Month: December 2021

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VRAMP Features

How we measure Employee Engagement Score

21st December, 2021.

How VRAMP Measures Your Employee Engagement Score

Measuring success is a massive part of every business. At VRAMP we believe the same analytical focus should also be put on employee engagement. After all, as this infographic shows, employee engagement plays a huge role in employee productivity, profitability and even work-based accidents. By measuring employee engagement it is possible to make improvements, which in turn contribute to business success. 

What is an employee engagement score?

Put simply, an employee engagement score is the measure of an individual’s commitment to their organisation.

 

How do you keep track of your employee engagement score

There are several different ways to measure employee engagement and many organisations opt to use multiple measures that complement one another. Our employee engagement guide talks you through each of the different methods to measure employee engagement but for the purpose of this blog, we are going to focus on the easiest route – through the use of an employee engagement platform. 

Why is this the easiest route I hear you ask! Because employee engagement software such as VRAMP does everything for you!

Through the platform’s algorithms, VRAMP attains data on various aspects and presents the findings in a dashboard. The points from which VRAMP draws this information include, opens, views, and clicks. It’s this combination of data points that make the VRAMP employee engagement score so useful. You know that you have a reliable overview of all your tactics rather than having to compare and analyse multiple measures.

Aside from the all-encompassing nature of VRAMP’s employee engagement score and the fact you don’t have to do anything to see this score, there are other perks:

  • VRAMP provides a real-time employee engagement score – you can login and see your score at any given time.
  • VRAMP provides an engagement score at multiple levels – from the overall score of the organisation to individual teams. This ability to look at more granular detail not only helps those responsible for employee engagement but also line managers and HR.
  • The VRAMP employee engagement score includes survey participation rates because employee surveys are included in VRAMP. You can send an employee survey whenever you want to and the success of that survey will be included in your overall employee engagement score. This connection between all of your employee engagement efforts makes the VRAMP employee engagement score an extremely accurate way of measuring employee engagement.
  • You can set benchmarks to work towards and VRAMP will keep tabs of your progress as you work towards this benchmark.

What is a good employee engagement score?

VRAMP measures your employee engagement from 0-10. As a general rule of thumb, we consider anything above 6 to be good and above 8 to be excellent. But, this comes with a huge caveat. 

Our classification of ‘good’ and ‘excellent’ is based on a company that has an established employee engagement strategy. If you have only just started your employee engagement journey and began at a score of 1, to reach a score of 5 would be considered brilliant. 

So while we are asked all the time what a good score is, our advice is to never compare yourself against other organisations. Instead, look at your employee engagement score as your own journey. As long as you are seeing improvement, it is good. If you are seeing a lot of improvement it is excellent!

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Employee engagement within VRAMP

For more information on how you can keep tabs of your employee engagement score, book a demo and we will show you how it will help you improve your internal comms and employee engagement.

Trevor Munday

Director

I’m quick thinking & make calculated decisions that help projects & clients move forward & not stall. Helping businesses deliver on their objectives through VRAMP’s internal communications system.

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Blog Internal Communication

Steps to effective change management comms

25th November, 2021.

7 steps for effective change management communications

Change is a vital and common part of any evolving organisation. As such, change management communications consume a big chunk of an internal communication team’s time – whether that is communicating an acquisition, the implementation of new software or procedures, a new brand identify or simply a change in personnel.

Whatever the change, and no matter how positive that change, some of your employees will feel unnerved by the change while others will feel excited. Every change management project is complex for an internal communicator because of the strong emotions employees will feel.

We also have to deal with the fact that a significant number of change projects fail, or at least encounter serious problems. The statement that “70% of change projects fail” is well known in the corporate world and while some argue for this stat and some argue against, what is clear is that any change management project is very likely to experience a bumpy journey, particularly if it is a large project.

But what can internal communications do to make this journey smoother?

The role of internal communications during an organisational change​

Thankfully you don’t need to manage the change project which means you won’t be worrying about the ROI or how to resource the project. But you will need to provide timely and relevant information to those who need it throughout the change project. You are basically the mechanism for momentum: you stick together everything everyone is doing and bring other employees aboard for the journey!

The point of bringing employees onboard is a particularly important one. There is a saying that “you will only transform when you have changed how people behave” and this is particularly pertinent for change communications. No matter how successful the acquisition of a new company is, or the implementation of new software, the project can only be counted as a success if your employees embrace the new way of working and continue to align with your goals and values. Without this vital step, the success of the project will always be restricted.

