What Is The Best Way To Measure Employee Engagement? Start With An Employee Survey!

For many of us, the past two years have been the most challenging years of our professional and personal lives, as we juggled the demands of remote work with raising kids, caring for parents, taking care of pets and managing households. Furthermore, months of living under strict lockdown measures have caused severe damage to mental health. It's totally understandable that the resilience and motivation of people were largely tested and, in many cases, proven since we continued to work remotely despite everything. After the unprecedented 2020 and 2022 years, employees were eager to return to their offices in 2022. Due to a surge of COVID-19 cases caused by the Omicron and Deltacron variants, organizations are forced to alter their back-to-work plans and continue hybrid and remote work practices. According to a Gartner survey, 44% of companies postponed their reopening plans, resulting in more significant uncertainty for employees regarding their employment prospects. Thus, prioritizing employee engagement, experience and productivity have been more critical than ever. It is because a happy and motivated workforce is the backbone of any profitable and productive organization, so measuring and improving employee engagement has been a sacred mission for HR professionals for many years.

Getting employees engaged with their jobs, customers, and each other has always been important, but it is even more vital in a challenging environment.  It is also essential that employers understand how employees feel about their jobs and organizations as we have moved towards a new work culture. To improve employee engagement, organizations should attempt to understand their employees. Without a proper understanding of this, your strategies and tactics for employee engagement may be misguided.

So, what works here? How can you enhance your employee engagement? Is there a possibility of measuring your employee engagement level? And that's where employee surveys come into play. By conducting an employee survey, you can better understand your employees' experiences, how they feel about specific issues, what your business is good at, and how you can improve employee relations.

Before we detail, let's talk about employee engagement and why employee surveys are so important for measuring employee engagement.

Employee Engagement: The Lifeblood Of An Organization

The concept of employee engagement covers many different aspects of the employee experience. Employee engagement encompasses motivation, physical and emotional well-being, psychological security, job satisfaction, and their level of performance. A Gallup report on employee engagement found that organizations with highly engaged employees had 21 % higher profit margins. The report also states that engaged employees generate 17% more revenue than disengaged employees.

It is because highly engaged employees exhibit more motivation, higher productivity, and a deeper commitment to their work. This makes them more likely to make a significant contribution to their projects. Employee engagement is perhaps most evident in those who have 'internalized' their work; they manage to distinguish less between 'life' and 'work', and their career goals become intertwined with their personal goals. Engaged employees tend to be happier and more content in general and report higher levels of personal well-being. A positive work situation often leads to more engagement at work - the more you can invest in your work, the more you can focus on it.

Why Measuring Employee Engagement Is Crucial?

There is no clear definition of employee engagement, making measuring it hard. Organizations define it differently- some as happiness, some as satisfaction, while others see it as a commitment to achieving goals.That's not entirely accurate. When you don't get enough feedback from your manager, you can be happy at work. Although you might get a lot of good feedback, you may not have any growth opportunities. However, if you lack a work-life balance, you won't have any growth opportunities. It would be great if the definition were crystal clear, but engagement is a complicated emotion, so it isn't. Engaging employees requires many different factors like feedback, wellness, job satisfaction, relationships with co-workers and managers, employee recognition etc. Engagement measurements provide insight into what employees appreciate about your organization and areas for improvement.

Key Advantages Of Measuring Employee Engagement

• Measure engagement regularly to determine strengths, challenges, and hidden insights You can deal with obstacles before they become problems by taking regular engagement measurements. The engagement data can also be used to showcase what's working and to link weaker teams or departments with stronger ones.
  
  
• It helps to establish trust between employees and employer It shows that you care about your employees' opinions and how they feel at work when you ask them for feedback. This lets the customer know you're listening and trying to make their experience the best it can be.
  
  
• To assist everyone in understanding the situation. You should share the data with everyone - leaders, managers, and front-line employees. Everyone can help improve a company's culture.
  
  
• It provides insights into trends. Get a clear picture of what's going on in your organization in terms of location, team, time, or compared to industry benchmarks. Stay up to date with how and where the organization is (or is not) progressing.
  
  

Employee Survey: A Reliable Way of Measuring Employee Engagement

There are many techniques an organization can use to measure the level of employee engagement, including one-on-one interviews, exit interviews, group discussions, etc. However, conducting an employee engagement survey is the most common and most effective way.

An organization's employee engagement is a complex matter that requires every employee to do their part. It is an effective way of gathering information about your team's commitment to their work and perception of the company. Using a combination of numerical scales and open-ended questions aimed at various drivers of employee engagement, you can collect real-time data and make better-informed decisions. The confidentiality and anonymity terms of the survey should be explained to employees, along with the difference between each.

How Can Employee Surveys Be The Best Option?

Employee surveys are designed to help companies better understand their key stakeholders and employees and turn their feedback into meaningful, integrated insights that improve employee experiences. Using these tools, employers can better identify employee needs and expectations. Employers can use employee surveys to improve employee engagement, employee recognition, retention initiatives, etc. Making employees feel heard and valued through employee experience surveys can help create a culture of trust, increasing employee engagement and decreasing turnover.

• Easily scalable It is possible to launch an employee satisfaction survey within a week.
  
  
• Easy to access Companies often create employee experience surveys that can be downloaded for free online.
  
  
• Detailed analysis The employee experience survey can be customized to measure employee feedback and job satisfaction across a range of departments, functions, or processes.
  
  
• Reliable It is more accurate to get an accurate picture of employee attitudes from a comprehensive employee experience/engagement survey. A more comprehensive survey increases the likelihood that the results will accurately reflect employee opinions.
  
  
• A clear call to action Employee surveys capture employee feedback, which can be formulated into an action plan for employee engagement.
  
  
• Establishes a culture of continuous improvement It is beneficial to the organization to have a culture that incorporates feedback to improve aspects of the business.
  
  
• Encourages open communication Listening to employees makes the workplace more open. You will gain insights, thoughts, and ideas you would not otherwise have access to.
  
  

Conclusion: Achieve Your Organization's Goals With Automated Surveys

It is true that traditional surveys are no longer relevant in this new normal. Due to the irregular nature of traditional employee surveys, they fail to provide an accurate picture of employee engagement. It is impossible for employees to ask for assistance or clarification in traditional surveys. Furthermore, there is no easy way to personalize questions by role or location. That's why automated employee surveys are introduced.

Enterprise automation surveys are crucial for finding important insights that can be used to change or implement policies at a company level. By conducting an annual automated survey, you will be able to collect data on employees through one single medium and store it on one platform. Rezolve.ai, an ai-powered service desk, helps clients conduct an automated employee survey and feedback right within collaborative platforms like MS Teams or Slack. It makes it easy to collect repetitive team responses (weekly, monthly, etc.) Based on where employees are located, you can customize questions.

Would you like to learn more about Rezolve.ai? Take a look at our webinar