The HR Guide to Effective Employee Engagement Metrics

Without effective employee engagement metrics, you won’t know how connected, motivated, and satisfied your people are at work. 

But it’s not always an easy task to measure employee engagement. HR leaders often have trouble choosing the right employee engagement metrics. 

Keep reading to learn the best metrics to measure employee engagement. 

Employee Engagement Metrics - Why They Matter

What is Employee Engagement?

Employee engagement refers to how connected a person feels to their job. An engaged employee will be more motivated and happier at work. Higher levels of employee engagement result in improved productivity as well as better levels of job satisfaction and improved employee retention. 

Engaged employees are willing to put in extra effort and take actions that drive innovation. They will be more likely to deliver a better experience for customers, which boosts sales and assists in reputation building. 

Good employee engagement helps to reduce staff turnover and absenteeism. Employees that feel connected to their company are significantly more inclined to recommend the company to others, helping the business to secure the best talent available. 

It’s no wonder that human resources professionals spend much of their time focusing on employee engagement levels. But while it’s relatively easy to gauge how productive your people are or how many sick days they take, measuring just how connected and content your employees feel isn’t so straightforward. 

How to Measure Employee Engagement Metrics

Because employee engagement is tied up with how people feel, it can be difficult to quantify. HR teams must analyze a variety of metrics to accurately measure how engaged employees are. These metrics provide data on how happy employees are at work, how loyal they are to the company, how in line with company culture they are, if they feel that their work is important and if they feel valued by the company. 

Common examples of employee engagement metrics include:

• Employee feedback on company policies
• Employee performance rates
• The retention rate of the company 
• Employee satisfaction levels 
• Work-life balance
• The company’s net promoter score

You can effectively measure and monitor employee engagement metrics with specialized digital solutions such as the LumApps intranet, which includes advanced analytics to show employee engagement metrics like read rate and which articles are most popular. 

The Importance of Employee Engagement Metrics

Your employee engagement metrics provide valuable insights into the overall health and vitality of your organization. Learning how to measure employee engagement metrics properly is crucial to maintaining optimum levels of productivity and employee satisfaction. 

How Employee-centered Intranets Drive Workforce Engagement

Download this free case study to learn why organizations of different sizes and geographic dispersions partnered with LumApps to solve their unique challenges around internal employee communication. 

10 Key Employee Engagement Metrics

At this point, you’re probably wondering just what the best metrics are to measure employee engagement. We’ve listed our top ten employee engagement metrics below. 

1. Work/Life Balance Satisfaction

The work/life balance is one of the most important metrics to measure. Employees that are constantly overburdened by heavy workloads often must take work home with them. This intrusion into their private life can lead to employees feeling resentful. 

Poor work/life balance leads to higher rates of staff burnout which results in reduced productivity levels and a decline in overall quality. The increased stress can also impact the physical and mental health of your employees.

Sending out a company-wide survey is a good way of measuring how your employees feel about their work/life balance. The responses can indicate if your employees feel overworked or not. 

Ask staff questions such as:

• Do you feel you have enough free time outside of work?
• Do you often take work home?
• Are work demands impacting your family life?
• Do you feel able to keep up with your current workload?
• Do you feel as if the workloads are fairly distributed among team members?

2. Engagement Levels with Senior Staff

Employees need to feel that their managers and supervisors are approachable. Business leaders should work to establish an environment where employees feel they can trust superiors and rely on them to make the right decisions. 

Improving engagement levels between business leaders and employees can be done via regular one-on-one meetings, team catch-ups, and companywide town hall meetings. Business leaders should ensure they adopt open-door policies and make sure all communication lines are clear. 

Surveys are once again a good method of getting feedback about how connected employees feel to senior staff. HR teams should also closely monitor reports from managers on employee performance and stay informed about any complaints or requests made by employees. 

→ Read more: 30 Questions to conduct an Employee Engagement Survey

 

3. Engagement Levels with Colleagues

To reach optimum productivity levels, team members need to form positive and supportive relationships with each other. 

Monitoring peer engagement levels can be done via surveys and short feedback forms. Regular one-on-one and group meetings should be held where employees can voice concerns about workloads, relationships with co-workers, and work processes. 

Managers can use data gleaned from these meetings to compile reports on how cohesive their teams seem and how well they work together. HR leaders can then analyze these reports to ascertain levels of peer engagement among employees. 

4. Retention Rates for Current Employees

Are you aware of the importance of effectively managing employee retention? A high percentage of employees that stay with a company for a long period is a good indicator of how satisfied they are with the organization in general. 