So, what can you do to make an organisations change project as successful as possible?

The 7 essential steps to an effective change management plan

1. Segment your audiences effectively

We all know there is no point sharing a communication if it is of no relevance to the recipient. With change communications the recipient may be resistant to the project and not wish to hear your communication so the need to segment effectively is even more important.

Consider all of your audiences; from the employees who will need to adapt how they work as a result of the change, to the people making the change happen, to the leadership team.

Whilst your number one job is to communicate transparent updates to keep everyone informed, you may also need to do an element of education. For example, does your leadership team and deployment team fully understand the importance and value of internal communications during a change programme? If they don’t, you need to spell it out to them because a change communication plan without the support of leaders and managers is going to be an uphill struggle. 

So, while considering your audiences consider the type of communication you will need. Also consider whether each of those audiences may have people sitting in different camps. Could you have some that are in favour of change and some that are hesitant of change for example? If so, are there ways in which you can segment these groups so that you can build communications that are better suited to each audience?

Spend time considering each audience. Speak to some of them if that would be useful. By the end of this phase, you want to feel as though you could step into the shoes of each segmented audience member and be confident in the information they would like to, and need to, hear. 

Depending on the number of segmented audiences you have, you may find it useful to create an audience persona for each to refer to as you build your communications. These personas would be an average profile of someone in each group and include points that will really impact how they receive your internal communications. For example, what pains will they experience, what hesitations are they likely to have, who within the business is likely to influence their opinion, etc? These will help you keep your messages focused. 

The more you can understand the audiences you will be communicating with the more pertinent your internal communications will be.  

2. Consider your culture

 Statistics show that 70% of change projects fail because of culture-related issues. Your culture has the potential to either make or break this project, so it is important to take a moment to consider the strength of your culture before the project begins.

If you have a strong culture your task is far easier. Your employees will be invested in the change and that positivity will see most people through any challenging periods.

That said, depending on the scale and type of change, even the strongest of cultures can start to crack. This is something to keep a close eye on throughout the project. Scheduling regular employee pulse checks would be an effective way to monitor this.

Should culture be a concern for you it will be important to put a far greater emphasis on communications. Your employees are likely to need greater levels of communications to provide reassurance and keep them focused. Meanwhile your management should also play a heavier role in connecting with employees during the project to support and listen to them.

It will also be worth pointing out your cultural concerns to the leadership team to ensure they are aware of the potential issues. The more aware everyone is, the more can be done to help align everyone with the project and wider organisational goals.

3. Dig deep into the change project

 For you to communicate effectively you need to understand the ins and outs of this project; what the end goals are, how long it is anticipated to take, who will be involved, who will be impacted and why the change is necessary. The more knowledgeable you are the more transparent you can be with your change management communications.

This will also be an opportunity to get to know the individuals who will be responsive for rolling the project out. This will give you a good feel as to who is best placed to keep you updated throughout the project. The better this connection the more timely and accurate your communications.

4. Review past change management processes

 Have you, or anyone else in your team, produced a change management communication plan before? If so, great, your job may have become far easier! But be sure to analyse the previous project thoroughly. What you don’t want to do is inherit any past mistakes, failings, or even mediocre results.

If you are unsure of the effectiveness of previous change management communications projects, or if there is no evidence of any, speak to people. Inevitably, unless you are in a very young business, every organisation will have experienced change at some point and that change will have been communicated somehow. Speak to those involved in rolling out the project but also speak to people at the receiving end. While this process may not bring complete clarity over what you should do, it is likely to unearth some things that you shouldn’t do!

5. Establish your methods of communication

 Consider both the channels and mediums you are going to use.

First start with the how. How will you communicate to each of your audiences? Will the same method work for everyone or do you need to consider different routes. For example, while email might be effective for office workers, if you have frontline or shop floor employees they need to receive their information in a different way such as through an internal communications app.

If you already have effective channels of communication in place great, but if you don’t, depending on the scale of the change project, it may be worth exploring other options. If the employees who need to know about the project don’t receive your internal communications, or receive a diluted or delayed message, distrust and a sense of uneasiness is likely to manifest.

It is also worth considering multiple channels of communication. What works for one employee may not work for the other and for particularly important messages during the project, multiple channel communication will help to emphasis its importance.

