Our quick-fire guide to employee engagement measurement

Checking in on employee engagement is vital if you want to maximize company success. Why? Because engaged employees are loyal, happy, and productive employees - great for business. 

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Taking employee engagement measurements is the best way to understand employee engagement levels. So if you’re new to monitoring engagement metrics, here’s everything you need to know.

Want proof of how critical employee engagement is? See our article on employee engagement statistics to find out!

How to measure employee engagement

Employee engagement is hard to quantify because engagement is a set of emotions and behaviors. So what you need are measurements that infer engagement. You can do this by asking the right questions - strategic questions designed to better understand how your employees feel.

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Asking these questions can be done in various ways to suit your organization, with a survey or without.

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Measuring employee engagement without a survey

1. How Gomada measures engagement

With feedback directly after team building activities and measurement via Slack, Gomada can give you engagement metrics without relying on surveys alone. Depending on how your team votes, responds, and interacts with each other, Gomada determines your engagement metrics.

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Pros:

• When employees don’t respond to surveys, you have other ways to get engagement metrics
• Gomada also improves your team with activities (instead of just telling you what’s wrong) 

Cons:

• You’ll need Gomada Premium to get team metrics

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2. Face-to-face meetings

The quickest and easiest way to assess employee engagement is to speak to your team. Regular meetings where employees can talk honestly and informally are excellent for building trust. 

Pros:

• When done well, this gives you a clear sense of what’s happening whenever you need it. 

Cons:

• Requires employees to feel safe enough to open up. Not ideal for employees who struggle with the pressure of one-to-one meetings.
• Not always practical for large organizations where managers can’t offer every employee the time needed.

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3. Ongoing anonymous feedback

Inviting confidential feedback (at any time) is crucial for accurately measuring employee engagement. If you rely on annual surveys, problems may resolve themselves before you know of them and this means you don’t have the opportunity to stop issues from happening.

Pros:

• It gives employees a safe place to provide honest feedback at any time.
• Get awareness of problems as soon as they happen.

Cons:

• You’ll need to be prepared to act on issues faster. Good for business, but a challenge nonetheless.

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4. Exit interviews

These are interviews taken before an employee leaves an organization. They help to assess an employee's experience and understand why they’ve decided to move on. 

Pros:

• Get honest, negative feedback to address issues and avoid future similar problems.

Cons:

• The feedback you’ve received will come too late for that employee! It’s vital you’re also collecting measurements earlier in the employee experience (e.g., Stay Interviews)

Measuring employee engagement with a survey

You have several options for surveys:

• short, frequent pulse surveys, 
• employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS) surveys, 
• or in-depth annual surveys. 

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Most organizations benefit from a mix of all three. 

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Surveys allow you to carefully shape the feedback process, ensuring you ask all the questions you need. Plus, giving employees the time and confidentiality to provide honest answers. Let’s have a look at the different types:

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1. Pulse surveys

A pulse survey is a brief set of questions sent out to employees to get feedback in a routine way. They can be completed in a few minutes and may be sent out daily, weekly, or monthly.

Pros:

• Quick & easy to set-up
• High completion rate

Cons:

• Limited in what data you can collect

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P.S. Gomada’s free Slack integration offers a simple but effective pulse survey. Learn more here.

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2. In-depth employee engagement surveys

More comprehensive employee engagement and satisfaction surveys can be sent out annually to gauge your employee experience across various aspects, from job role and company culture to leadership and team relationships.

Pros:

• More scope for asking open-ended questions that help you take the necessary action.

Cons:

• Longer, meaning not everyone will take the time to complete these

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3. eNPS (employee Net Promoter Score)

The employee Net Promoter Score is a simple survey asking two questions: 

1. On a scale from 0-10, how likely are you to recommend your organization as a good place to work?
2. What’s the reason for your score?

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These questions provide a fast and easy way to assess employee loyalty at any time. Participation and competition rates are typically very high.

Pros:

• A quick way to gauge overall employee sentiment. 
• Easy to ping out via email at any time.

Cons:

• Won’t provide much in-depth data.
• It can result in a lot of ‘neutral’ feedback (scores 7-8), which isn’t helpful.

