager) and year of service as these facts significantly impact the measurement of the employee engagement (Robinson et al, 2004).  

The organization where I employed in is conduct employee engagement survey in annually and its include the Biographical, Job category and year of services as I can see the different scores and engagement level between men & women further age group is also gives the significant impact, under job category most of the general managers and senior managers are higher level of engagement compare with others, if employees continuously doing the same job over and over the staffs get demotivated and frustrated hence based on the survey feedback my organization take some strategic actions which motivate employees as such my organization earned competitive advantage and continuously in number one position with 55% market share in telecommunication industry in Sri Lanka.

In questionnaire, options are given to employees to select as “Strongly Agreed, Agreed, Neutral, Disagreed & Strongly Disagreed”. Figure 03 shows the rating level for sample questionnaire whereas “Neutral” doesn’t include further in my organization, when conduct annual survey “Neutral” should be available as in the final survey report this would impact to identify not engaged and disengaged employees, as suggested in my previous blog post need to identify disengaged and not engaged people and bringing back to engaged level to perform the organization

Figure 03: Sample of Employee Engagement Survey

Source: (Armstrong, 2009)

Figure 4 listed some sample employee engagement questionnaire which used by worldwide recognized companies, below survey shows whether employees are committed and have a good relationship with employer further surveys determine how employees emotionally and rationally engaged or committed with employer to perform (Vance, 2006).             

Figure 04: Sample questionnaire for Employee Engagement Survey

Source: (Vance, 2006)

Below are some common questions that employee engagement survey should cover to evaluate the level of engagement (Vance, 2006).

• ·         Pride in employer
• ·         Satisfaction with employer
• ·         Job satisfaction
• ·         Opportunity to perform well at challenging work
• ·         Recognition and positive feedback for one’s contribution
• ·         Personal support from one’s supervisor
• ·         Effort above and beyond the minimum
• ·         Understanding the link between one’s job and the organizations mission
• ·         Prospects for future growth with one’s employer
• ·         Intention to stay with one’s employer

Organization conducting surveys/measuring employee engagement is to further identified how staffs feel the organization environment whether its negative or positive environment as positive environment leads the cognitive drive which employees feel as “ the work I do makes contributions toward the organizations objective, feel safe at work and have enough resources to deliver over and above the expectations” (Lailah et al, 2014). Employees are the faces of the company and sources of creativity and some organizations think if companies take care of employees well, employees will take care of the organizations’ business and stakeholders hence measuring employee engagement is very crucial (Kumar. V, 2015).

As stated above my organization conduct annual employee engagement survey and this will be conducted by a third party company “ Towers watson “ and employees are free to mentioned the comments as organizations guaranteed that 100% secure and no one can traced, further “service from my heart” culture came to employees DNA and this came through the survey, recent survey there were few question with regard to “service from my heart” means organization need to know weather implemented culture is practicing or need any changes, further I observed in my organization that taking employees opinion and implement in to practices which lead the employee satisfaction and engagement.    

List of Reference

Armstrong, M. (2009) Human Resource Management Practice, 11^th ed. London, Kogan Page [Online]. Available at< https://www.pdfdrive.com/armstrongs-handbook-of-human-resource-management-practice-e161954724.html. >. [Accessed on 23^rd May 2020].

Kumar, V., Anita, P. (2015) Measuring the Benefits of Employee Engagement. MIT Sloan Management Review [Online]. Available at < https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/measuring-the-benefits-of-employee-engagement/. >. [Accessed on 24^th May 2020]. 

Lailah, I., Christo, B., Christoff, B. (2014) A Model to Measure Employee Engagement. Journal of Problems and Perspective in Management, 12(4-2), pp. 520-528. [online]. Available at <https://businessperspectives.org/images/pdf/applications/publishing/templates/article/assets/6165/PPM_2014_04cont2_Imandin.pdf. >. [Accessed on 24^th May 2020]. 

Robinson, D., Perryman, S,. and Hayday, S. (2004) The drivers of Employee Engagement Report. 1^st ed. Brighton, Institute for Employment Studies [Online]. Available at < https://www.pdfdrive.com/the-drivers-of-employee-engagement-e17421515.html. >. [Accessed on 9^th May 2020]. 

Vance, R. J. (2006) Employee Engagement and Commitment. [Online]. Available at <https://www.shrm.org/hr-today/trends-and-forecasting/special-reports-and-expert-views/Documents/Employee-Engagement-Commitment.pdf.>. [Accessed on 23^rd May 2020].