As an internal communications professional, one of your primary tasks is to maintain a high level of employee engagement. Even though employee engagement is on the rise across the country, there’s still plenty of room for improvement. And that’s where you come in.
What is employee engagement?
While the term “employee engagement” means something slightly different to everyone, the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) defines it as follows:
The term employee engagement relates to the level of an employee’s commitment and connection to an organization.
The benefits of high levels of employee engagement run deep, including but not limited to:
- Retention of talent
- Employees working at peak efficiency
- Improved employee loyalty
Because of this, employee engagement is an important metric to track.
How do you measure employee engagement?
Employee engagement isn’t something you simply wish for, but something you chase with a sound strategy in mind. And that starts with understanding how to use employee engagement metrics to your advantage.
Here are five metrics that will give you a better overall understanding of the level of engagement between your company and its workforce:
1. New hire 90-day failure rate
Some employees feel engaged from day one. Other employees never really connect with their team and employer, thus leading to them leaving the company before the 90-day mark.
You’re bound to lose some employees before 90 days pass, but if your rate is too high, there’s a problem. It could be related to:
- Hiring the wrong people
- Lack of a comprehensive training program
- Failure to implement the proper tools
High employee engagement in the early days of employment reduces the risk of a high 90-day failure rate.
2. Absenteeism
It’s okay for employees to take sick, personal and vacation days. In fact, this is a good thing. It means that your employees feel comfortable taking time off as necessary.
But there’s a problem if employees are missing work unannounced and/or cutting their hours short. This is a sign that engagement is suffering.
If you’re not already doing so, start tracking the absenteeism of each employee. This will help you pinpoint those who may not be fully engaged.
3. Employee Satisfaction
Satisfied employees are high-producing employees. So, you must track satisfaction levels as closely as possible. There are many ways to do this, such as:
- Distributing employee surveys
- Scheduling one-on-one meetings
- Asking for feedback at the completion of specific milestones
Tip: You have a better chance of securing accurate data if you distribute an anonymous survey.
4. Employee net promoter score (eNPS)
Don’t forget to calculate your Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS). This is one of the best ways to determine how your employees feel about your company at any given time.
It starts with asking a simple question: On a scale of 0–10, how likely are you to recommend [your company’s] products and services to other individuals? Of course, you can use many variations of this question, such as How likely are you to recommend employment at [your company] to someone in your network?
This system assigns employees a label of promoter (those who are happy and talk up the organization), distractor (those who are unhappy and unlikely to have anything good to say about the company), or passive (those who are neutral or not invested in the company’s success or failure).
The employee Net Promoter Score is calculated by subtracting the number of detractors from the number of promoters. The resulting number is then divided by the total number of respondents and is then multiplied by 100.
A higher eNPS generally points toward higher engagement levels. While scores can range from 0 to 100, scores above zero are acceptable. While different organizations strive for different scores, generally, scores between 10 and 30 are thought to be good and scores of at least 50 are excellent.
5. Turnover and retention
Unhappy, unengaged employees aren’t likely to stick around for long. Turnover and retention metrics go along with the new hire 90-day failure rate listed above.
Track how long employees stay at your company and their reasons for leaving. Are you losing new employees? Are you losing top employees who have been with the company for a long time?
Can Tryane’s products help?
As you can see, employee engagement metrics can help you better understand how your workers are connecting with your company. Your goal is two-fold:
- Determine which metrics most closely align with your business
- Devise a strategy for tracking employee engagement
Tryane offers a variety of tools for tracking and increasing employee engagement on internal communications platforms, thus allowing you to make calculated decisions that have the biggest impact on performance.
Don’t assume that employee engagement at your company is high — Tryane’s suite of tools can help you find out once and for all if this is the case. Contact us today to get started.