You also need to consider the format of communication you are going to use. Traditionally we communicate in written form but could some of your change communications be better as a video, image, infographic or face-to-face. While you don’t want to create unnecessary work for yourself, it is important to consider all of your audiences and identify the mediums that are likely to best resonate with each group. 

6. Build your internal communication change management strategy

 In comparison to the other stages this is the easy bit – the writing! Using all the knowledge you’ve gained from the points above you can now start to plan your change communication plan.

We would recommend you have a high-level timeline for quick reference to help others in your team, and wider organisation, understand what needs to happen when. Download our free communication change timeline to get started on this. Change management timeline template

Throughout your communications as the duration of the project unravels, remember to regularly remind employees of the purpose of the change. As delays or problems occur and employees are inconvenienced by the work, it is easy to lose sight of the end goal. Regular reminders of how their working life will be improved once the change project is completed will always be valuable. 

7. Measure and review your strategy

The final but most important step in your change management communication process. This is often a step that is overlooked (48% of communicators do not monitor the effectiveness of their internal comms), but it will make or break your change communication plan.

After the time you have spent crafting your change communication plan you must track and measure its effectiveness. This will help you understand which communications are resonating and which aren’t. With the right data, you will also be able to see which teams are engaging with your communications and which aren’t. This is hugely valuable information that will enable you to adjust your plan and target specific groups with key messages.

With data in your back pocket, you can react and respond. You can identify ‘problem’ groups and adjust your strategy. Those who use our internal communications software will also use our analytics to identify potential issues before they have bubbled to the surface. For example, they can see engagement levels over a set time period and should a previously engaged team suddenly disengage they have conversations within the business to identify why. This means they can often resolve an engagement problem before it has impacted anyone else in the business.

In a project where there are so many variables this level of insight can make a massive difference to the effectiveness of the communications plan.

Of course, to be able to utilise this level of data you will need internal comms software to support you. If you are not currently in a position to utilise such software there are still other ways to measure your success. Granted they won’t give you the same level of insight but the data will still be useful. Here are a few methods you could use:

  • Email open and click rates – these will be a good gauge for the effectiveness of each communication and help you to establish strong subject lines and links.
  • Employee pulse checks – regular quick-fire surveys will help you to monitor overall engagement.
  • eNPS surveys – an employee Net Promoter Score will provide you with an employee engagement score. If you are embarking on a large change project you may want to carry out an eNPS survey at the beginning, the end, and potentially during, the change. This will help you to keep tabs of the impact the project has had.
  • Focus groups – bringing employees together and asking their opinion on your change communications and the wider project will give you a great snapshot of opinion.

The key takeaway is to measure as much as possible. The more you know about how your change communication plan is being received, the more you can do to improve it. The more you can do to improve it, the more successful it will be.

 

author-rachel-stidworthy

Rachel Stidworthy

Marketing Manager

With over 15 years’ experience in communications I have seen first-hand the difference strong internal communications can make. I am passionate about helping organisations reap the rewards of an engaged workforce and feel privileged to work for an organisation that has this same passion. We can achieve so much more when we work together towards the same goals. 

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Categories
VRAMP Features

Analytics

1st December, 2021.

VRAMP Analytics

Analytics in the context of internal comms and employee engagement is a game-changer. 48% of UK businesses don’t measure the effectiveness of their internal communications. That’s half of businesses who have no idea if their internal comms are achieving anything.

For those that do measure the performance of their internal communications they have complete visibility. They can see which departments in the organisation are most engaged and which aren’t, and they can see which content resonates the most. This level of insight enables them to make continual improvements to their approach so that engagement continues to increase. 

With analytics under your belts, you have the opportunity to use employee engagement as a real driving force to improve business output.

Analytics also brings more efficient ways of working within internal comms teams. With greater insight the team can hone in and focus on specific areas where improvements have been identified. Without analytics to identify such opportunities, most internal comms departments will try to cover all bases but only be able to do so with a very light touch. 

Due to the value analytics brings we have invested a lot of time perfecting the analytics functionality within VRAMP. 

How VRAMP analytics works

 For every article that is shared, VRAMP measures how well it has resonated with your employees. There are multiple measures that are all presented in an Overview dashboard. 

Using similar technology, VRAMP also displays results of surveys in an easy to digest way and this sits alongside the content statistics for a complete overview of every type of engagement. 