Most companies have some level of employee churn. After all, people leave jobs all the time for personal reasons that have nothing to do with work matters. But if your company is seeing high rates of long-term employees leaving, you could be facing a serious engagement issue.

Measuring retention involves looking at a certain period and collecting data on the number of employees who left within this period. The calculation to ascertain retention rates is straightforward. Say a company that has 70 employees had six employees leave within a year. The HR team takes the remaining number of employees and divides it by the original number of employees to arrive at a retention percentage. In this case: 64 divided by 70 arrives at a retention rate of 0.9%. 

But numbers alone won’t tell the whole story. Why people are leaving matters. If you have high levels of long-term people leaving on bad terms, you have a major employee engagement problem. 

 5. Employee Turnover Rates 

While retention shows how good your company is at keeping its people, the employee turnover rate indicates how many people want to stay at the company once they’ve joined. 

As with retention, there is always some degree of short-term employee turnover in any company. But if you have a high number of people who join your organization but then leave it after a short period, there is a serious engagement issue that needs to be addressed.

To calculate your turnover rate, divide the total number of employees who left the company by the total number of employees at the beginning of the period. Then multiply this number by 100. So, using the above example, six divided by 70 multiplied by 100 gives us a retention rate of 8.5%. And again, research will need to be done to ascertain exactly why the employees left. 

6. Rates of Employee Absenteeism

Absenteeism occurs in every workplace. People always need time off because of pressing family matters or because they have fallen ill. But if your people are constantly finding excuses not to be at work, it’s likely that they are not engaged with the company and aren’t satisfied with their roles. 

Additionally, high rates of constant absenteeism result in increased workloads for the remaining employees. This, of course, damages their work/life balance and creates a separate employee engagement issue for management.

Gauging your rates of absenteeism involves a quick calculation. Choose a period you want to analyze. Then divide the number of absent days per employee by the total number of working days in that period and multiply the result by 100. This will give you your absenteeism rate. 

7. Employee Net Promoter Score

Also known by the acronym eNPS, the Employee Net Promoter Score is a popular HR employee engagement metric. Used by a wide variety of organizations in many different sectors, the Employee Net Promoter Score is a useful indicator of employee engagement. High scores show that your employees feel connected to the company, feel valued, and find their jobs satisfying. 

The Employee Net Promoter Score is usually ascertained via a series of survey questions. Employees are asked to rate on a scale of one to ten how likely they would be to recommend the company to another person, either as a customer or as a potential employee. 

The Employee Net Promoter Score system groups employees into three categories based on their responses: promoters, passives, and detractors. 

Any employee who scores the company nine or ten is a promoter, they are very satisfied and engaged employees. Passives usually rate the company between six and eight, indicating that they are not completely engaged but would not discredit the company. An employee with a score of six or below is a detractor. Detractors are unsatisfied employees with very low levels of engagement. 

To determine the overall Employee Net Promoter Score, subtract the number of detractors from the number of promoters and then divide the result by the total number of employees surveyed. A score of 50 or above is a good result.

8. Performance and Productivity Levels

Employees that are engaged with the company culture and find meaning in their work are much more likely to be high achievers. Keeping track of your performance and productivity levels can be highly useful in determining employee engagement levels. 

A common way of measuring performance and productivity is to look at four metrics:

• Work quality: For example, the average number of employee errors
• Work quantity: For example, the average amount of sales, units produced, or handling times
• Work efficiency: Compare the qualitative and the quantitative results to gauge the efficiency
• Organizational performance: Individual revenue generated, company ROI on investment in employees

 9. Recognition and Rewards 

Employees that feel their work is valued are more likely to have good levels of engagement. It’s human nature to work for a reward after all! If your people feel like they are being adequately recognized and rewarded for their efforts, they will be more likely to go above and beyond. Employees who don’t feel as if their work is appreciated will deliver substandard or just average results. 

Make sure that your organization regularly recognizes employees for their outstanding efforts. It’s also important to acknowledge employees that consistently perform well. Encouraging employee feedback about how recognized and rewarded they feel is important. Including a question on rewards and recognition levels in a company-wide survey will also provide reliable data on this metric. 

10. Opportunities for Professional Growth

Human beings are naturally ambitious. Employees need to have clear pathways they can take to reach the next level in their careers. Providing your employees with opportunities for professional growth and development will encourage them to be more productive and innovative. 

An employee that can see clear paths to professional development will feel more valued and be more likely to stay at the company. Employees that have no opportunities for advancement can feel trapped in their position and become stagnated and resentful. They won’t put in any extra effort and will simply do the bare minimum required in their role. 

