Gauging employee engagement levels is serious business.
Why? Well, depending on how engaged your employees are, your business could be thriving or…not so thriving.
Companies that have engaged staff can be up to 21% more successful in profits, according to recent research.
So, what is employee engagement? Employees that want to work and put effort into their duties. AKA, they’re excited about coming into (or logging on to) work!
This is where using employee surveys to measure key performance indicators (KPIs) can come in handy.
KPIs for employee engagement are the factors that are measured in market research methods like an employee survey. They’re a way to clearly see what’s standing out in the research, allowing leadership to pinpoint areas to focus on.
Keep on reading to see our list of important KPIs that can be measured in your next employee satisfaction survey. Or, watch our video for a quick recap.
KPI #1. Employee Net Promoter Score
An employee net promoter score (eNPS), put simply, gauges just how likely your staff will likely be at your company.
A 0 to 10 scale is used to calculate an eNPS.
The high end of the scale represents your promoters (those who love working at your company) with the low end representing the detractors (those who flat-out hate working at your company). In the middle, we have our passives.
Detractors are then subtracted from promoters to arrive at the eNPS.
A great way to detect company loyalty, finding your eNPS can give you important insight into how your staff can affect your business. Running an employee engagement survey is a great way to calculate this metric.
💡 The Key Takeaway: Your eNPS is an important KPI to consider when running a staff engagement survey. Through this metric, you can gauge how many employees are likely to trash you or promote you.
Image source: Mesh
KPI #2. Importance Rank
A lot of companies can fall short in this area.
Sure, there may be things about your company that employees like. But what’s on the other side of that coin? Enter importance rank.
Weighing the importance of various practices is a useful KPI for employee performance because it measures the “why.” You’ll be able to see what some may value more than others.
If you don't know how important something is to employees, you can't really prioritize anything.
Part of this KPI for employee engagement is that you can tie it back to satisfaction scores, essentially creating a little matrix.
This matrix will not only tell you what’s important to staff, but what needs to be fixed immediately to retain and attract employees.
Conversely, you can understand your differentiators as a business. When you see what your employees rank as important and something that you’re offering, this is a huge opportunity.
Lastly, our employee survey company recommends working these differentiators into your recruitment materials and into your website to attract potential hires.
💡 The Key Takeaway: Importance rankings are an often overlooked KPI that can be gathered from an employee engagement survey. However, they play an integral role in discovering ways to promote your business.
KPI #3. Benchmarking
Here’s one statement to sum up this section: benchmarking is always important in all research. Don’t worry, we’ll tell you why.
Benchmarking allows for comparisons to be made within market research.
The best comparison can be made when it’s built right into a survey. How does an employee’s company compare to others that they’ve worked for in the past? Is it on par? Is it better? Is it worse?
This type of questioning can yield deeply insightful data and is an essential KPI for employee engagement. With it, you know where your employees’ satisfaction sits against others.
💡 The Key Takeaway: Benchmarking provides context to data gathered in staff surveys. By having data to make comparisons against, you can easily see where your company stands.
Recommended Reading: 4 Types of Market Research Benchmarks
KPI #4. Words and Phrases
A more subjective, qualitative (small-scale) KPI, how your employees describe your company is also very telling.
For instance, when you think of your employer what's the first word or phrase that comes to mind? Market researchers get a lot of sentiment from that, whether it's positive, negative, or neutral, words/phrases tell you a little bit about what your company stands for.
When you’re answering that question, is your response good, bad, or somewhere in between? Think about how your own employees might answer that question, too.
While a fairly simple KPI, it’s certainly not one to overlook.
💡 The Key Takeaway: The words/phrases that employees come up with when asked about their company is an extremely telling KPI.
Can Company Culture Be Measured With KPIs?
Recently, it was shown that engaged employees can have performance boosted by 202%.
Of course, a solid company culture leads to employee engagement. But is there a specific KPI with which it can be measured?
The short answer: Not exactly.
That being said, all of these KPIs for employee engagement touch on culture. Corporate culture is a tricky one to cover in employee surveys because it can encompass so many things. If you were to ask 5 people to define what culture means to them, they're going to define it differently.
In our article Fighting the Great Resignation with Employee Surveys, we discuss some of the main factors that go into understanding a company’s culture. These factors can also be considered KPIs.
So, yes–in a way, the KPIs we covered in this post will give you insight into your company’s culture. It’s how you interpret the data that truly matters.
💡 The Key Takeaway: Company culture is made up of many different factors, and means different things to different employees. By measuring the right KPIs, you’ll be able to detect how employees feel about your company’s overall culture.
Contact Our Employee Engagement Market Research Company
For leadership wondering how to improve employee engagement, understanding KPIs and how they interact in employee engagement surveys is critical.
We offer full-service employee surveys or a turn-key solution to measuring employee engagement KPIs.
Drive Research is a market research company based in New York. Our team of research pros boasts the expertise and tools to craft a high-quality employee survey for your company.
Want to know more about our market research services? Talk to us through any of the ways below.
- Message us on our website
- Email us at [email protected]
- Call us at 888-725-DATA
- Text us at 315-303-2040
George Kuhn
George is the Owner & President of Drive Research. He has consulted for hundreds of regional, national, and global organizations over the past 15 years. He is a CX certified VoC professional with a focus on innovation and new product management.
Learn more about George, here.