VRAMP is an all-encompassing employee engagement platform which enables our customers to send news, videos, images, files, forms and surveys. Our analytics features not only measure all of these, but it also measures any responses received from employees. By measuring every aspect of employee engagement VRAMP delivers hugely valuable insights that inform confident decisions. 

The information you will learn

 VRAMP goes beyond the traditional statistics we have all become familiar with through email marketing. Here is what you will be able to keep track of through VRAMP.

Read times

 While you can still see open and click rates through VRAMP you also receive a greater depth of information. Open rates only show you the effectiveness of the logistics that sit behind your communication processes.

Clicks give you a better indication of the value the recipient saw in the article because they are invested enough to click to find out more. But you may not always have something you want your employees to click through to. Read times give you a far more accurate representation of engagement and with VRAMPs algorithms working out the average read time for every article, you’ll know exactly what is resonating and what isn’t. 

Engagement score

 VRAMP provides an overall engagement score week-on-week. Detailed algorithms take different types of engagements into account and assign them a score. When combined, this becomes your engagement score. You can view your engagement score in real-time, week-on-week, or across a chosen data range. This enables you to benchmark and measure your performance very effectively. 

Level of employee interaction

 VRAMP is a two-way communication platform. Rather than just pushing communications out, our customers can also ask for feedback. In addition to surveys, employees can also comment on articles and use the emojis to show what they think of each article. Each of these interactions are measured and the level of variation week on week is displayed on your Overview screen. 

Survey completion rate

 When you send a survey you want to monitor how many employees have responded. VRAMP shows you this as a percentage enabling you to monitor progress, identify any fluctuations and react quickly to any concerns.  

Skills gaps

 Within each employee profile your team will list all relevant skills. Not only does this help colleagues to collaborate, it also helps you keep track of any skills gaps. You can see this at both company and team level with clear sight of the skills that are most prevalent and those that aren’t. The latter enables you to identify risks and address any learning and development requirements.

Top driver

Within VRAMP a Driver is a noteworthy topic. This is set by you so it could range from environmental factors through to team socials. Whatever Drivers you set, you can see which are of most interest at any given time giving you a good understanding of the topics your employees are most interested in. 

Employee Net Promoter Score

 Your Employee Net Promotor Score (eNPS) is a one question survey that measures how your employees feel about working at your organisation. It can be automatically scheduled at set intervals to give you a continuous way of measuring employee engagement.

Every time an eNPS survey is carried out you will see the percentage of employees who have responded and your overall eNPS score. These are displayed over time so that you can quickly and easily see how engaged your employees are.  

For more information on Employee Net Promoter Score check out our guide.

Your most engaged employees

 Engaged employees are very valuable. They can become very effective advocates who help to spread your positive message across the organisation. VRAMP shows you your most engaged employees so that you can engage them and expand your reach with other employees. 

What can be achieved with VRAMP analytics

 VRAMP will open the door for you to reach a new level of insight and engagement. Data is king and that is definitely the case with employee engagement. 

For starters, VRAMP enables our customers to communicate more transparently with employees. They can inform them why they are taking the approach they have and keep employees much more in the loop. This goes a long way to better engagement.

The level of insight also leads to more confident decisions on their own strategies but beyond that, our customers are able to make employee engagement a business KPI that is reported upon just like any traditional business KPI. They also use the data to build a business case for additional resource, tools or system.

See the difference VRAMP could make to you

 Book a demo to learn more about VRAMP and how you can implement it to better improve your internal comms and employee engagement.

Trevor Munday

Director

I’m quick thinking & make calculated decisions that help projects & clients move forward & not stall. Helping businesses deliver on their objectives through VRAMP’s internal communications system.

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Categories
Guides

Employee Engagement Guide

1st December, 2021.

Table of Contents

Guide to employee engagement

In this guide, we will take you on a journey. Starting with the purpose and value of employee engagement before moving on to some strategies to help you improve and measure employee engagement in your organisation.  

What is employee engagement

Employee engagement is the measure of an employee’s emotional connection and commitment towards an organisation.

But while employee engagement is a measure of how an employee feels, it is the organisation that influences that opinion. Engage for Success explain this succinctly; “Employee engagement is a workplace approach resulting in the right conditions for all member of an organisation to give of their best each day.”

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Why is employee engagement important?

