Engaged employees are highly valuable assets that play a crucial role in the overall progress and sustainability of the organization. On the other hand, disengaged employees will either leave your organization one day or will bring poor results while staying. Therefore, modern organizations should make it a priority to improve their employee engagement metrics. Fortunately, there are a set of HR practices, techniques, and tools like HR software that companies can use to measure, monitor, and enhance employee engagement metrics.
This article discusses the techniques to improve the most important employee engagement metrics. But before we do so, let us have a brief overview of the key employee engagement metrics and why they matter?
What Are the Most Crucial Employee Engagement Metrics?
The most crucial employee engagement metrics are:
NPS: Net Promoter Score (NPS) shows if the employee is keen to recommend your company to friends and relatives.
Employee Health Index: This score determines the physical and mental strength of employees to work without reeling under pressure.
Attrition Rate: The attrition rate measures the ratio of employees that left the organization versus those who stayed over a specified period.
Absenteeism: It measures the percentage of days employees were absent.
Other indicators of employee engagement that companies should monitor are:
- Glassdoor Reviews
- Employee Surveys
- HR reports about employee complaints
- Slow production rate or slow rate of service deliveries
- Exit interview outcomes
Why Employee Engagement Metrics Matter?
Employee engagement metrics provide a clear idea about the current employee engagement situation, insights about weak and strong areas, and the scope for improvement. Highly engaged employees are 57% more effective, stay loyal, and are more likely to stay for the long term. In a recent survey, 68% of employees confirmed that they feel engaged in their work. This still means that organizations are left with 32% employees where there is a scope for improvement in engagement. Proactive organizations respond quickly to such engagement issues. There are techniques that can be deployed to foster positive employee experiences. Let us discuss these in detail:
Techniques to Improve Employee Engagement Metrics:
Workplace Recognition
A progressive culture of recognition empowers employees and brings a measurable impact on employee performance. Recognition with bonuses, salary hikes, perks, etc., becomes more crucial in organizations that have flat organizational structures with fewer opportunities for promotions to higher places. Your recognition strategy should be impartial, well-designed, transparent, and regular. Companies should deploy an appraisal management system tool for accurate and effective recognitions
Meaningful Work
Assigning meaningful work to employees is an effective retention and engagement strategy. You need to create a system where employees are allotted work according to their skills and strengths and aligned with organizational goals. When employees feel that their talent, skills, and knowledge are well-utilized, they display a high level of engagement in their work.
Create a Culture for Healthy Peer Relationships
Inclusive work cultures with opportunities for social interactions increase team cohesion and develop healthy relationships among employees. Clear directions from superiors prevent conflicts at lower levels and promote conducive and engaging work environments.
Give Employees Opportunities for Professional Development
Professional development boosts employees’ morale, unleashes a sense of achievement, and upskills them for better work performance. You can give employees opportunities to take part in workshops, conferences, training programs, mentorship sessions, certifications, and more.
Don’t Interrupt Employees’ Work-Life Balance
Employees seek work-life alignment and appreciate when their company provides them an avenue for a balanced work-life combination. Not only it keeps them mentally/physically well, but it also improves their zeal, commitment, and engagement towards their work. Any resentment about not being able to deliver on the personal front reflects negatively on their work performance.
Give the Required Autonomy and Don’t Micro-Manage
Micromanaging is devastating in the long term and breaks employee-manager trust. Playing a control freak or excessive meddling in employee work will eventually destroy employees’ ability to grow as a professional. Without autonomy, employees will show limited creativity.
Provide Satisfactory and Consistent Employee Benefits
Employee benefits fuel employees’ satisfaction with their jobs. Happy employees are more productive, engaged, and attracted to their organization. Popular employee benefits include health insurance, vacations, leaves, work from home flexibility, work hours flexibility, employee stock options, profit-sharing, low-interest loans, gratuity benefits, plans for financial security, etc.
Encourage to Use Vacation Days
The benefits of encouraging employees to utilize their vacation time include greater job satisfaction, better employee health and morale, stress-free and highly engaged employees. You should allow employees to completely disconnect during the vacation period and make mandatory vacations a part of HR policy like Netflix’s unlimited vacation policy, Evernote’s $1000 stipend for vacation, etc.
Use Technology to Monitor Employee Engagement Metrics
Employee engagement metrics can be easily monitored using sophisticated tools such as Employee Engagement software, HR Software Systems, HRIS, HRMS, etc. These software solutions also come with all modules that organizations require to enhance employee engagement metrics.
Use Automation to Unburden Employees
Automation augments employee performance and reduces work pressure. Regular and repetitive workflows, tasks, and activities that do not require mandatory manual intervention can be automated to reduce the workloads of employees. Rule-based AI and machine learning automation can also help employees in managing humongous data and client communication.
Allow Transparent Communication Across Organization
Communication transparency at the workplace creates a better management-employee relationship, makes employees feel valued, and allows employees to engage in productive conversations. Communicate project results, failures, upcoming projects, changes in roles, policy changes, etc., with transparency and gain employee trust and engagement.
Employee Amenities:
Employee amenities such as proper workplace infrastructure with comfortable seating, uninterrupted intranet, professional email ID, coffee machines, personal storage, free snacks, etc., go a long way to promote employee engagement at the workplace.
Wrap Up:
Employee engagement is directly proportional to the trust organizations show in their employees. It is an ongoing process that needs efforts and proper mechanisms from the management. When you strive for engagement, your efforts should be targeted towards making both the workplace and the work irresistible. Once employees are engaged effectively, all metrics such as NPS, attrition rate, health index, etc., improve. Therefore, organizations should use the techniques as discussed in this article and improve their employee engagement metrics.
Author Bio:- James Mordy is a content writer for Goodfirms. A voracious reader, an avid researcher, a logophile, and a tech geek, he loves to read about the latest technologies shaping the world. He often articulates the very nuances of the tech world in his blogs. In his free time, he loves to watch movies and analyze stock markets around the world.
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