Measuring professional growth metrics involves creating scalable promotion systems, offering training programs, setting performance targets, and then tracking how many employees are taking advantage of these opportunities.

Effective Strategies for Improving Employee Engagement Metrics

To create strong levels of employee engagement, an organization has to employ a range of effective employee engagement strategies. 

Establish a Baseline

The first step is to make sure your HR people understand the current baseline of employee engagement. You can use employee surveys to generate data that establishes a baseline for engagement levels. You can then set engagement goals and use this baseline as a reference for future improvements.

Send Out Surveys

Remember that data-driven decision-making is at the heart of any employee engagement strategy. Gathering this data can be done in several ways. Surveys are a highly useful tool that can measure rates of employee satisfaction and identify areas for improvement. Improving employee satisfaction is a key part of enhancing engagement levels. The LumApps Platform allows you to send out digital surveys via your intranet quickly and monitor the results accurately. 

Create a Strong Company Culture

Some of the best strategies for enhancing employee engagement are to do with how the company sees and presents itself. A strong company culture gives employees a sense of purpose and mission. 

Support Diversity

Focusing on diversity in the workplace is important for engagement. Creating an inclusive, open, and welcoming work environment will make all your employees feel valued. 

Be Transparent and Communicate

Transparency and communication are also crucial to building engagement levels. Employees need to know they can take their concerns to management and that they are being kept in the loop about any major changes to the company. Regular meetings and announcements should be made to keep employees informed. Business leaders should adopt open-door policies and provide staff with anonymous ways to provide feedback. 

Acknowledge Your Employees

Be sure to reward and recognize your employees for their hard work. Instigate monthly award ceremonies or set up an in-house intranet page dedicated to recognizing achievements. Provide your employees with perks or bonuses for going above and beyond. 

Set Fair Workloads 

Give your employees fair workloads and encourage them to take time off if they need it. If your employees know their work duties will not impact their personal obligations, they will be more motivated. 

Always Strive to Improve

Business leaders should always strive to continuously improve employee engagement levels. Hold regular one-on-one meetings and town hall meetings to monitor employee engagement. Take note of employee survey results and act to resolve any employee complaints. 

To conclude

Employee engagement metrics provide HR leaders with invaluable data on staff satisfaction levels. Analyzing these metrics enables HR teams to implement effective strategies to improve engagement. Better employee engagement can enhance productivity, boost morale, foster innovation, and improve the reputation of a company. 

LumApps offers you highly effective tools that can accurately measure and track employee engagement metrics. Discover how LumApps can help you create a happier and more productive workplace. 

How Employee-centered Intranets Drive Workforce Engagement

Download this free case study to learn why organizations of different sizes and geographic dispersions partnered with LumApps to solve their unique challenges around internal employee communication. 

Discover our latest content on Employee Engagement

• What is Employee Engagement? Benefits, Strategies & Steps
• Why is Employee Engagement so Important? TOP 20 Benefits
• Best 15 Employee Engagement Strategies in 2023
• What is Brand Advocacy? How do You Build and Drive it?
• 10 Steps to Create a Strong Employee Engagement Action Plan
• 30 Employee Engagement Best Practices to Follow in 2023
• 15 Key Factors Influencing Employee Engagement in 2023
• 50+ Employee Engagement Ideas and Strategies for Companies
• Top 10 Employee Engagement KPIs: The Metrics to Measure
• 15 Best Features for Your Employee Engagement Software
• Top 30 Questions to Conduct an Employee Engagement Survey
• 20 Easy Ways to Motivate Employees
• Top 10 Employee Retention Strategies & Ideas to Set up
• Employee Social Advocacy for HR and Recruiters
• 10 Great Ways to Empower Frontline Employees | LumApps
• How Employee Advocacy Can Help Your Brand Build Trust
• How to measure employee satisfaction: Best methods and key metrics to track
• How to Boost Morale at Work? 30 Strong Ideas
• 15 Proven techniques to keep employees engaged and motivated
• The HR Guide to Effective Employee Engagement Metrics
• Top 10 Ways to Improve Employee Satisfaction
• Social Advocacy for Business Benefits
• 6 Tips To Build a Strong Employee Advocacy Program
• 30+ Virtual Team Building Activities for Companies in 2023
• Employee Advocacy on Social Media: Benefits, Examples & Strategies
• What is Employee Retention and How to Manage it?
• A Guide for Reducing Employee Turnover