Employee engagement is proven to benefit businesses in multiple ways. Here are a few stats that evidence how: 

These facts speak for themselves and there are many more statistics online that further demonstrate the value of employee engagement, should you need them.  

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How employee engagement differs from employee satisfaction

Employee engagement and employee satisfaction often get intertwined but, actually, the two describe something very different.

As the definition above highlights, an engaged employee is someone who is committed to helping their organisation achieve their goals. In contrast, employee satisfaction describes someone that is happy in their job. For example, Tom works an 8-hour shift at a factory. He feels he has adequate breaks, the equipment and knowledge necessary to do his job and a decent salary. His commute is minimal and he takes home no stress from his job. Tom is satisfied with his job and yet if you were to ask him what the company’s goals were he has no idea. He does not consider himself to be part of the journey, he just works a job that he is contented with.

Contributing factors that influence employee satisfaction include salary, benefits, recognition and work-life balance.

In contrast, contributing factors that influence employee engagement include career opportunities, leadership behaviours, internal communication and company culture.

While there is a clear distinction between employee engagement and employee satisfaction it is important to note that the two are equally important. While an engaged employee can withstand a period of job dissatisfaction, if they cannot foresee improvements in the future, this is not sustainable and the majority of employees will only become engaged employees if they are first satisfied in their job.

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs explains this perfectly. It is only when an employee moves up through the psychological needs and into self-fulfilment needs that they will be engaged. The needs at the bottom of the pyramid must be in place before they can progress.

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs
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What other factors influence employee engagement?

Employee engagement is a combination of a wide range of factors. Below are 15 areas that all influence employee engagement, each of which should be considered within your employee engagement strategy. However, it is important to note the weight in which each factor holds over employee engagement will depend very much on the individual because different personalities will react differently to what they are presented with. 

15 factors that contribute to an engaged workforce

  1. The vision of the organisation – do employees know it and can they relate to it?
  2. The product or service – is the very purpose of the company something the employees are proud of?
  3. Trust – do employees trust the leadership and does the leadership trust the employees? Is there an appropriate level of autonomy?
  4. Transparency – do employees have a good understanding of business performance? Do they feel leaders are honest?
  5. Career opportunities – are employees able to progress their careers?
  6. Learning – are there adequate opportunities to expand knowledge and understanding?
  7. Equipment and tools – do all employees have everything they need to do their job well?
  8. Culture – is there an inclusive culture with behaviours that are consistently demonstrated?
  9. Employee voice – is there sufficient opportunity for employees to have their say and share their opinion? Are those opinions listened to?
  10. Recognition and reward – are pay scales fair? Do employees get recognised for outstanding work?
  11. Work-life balance – is employee wellbeing considered and supported?
  12. Responsiveness – is the organisation effective at responding to incidents and major factors that influence the business?
  13. Internal communication – is there an effective internal comms function that keeps employees connected to the wider business and company goals?
  14. Use of talent – do your employees fully utilise their individual talents within their role?
  15. Manager/employee relations – are your managers effective? Do they have the respect of their team?

The impact of different personalities

While the 15 points above all need to be considered, how they are received will depend upon the personality and behaviours of your employees. Whilst you cannot psychoanalysis each of your employees it is worth considering the traits when you are planning your engagement strategy, particularly if you have a lot of employees sitting either side of the camp. 

Below is an example of some of the traits and behaviours you can expect to see within engaged and disengaged employees. 

It is worth noting, a lot of these behaviours can be changed. With the right strategy you can influence these, but you will need to consider different strategies should you have people at polar opposites. You could also consider recruiting those displaying engaged traits to help you win over the less engaged team members.

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Who is responsible for employee engagement?

In short, everyone! Employee engagement impacts your entire organisation and is affected by every single relationship within it. Every individual within the business, therefore, has a role to play.

The role of HR

HR should foster a culture of engagement – becoming a leading example of how others in the organisation need to behave and ensuring the relevant policies and guidance are in place to support this. The HR team will also need to support and develop managers and manage any day-to-day matters that influence employee engagement. 

The role of leadership

All eyes are on the leadership team so they need to ooze with all the positive traits and behaviours that will drive employee engagement forward. From setting the company vision, to communicating effectively, to interacting with employees with respect. Your leadership team should become your employee engagement advocates and inspire employees through their own actions and behaviours. 