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Read our guide on employee engagement surveys to learn more about collecting employee feedback via surveys.

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The best tools to measure employee engagement

Whether you want to use a survey or not, many Saas employee engagement tools are available to support you. Each offers a mix of solutions to help with measuring and improving employee engagement - from survey creation to performance reviews, feedback portals to employee reward schemes. Our favorites are:

1. Gomada
2. OfficeVibe
3. Culture Amp
4. Kudos 
5. Bonusly
6. Enboarder
7. Fond
8. Assembly

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Have a look at our blog on the best employee engagement apps to find out more about each tool and what we like about it.

Why measure employee engagement?

There are many benefits of measuring employee engagement. Let’s take a look:

1. Address problems before they get worse - Checking in with employee sentiment allows you to get to the root of issues before they escalate. This reduces the risk of low employee retention or sudden drops in sales.
2. Build trust - Help show employees you’ve got their back. Feedback is a two-way process. Measuring employee engagement shows you value employee input.
3. Boost morale - Demonstrating employee morale is a priority by how often you check in on how your teams are feeling.
4. Share transparency - With metrics in place and data to show for them, you’ll be able to show employees exactly what they're working towards. Allowing staff to see results will drive them to push harder. 
5. Spot opportunities - Measuring employee engagement also allows you to spot trends (what is and isn’t working). This helps to pinpoint opportunities that empower employees to do their best work.
6. Keep up the good work - When you know what is working, you can continue to provide the right environment & resources to keep it up. No flukes. 

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How to measure employee engagement metrics

When planning the measurement of employee engagement, there are two different measurements to consider - employee engagement metrics themselves and your existing KPIs.

What is a KPI for employee engagement?

While the following KPIs don’t give you an understanding of why engagement is low (and therefore, don’t help you to improve on engagement), they do give you insight into when employee engagement is high/low. Which makes them important to pay attention to.

1. Employee retention - Unhappy employees won’t stick around. It’s that simple. If your employee retention rate is low, it’s definitely time to investigate what is impacting your employee engagement.
2. Profitability - Engaged employees are productive and therefore profitable. If you’re seeing a slump in business performance, could it be because your employees are unsatisfied? 
3. Glassdoor.com rating - GlassDoor.com allows employees to feedback on their employment experiences. It’s often used by new hires to gauge whether an organization is a good employee. So it’s definitely worth keeping an eye on how your business fairs here.
4. Absenteeism - How often are your employees away from work. If your sick rate is high, it can (but not always) mean your staff are looking for reasons to be away from the office.
5. Vacation days used - Are vacation days going unused? A healthy work-life balance is key to engaged employees. If staff don’t feel comfortable taking their holidays, it’s usually an indicator of an issue.

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What metrics measure employee engagement?

Measuring engagement requires an in-depth exploration of your employee experience as a whole. Officevibe helpfully pinpoints the following ten metrics key to investigate:

1. Feedback. How satisfied employees are with how their feedback is collected and acted upon.
2. Recognition. How satisfied employees are with the recognition & reward they receive for their contributions.
3. Happiness. How content employees are with their job.
4. Relationship with peers. How satisfied employees are in their relationships with colleagues.
5. Relationship with managers. How satisfied employees are with the relationships they have with those in leadership roles.
6. Personal Growth. How well supported employees feel in fostering growth. And how satisfied they are with access to opportunities for development.
7. Alignment. How satisfied employees feel that your organization is aligned with their personal values. 
8. Satisfaction. How fulfilling employees find their work, and whether they feel their role is meaningful. 
9. Wellness. How your business impacts employee wellbeing - physical, mental, and emotional. 
10. Ambassadorship. How likely your employees are to act as ambassadors for your organization. 

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Simply put, the more positive and committed employees feel towards an organization, the more engaged they will be. And the more engaged employees are, the more profitable they are for your business. 

Employee engagement statistics show engaged employees close 20% more sales, demonstrate 17% higher productivity results, and deliver 10% higher customer satisfaction.

‍When it comes to employee engagement solutions, we know there’s a wealth to choose from. At Gomada we do things differently. We boost employee engagement with scientifically-backed activities that make teambuilding online fun!