Let’s remind ourselves of the fundamental definition of employee engagement: The willing participation of employees in their work. It is acknowledged that an individual who willingly performs their job is also committed to the organisation they work for, their manager and the team they are part of. Nevertheless, these factors can occasionally impact the outcomes of engagement assessments. They may demonstrate dedication to their job, yet struggle with leadership. Although committed to the organisation, they may not have fully embraced their team and their role within it.
Furthermore, external events can affect their attitudes and perspectives.
Hence, the question arises: How often should we evaluate internal engagement levels?
Why do we measure?
Before we discuss the timeframe for measuring engagement, let’s consider why we measure engagement. We know that employee engagement has many effects: Increased productivity, sales, customer satisfaction, performance, morale… Reduced turnover, accident rates, absenteeism, delays and conflicts…
HR managers should constantly monitor these criteria with the same detail and sensitivity as sales managers monitor sales figures.
One of the reasons why HR managers have been part of the decision-making mechanisms of companies for the last 10 years is the “New HR” approach, which is based on data analysis and numbers.
- The way to create employee engagement for HR is through measurement. You cannot take the right actions for unmeasured and assumed results.
- In order to plan strategic changes that will develop/improve the company culture, you need to know how engaged your employees are.
- At the same time, measuring engagement shows employees how much you value their insights and increases trust within the organisation. (In a way, you can start to increase employee engagement by measuring it😉)
- Depending on the capabilities of your measurement tool, you also have the opportunity to drill down into the factors that influence your employees’ engagement scores (fairness, trust, communication, leadership, etc.).
- As we have seen in the recent Gallup report, even companies with high engagement rates can experience critical issues such as increased stress and burnout. It is important for people managers to be vigilant.
The time of flexibility in the measurement period
Flexibility has become a power factor in the business world. What makes flexibility so important is that it is in the DNA of the new generation of workers. Deloitte’s “2023 Generation Y and Z Survey” proves once again that the new generation is building their careers with flexibility in mind. They want to work in a hybrid way, even up to 4 days a week.
Given this trend towards flexibility, to what extent does measuring employee engagement once a year (or even once every two years) meet the need?
According to our experts, who have also evaluated the feedback we have received from Moodivation users, measuring employee engagement on a quarterly basis provides a healthy monitoring opportunity. A quarterly assessment will also help you keep your finger on the pulse of your employees, respond to their concerns and suggestions, and develop a culture of continuous feedback and improvement.
As the Moodivation team, we recommend that you consider the following points when measuring engagement:
- You can check the momentum by conducting a pulse survey after major changes in the organisation.
- There are concerns that quarterly surveys cause survey fatigue. You can avoid this fatigue with a measurement platform (such as Moodivation) that provides short, concise information, is easy to use and gives clear cause and effect messages.
- You can experience the interim survey format we have created for companies that do not prefer to conduct a comprehensive employee engagement survey every 3 months.
Above all, remember that every question we ask employees and every answer we get should have a route. If you conduct an engagement survey once a year, but use technology that makes it easy to get continuous employee feedback, the data will guide you. Organisations that follow data can set their own pace. If you plan actions based on the responses you receive from all the pulse surveys throughout the year, and share this information in a sensible way through internal communications, there will be no survey fatigue. On the contrary, it creates a participative atmosphere.
It is essential for employees to be listened to, to be consulted and to see their ideas and suggestions being taken into account. In the same way that they willingly participate in work, they will willingly participate in all your measurements. And without getting tired 🙂