The role of managers

Managers are the linchpins that bring the aspirations of the business to life for employees. They must create a working environment that is transparent and respectful. One that fosters strong working relationships and supports employees with the day-to-day working life and career aspiration. This grounded and supportive approach, combined with their own demonstration of the values will encourage employees to engage.  

The role of employees

It is important not to lose sight of the value an individual employee can have on your employee engagement strategy. One highly engaged employee can often have far more influence on their peers than a manager. So, make sure you listen to them too. Ask them for feedback on your strategy; give them an opportunity to contribute and bring innovative ideas to the table. Also, remember that for them to be engaged they need to be empowered to make their own decisions. Checking that this is the case on a regular basis will always be beneficial.

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10 steps to improve employee engagement

For you to improve employee engagement you must first understand your current situation. In fact, analysis plays the biggest part in improving employee engagement; hence the first 8 points in the 10-step guide covering your existing ways of working.  

1) Understand what your employee engagement levels are – if you have been measuring employee engagement gather together all the data to understand your current situation. If you haven’t, it will be worth running an employee survey to find this out. Without this information, you cannot measure the success of the actions you are going to take.

2) Listen – if you recognise a need to improve employee engagement your first port of call to improve it should be your employees. What do they think? What is important to them? This will not only give you the basics of a strategy but also help you to prioritise.

3) Review your recognition scheme – consider whether your recognition scheme is effective. Are all employees recognised equally? Is that recognition well received? Do people get recognised for effort or for the time they’ve worked? If the latter, it may be time to review it. Similarly, are employees incentivised or recognised? While incentivising works with certain personality types others respond far better to recognition. Ensure you have the right balance for the right teams.

4) Review your development and training policies – if your employees state a lack of opportunity as an issue it will be beneficial to take time to explore your training and development policy. Does it meet the needs of ALL employees? Is it promoted effectively?

5) Review your wellness policy – how effective are you at supporting the wellness of your employees? This relates to both physical and mental wellbeing. Your approach should cover both an individual’s wellness and their understanding and appreciation of their colleague’s wellness.

6) Review your communication methods – a lack of transparency can often be a route cause for employee dissatisfaction. But this comes in two forms. Firstly a genuine lack of transparency in which information considered to be important to the employees simply isn’t getting through. This is a quick fix, assuming all management team members are on board.

The second is trickier – this is where employees perceive the organisation to be obscure and ambiguous. A perception is far harder to change, particularly if it is an incorrect perception. To resolve this issue you will need to strip things back and unearth where the perception stems from. Inevitably it will be a cultural issue, but you won’t be able to fix it until you fully understand where it stems from. Focus groups, employee surveys and 1:1s will all be an effective way to drill into this. All will require time but depending on the depth of the challenge, this is likely to be time well spent.

7) Review your onboarding process – how successful are you in embedding your company culture with your new starters? This should be from the very first engagement they have with you at the job application stage all the way through to their onboarding process when they start their employment with you.

8) Review your cultural values and mission – are your company values demonstrated in the actions and behaviours of all your employees? Are your employees bought into your mission?

If employees aren’t connected with your mission there are three possible reasons:

1. They are unaware of it

2. They do not believe in it

3. There is something else within their workplace that holds them back

If your values aren’t being demonstrated there are typically just two reasons:

1. They are the wrong values for your organisation

2. Your wider company culture prevents these values from being displayed.

Your task will be to understand the reason and then dig deeper to find the root cause.

9) Put a plan together – improving employee engagement is a long-term commitment. While you are likely to have some short-term fixes, many of the improvements you make will take time. By putting together a roadmap of your plans and communicating this with your employees they will be able to see your commitment to improved employee engagement.

10) Measure employee engagement – there is no point in embarking on an employee engagement improvement programme if you do not have measures in place to monitor their success. The more you can measure the more confident you can be in the decisions you make. This is a vital step so we have detailed ways in which you can measure employee engagement in the section below. 

 
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How to measure employee engagement

The purpose of employee engagement is to improve the experience of your employees and the performance of your business. Measuring your progress is therefore critical. But despite this 48% of businesses do not measure the effectiveness of employee engagement. To avoid implementing employee engagement strategies that go unrecognised here are some effective ways to measure their success. 

1) Employee engagement – perhaps an obvious point but one that many organisations overlook. Often because it isn’t currently something they measure. But it is very easy to measure how engaged your employees are with the right tools and processes in place. 

