5 Actions To Discover Your Employee Engagement

Reading this article will tell you exactly what actions you need to take to discover what your teams engagement level is. I have included a case study to highlight the information that is available to you if your take these critical actions.

1. Why It Is Important To Have A Highly Engaged Team?

If we consider ’employee engagement’ as a direct correlation to the level of ‘customer engagement’, I wonder how many business leaders have considered the impact of this to their business, in both a positive and negative sense.

I would like to think that most leaders would agree that their employees are their most important asset and have a direct impact on their customers level of engagement but in reality the truth is that most business leaders I ask this question to, truly do not know how engaged their employees are.

If your employees are not highly engaged how can they be adding value to your customers or your business?

And what is the cost of this to your business?

Do you know what your team is saying about you and your business to their friends and colleagues?

Would your team recommend your business as a place to work, to their friends and colleagues?

If yes, do you know WHY? If not, do you know WHY NOT?

I am not asking you to guess or make an assumption. I am asking ‘hand on heart’ do you know the answer to these questions?

And, if you think you do, do you use a proven methodology that is statistically valid to understand the true voice of your employees and the level of satisfaction and engagement? The Net Promoter Score (NPS™) is a globally proven method for measuring word of mouth, and is our preferred method.

And if you do use a proven methodology, do you know if your employees feel free to tell the truth when participating in this research?

You have got to ‘get the truth’ their experience and their level of engagement.

For example, a Gallup report finds Australian employees stressed and disengaged.

What drives their level of engagement and what does not. The truth is most of us don’t know what our team is saying about us to others. And we do not understand the impact of not knowing this on revenue.

2. Types Of Employees Based On Levels Of Engagement

For most part, our focus is on the importance on customer loyalty research programs, engagement and delivering 10/10 or outstanding customer experiences to maintain and grow customer loyalty. We forget that our team and the level to which they are satisfied and engaged is equally important.

According to Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace report, conducted by Forbes only 15% of employees worldwide are engaged in their jobs – meaning that they are emotionally invested in committing their time, talent and energy in adding value to their team and advancing the organisation’s initiatives.

And they provided a breakdown of the 3 types of employees

Engaged These employees are loyal and emotionally committed to the organisation. They are in roles where they excel and where their talents are truly leveraged. They enthusiastically invest in their work and take on responsibilities outside of their job description. They are generally more likely to become emerging leaders and will stay with an organisation much longer then disengaged employees.

Not Engaged These employees can be difficult to identify because they are often relatively happy and satisfied in their role. However, they do the bare minimum and are not invested in the company’s mission, vision, values, or goals. They are less likely to be customer-focused and are not concerned about productivity or company profitability. These team members are both a threat and great opportunity, because with the proper approach, they can be transformed into engaged employees that thrive in the organisation.

Actively Disengaged We have all worked alongside these people. They are consistently negative, create a toxic environment, dominate their manager’s time and are usually vocal about their unhappiness. What’s worse, is they are often subject matter experts well-respected in their unique skillset. And because of that, they often have significant influence over others. These employees can easily spread toxicity throughout an organisation and can rarely be transformed into true “A” players.

If our team is not highly satisfied and engaged, our customers are not going to be highly engaged either; there is a direct correlation between customer engagement and team engagement.

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To Implement Your Employee Engagement Research Program, Take These Actions

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3. Talk To Your Employees, Do Your Research

Employee research provides you with the opportunity to understand your what drives your teams experience and their level of engagement.

You have got to ‘get the truth’. You have got to know the impact of not knowing is on your revenue.

And, you have got to know the answers to these questions.

Do you know what your team is saying about you and your business to their friends and colleagues?

Would your team recommend your business as a place to work, to their friends and colleagues?

If yes, do you know WHY? If no, do you know WHY NOT?

What drives a high level of employee engagement for your team?

And what does not?

Ideally your employee engagement research should be conducted by a third party. A third party calling to interview your employees on your behalf holds a neutral position; there is no attachment to the feedback that is provided during the conversation.

The level of detail collected and the analysis of your employee’s feedback is critical. It’s not always what your team say that can be improved, it is also what they are not saying.

It’s the quality of the conversations with your team that makes the real difference.

Telephone or face to face research provides the opportunity to converse, to probe and to clarify responses.

If you want to make a difference to your employee’s experience. You need to understand and focus on the areas that have the biggest impact.

