Simply put, employee engagement is the commitment that employees have towards their job, company, and its goals. Engaged employees accept the company like theirs and put forth their best efforts to make sure the business grows. Plenty of studies have proved that engaged employees are more productive and help with better business growth. Studies also show that companies with higher employee engagement outperform their competitors who have relatively lesser engaged employees.
While implementing employee wellness programs has been a proven strategy to boost engagement, there is a lot more to ensure it is all on the right track.
Why is Employee Engagement Important For Workplace Wellness?
When workplace engagement is successful, it can massively help in better employee productivity, organizational growth, and workplace wellness. The most common benefits of having an engaged workplace are –
- Higher customer or client satisfaction
- Enhanced employee productivity
- Lower turnover rates
- Reduced absenteeism
- Better workplace culture
- Better employee health and wellness
- Lesser healthcare costs
- Boosted business outcomes
How To Measure Your Workplace Engagement?
As it is evident that employee engagement is beneficial to the workplace, many employers are now putting in efforts to implement the right employee engagement strategies. In our previous blog, we learned the employee engagement strategies to boost workplace engagement. But how do you know if the strategies worked out? How do you measure employee engagement?
Employee engagement is a broad term and a non-quantifiable parameter. And so, to measure it, many methods and aspects must be considered and analyzed. While surveys are methods to understand the loopholes and concerns at the workplace, the other metrics are usually assessed to understand the level and impact of employee engagement.
Employee Surveys – Employee surveys are one of the best tools that can help in measuring employee engagement metrics quite accurately. A well-designed employee survey is one that gives adequate data about the workplace culture, workforce interests, and other important aspects that need to be focused on for better workplace wellness. The survey questions must focus on various aspects of workplace culture, employee health and wellbeing, skill development, leadership management, and other factors relevant to the everyday workplace environment. Employee surveys can be of two different types –
- Engagement Surveys – Employee engagement surveys are usually conducted once, annually. They focus on parameters that give an in-depth engagement insight. While it is usually done once a year, many companies choose to conduct it more than just once a year.
- Pulse Surveys – Employee pulse surveys are conducted more frequently to check in on the employee’s needs and other individual topics.
Employee Turnover Rates – When employees are unhappy at the workplace, they focus less on their job. This automatically reduces employee productivity and becomes a trigger for them to leave the company for a better organization that may offer a more interesting job and has a much more positive workplace culture. Analyzing workplace turnover rates can give enough insight into the concerns and points in question causing employee dissatisfaction.
Absenteeism and Presenteeism Rates – Typically, employee absenteeism and presenteeism rates are closely associated with employee turnover rates. Engaged employees are happy to turn up to their workplace and complete their tasks on time. They also put in extra effort to boost their organizational productivity. A higher absenteeism rate at the organization can easily imply a lack of employee engagement. Once identified, employers can implement suitable employee engagement strategies to establish workplace engagement.
Employee Recommendation Score – Word-of-mouth marketing is an effective marketing strategy in the corporate market. When an employee is happy and satisfied with their company, they are bound to recommend it to their friends and family. Employee recommendation score can be an effective metric to understand the engagement and contentment levels of the workforce at the organization. Employers can conduct pulse surveys asking employees if they would promote and recommend the company to others. On a scale of 0 – 10, if the net score is more than 7, it can imply that employees are well-engaged and would recommend the company to their friends and family. If the net promoter score is 6 or less, it may indicate that the employees are dissatisfied with the company and are not ready to recommend it to others. This lack of employee engagement must be taken into account and identify the deeper causative reasons to draft actionable plans.
Employing the best-suited employee engagement strategies like corporate wellness programs is vital to ensure successful workplace engagement.
When employees focus on the positive dimensions of workplace engagement, it helps in channeling their interest, effort, and energy in the right direction, while making space for a work-life balance. Likewise, employers must know what employees expect for better engagement and emphasize providing the right employee engagement strategies like corporate wellness programs, to ensure a better culture of health, enhanced workplace communication, higher employee productivity, job satisfaction, and overall workplace wellness.