First, you need to consider how frequently you are going to measure employee engagement: 

  • At a set period of time – select a set time of the year in which you survey employees and use the results as a measure. That may be part of a wider staff survey or specifically an employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS). The sole purpose of which is to measure employee engagement.
  • Continuously – some organisations prefer to have a real-time view of employee engagement. This is beneficial if you have a number of variables that could impact a one-off score, such as a seasonal peak in work pressure for example.

Another factor to consider is whether you want to measure employee engagement purely as an entire company or whether it would be useful to understand at a team level too. This is usually dictated by company size and/or your processes. Larger organisations typically benefit from greater insight at a team level purely because of their scale. But some organisations also choose to drill down deeper because they have the internal processes to be able to effectively respond to any dissatisfaction. By picking this up at the team level, these organisations can be very responsive and start resolving the challenges that cause the disengagement before it affects others in the organisation. 

Once you have decided the above you then need to decide how you are going to measure employee engagement.

If you have an employee engagement platform this will all be done for you. The software will automatically monitor interactions with your internal communications and, taking many different factors into consideration, give you real-time engagement scores.

If you don’t have employee engagement software, you can run an employee survey. Either of the following would be suitable. 

  • Employee surveys can include a section that asks people about their level of engagement. These questions should be consistent every time they are asked to give you accurate results.
  • eNPS surveys – an employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS) is an effective way of measuring employee engagement. With just one question you can quickly gauge engagement levels providing a solid benchmark to work from. 

Whichever method you choose from above, we recommend you use the results alongside some, or preferably all, of the following:

2) Staff turnover/employee retention – by keeping tabs on how many people are leaving your organisation you can get a good indication of the scale of disengagement. 

If you have them record historical figures because until you have these you have no benchmark to work from. 

3) Exit interviews – as employees leave you could get some valuable insight into why they felt disengaged. This will often provide a depth you can’t gain elsewhere so it is worth tuning into this data source. You may also want to consider adding some specific questions around engagement in the exit interview for more direct feedback.  

4) Absenteeism rates – a study by Gallup found that disengaged employees have a 37% higher absenteeism rate than their engaged counterparts. Monitoring your absentee rates will be a valuable addition to your statistics. It is also a great early indicator for disengagement which will always be helpful.

5) Productivity – evidence shows that disengaged employees are less productive. You are likely to already have ways of measuring productivity, whether through output statistics or 1:1s. By reviewing these historically at a team or company level, you will be able to identify trends. 

While engagement may be the cause of decreased productivity it is important to remember there could be many other causes too, such as process failings, silo working and inefficient tools or equipment. This statistic should therefore always be aligned with others to see if the trends marry with other findings. 

6) Profitability – a very high-level factor but as we know, engaged employees do result in greater profitability so it is worth measuring this connection. If nothing else, it can be used to help evidence the value of employee engagement.

7) Customer satisfaction – organisations with top quartile engagement scores average 12% higher customer advocacy. It is therefore valuable to keep tabs of customer satisfaction alongside employee engagement so that you can observe trends. As with profitability, this will also be a useful data point to evidence the success of employee engagement.

There is a reason that ‘measuring employee engagement’ is the biggest section in this guide. Measuring the performance of your employee engagement strategy is absolutely vital. Without it you cannot deliver communications your employees want to hear, you cannot identify ways to improve employee engagement and you cannot evidence the value your employee engagement efforts are having on the wider business.

 
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Conclusion

If you’ve reached the end of this blog well done, there was a lot to get through! What your dedication suggests is that you are clearly committed to either beginning, or improving, employee engagement within your organisation.

The information above should help you to build that strategy, but employee engagement is a big project. In a recent study, we found that half of those responsible for employee engagement spend less than a quarter of their working time on the function.

If you too are going to be stretched on time focus on doing less, but more effectively. Deploying a tactic and having the right measures in place to monitor its performance will offer you far more value than deploying many tactics with no ability to measure them.

An employee engagement platform would also be a big time saving. VRAMP customers can send internal communications and surveys quickly to whoever they are relevant for. Then they receive feedback from employees with data presented in easy-to-digest dashboards. It’s a one stop shop for all employee engagement requirements. Find out more about VRAMP here.

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daniel wright

Daniel Wright

Marketing Assistant

With a desire to grow personally and a wish to improve working lives through employee engagement, I am thrilled to be part of building an internal comms system that connects everyone.

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