4. Allow Your Employees To Talk, Hand Over To A Third Party To Ensure Confidentiality

To get the truth you must be able to guarantee confidentiality.

You must provide your employees with:

• A private space to speak freely
• An understanding that there is no way of knowing which employee said what.

We know that employees rarely tell the truth if these two very important steps have not been taken.

Confidentiality provides the space for employees to speak freely, without fear of repercussion for speaking their truth.

Again, this highlights the importance of handing over your employee engagement research program to a third party, otherwise there is no point.

Even setting up and implementing online employee surveys as a company still does not provide confidentiality. You cannot guarantee your team that someone in the company will not be able to identify who said what.

One of the biggest problems for your employees is how do you guarantee their confidentiality.

Allowing your employees to talk, getting the truth vs what you hope your employees might say includes scripting your questions so that responses are unprompted; unprompted responses are the most valid.

When creating your ‘survey script’ try not to use dropdown response options. Ensure you use open-ended questions that prompt verbatim responses.

Avoid giving multiple choice or put ideas in the heads of the employees.

Use the Net Promoter Score (NPS™), examples of questions, like:

How likely is it that you would recommend (business name) to a friend or colleague, as a place to work? With 10 being you would definitely recommend and 0 being you definitely would not recommend it? What number would best match how you feel?

For 9 & 10 Scores: What is the main reason for the score you gave them?

For Scores 8 and below: What is the most important improvement that would make you rate them closer to 10 in the future?

The objective when speaking with your employees is to understand what is ‘top of mind’ for each employee you are speaking with. What they think, what they have experienced and what they are saying, not what you think or assume.

Simply let them talk confidentially! Let them tell you what is important to them.

A third party interviewing your employees on your behalf either on the telephone or face to face holds a neutral position and most importantly ensures confidentiality can be guaranteed.

Confidentiality must be guaranteed:

• Whilst the interview is being conducted
• When analysing the data
• In the way the results are presented back to you, your management team, and all other employees

Which leads to the next action.

5. Get Professional Analytics Done And Maintain Confidentiality

Now you have got this great data it is not about reading and reacting to individual comments. It’s about the patterns that good analysts can identify.

If you want a highly engaged team and more customers recommending you to their friends and colleagues, then you need to know what drives your team’s engagement.

Not only is it very difficult to do the analytics yourself, if you don’t know how to do ‘good analytics. It is important to honour your agreement to your employee’s confidentiality.

Understanding best practice drivers and improvement drivers? For example, takes time and a particular skill set.

The need to read every employee response is critical.

Text mining tools don’t drill down to the level required to fully understand the voice of your team. Or the behaviours that drive employee engagement.

They cannot capture what you do that has an employee describe you as a great leader, or a business that provides its employees with a great culture to work within.

It is only by reading each response that you can clearly see the examples mentioned.

We have provided a case study below that demonstrates good analytics, the wealth of information captured and it is broken down into easy to understand and workable information that enables us to take the next steps.

Case Study – What Drives Employee Engagement

These are the areas that we have discovered through our research that drive employee engagement.

• It’s the culture of the company
• It’s the satisfaction of my job
• It’s the impact of leadership
• It’s the way I am communicated to
• It’s how I get on with others and teamwork
• It’s the resources/facilities I have available
• It’s the training I receive

What Are The Most Important Things You Can Avoid

• It’s the culture of the company
• It’s the impact of leadership
• It’s the satisfaction of my job
• It’s the way I am communicated to
• It’s how I get on with others and teamwork
• It’s the resources/facilities I have available
• It’s the training I receive

Note that what drives engagement and what does not are exactly the same. See below table containing more details.

What we find is best practice is equally and normally the most important improvement drivers as well. Which shows real evidence of how important these areas are to employees, get them right they will love you, get them wrong they are unhappy.

So, when your team is not satisfied and engaged the common conversations are around; people being stuck in their ways, morale is low, people are insecure about their jobs, performance is not measured, no feedback is provided, not much unity, and too much pressure causing employees stress.

This may not be completely true for you and your team, but satisfaction, leadership, always inviting team and individuals to share ideas, are the drivers that have your team experience satisfaction in their role and therefore a high level of engagement.

My next article 6 Actions To Improve Your Teams Engagement is where I will take you through the next actions to ensure an improvement in your teams engagement.