10 Crucial Employee Engagement Metrics For Successful Surveys

The corporate world has come a long way in the past two decades, from being more consumer-centric to paying equal attention to its employees. The primary reason for this shift was the realization of how the workforce played a vital role in the organization's growth. One of the significant outcomes of this was the introduction of employee engagement.

Employee engagement, in a nutshell, is the emotional bond that employees develop towards their organization based on the level of job satisfaction which again depends on several other factors. And it is a continuous process that varies with the experiences of the employees and their varying needs with time.

As such, organizations worldwide are now trying to bridge the gap between themselves and their employees by considering the various employee engagement metrics.

These are the metrics that help you understand how your employees feel and the things they seek from you to stay motivated at work.

Measuring Employee Engagement and its Relation with Engagement Metrics

The level of employee engagement is mainly measured through eNPS or Employee Net Promoter Score. It works because if employees like their organization, they'll promote it, and if the score is low, you need to reassess your efforts.

As research shows, accurately measuring this engagement score depends on the parameters that you take into consideration while pulling up an employee survey.

Learn How Vantage Pulse Can Help You Run Effective Employee Engagement Surveys

This is where employers often get confused about the things they should ask their employees. Hence, in this article, I’ll help you learn more about the important metrics that you must cover next time you run an employee pulse survey.

Let’s start!

The 10 Employee Engagement Metrics That You Need to Include in your Surveys

1. Recognition

The only thing that employees crave for more than a handsome paycheck is getting recognized for their work.

It is the process where you acknowledge your employees whenever they do something great. It makes them realize their worth and how their work is impacting the overall success of the organization. Recognizing employees rejuvenates their motivation level, pushing them to do even better next time they have a task at hand. And according to a study by Gallup, you must acknowledge your employees at least once a week, if not daily.

Workplace recognition is a very important metric as it is one of the crucial elements for ensuring an engaged and productive workforce. Amidst the hectic schedule, managers often miss out on praising their employees at work. If the same continues for a long time, it brings down employees' willingness to cover the extra mile.

Hence, you must focus on asking your employees if they're getting acknowledged for their work. If your employees' response comes out positive, then congrats, you're one step closer to achieving highly engaged employees.

Learn more: 7 Effects of Employee Recognition on Business

Sample Questions:

• Is recognition given out on time?

• If they genuinely believe that they'll get recognized whenever they present great work?

2. Workplace Relationship

Employee engagement also depends on the type of workplace relationship that employees share with their peers and management. When working in an organization, employees need to collaborate and constantly sync with the management. And organizations can only achieve this if everyone shares a healthy professional relationship.

Here, for measuring the peer relationships you can ask your employees if their colleagues praise them. Moreover, you can ascertain their relationship with management at multiple points if you look rightly.

Sample Questions:

• Do you feel your organization encourages employees to recognize each other?

• On a scale of 1 to 5, how much comfortable you feel when approaching the management?

3. Professional Development

Learning and development will always be the top priority of employees no matter what their job profile is or which organization they join. Every employee aspires to learn from their job, make connections, and apply the knowledge which they obtained from their experiences to do any task at hand.

L&D comes under performance management where managers need to ensure that every employee is getting equal opportunities to showcase their talents. The absence of adequate opportunities would result in employee turnover which must be avoided at all costs.

It is also an important part of the overall employee experience in your organization that comes in handy for attracting the best talents onboard.

Suppose your employees feel that they are getting enough opportunities for growth in all aspects. In that case, they'll surely turn into strong promoters of your organization.

Sample Questions:

• Are you satisfied with the opportunities you’re getting for applying your talents and expertise?

• Do you think you have grown both morally and professionally working with us?

4. Work-life balance

In today’s business world, work-life balance is slowly becoming a myth. Employees can perform the best only when they can give interrupted focus on their work. Nowadays, both the personal and professional lives of an individual are separated by a very thin line. And there could be several reasons, most of which are often related to their work which may disrupt this thin barrier. As a result, the employees cannot either attend to their personal commitments or properly engage in their jobs.

So, it would help if you keep it in check by making it one of your employee engagement metrics.

Sample Questions:

• On a scale of 1 to 5, how much would you rate your work-life balance?

• Do you think your organization gives enough opportunities to enjoy a healthy work-life balance?

5. Wellbeing at work

Employee wellbeing has become a buzzword in the corporate world due to its effectiveness in ensuring a healthy and productive workforce. Every organization now wants to include some corporate wellness programs as a part of their work culture. However, the number of organizations coming forward to implement such programs is still low, and that's a matter of concern. With the growing workload and sedentary lifestyle that has become a part of the present-day work environment, employees are exposed to some health ailments.

Download our Comprehensive Guide on Corporate Wellness Programs for Free

Therefore, if your organization already has a workplace wellness plan in action, then ask your employees if they feel uplifted from their earlier status. However, if you don't have any such programs, it would be a great chance to know if your employees would like to participate.

Sample Questions:

• Are you able to take proper care of your health with our wellness program?

• Would you participate in health activities if our organization introduces an employee health and wellness program?

6. Autonomy

Sometimes above all, the only thing that your employees seek is having autonomy over their work. When your employees have complete control over their work without constantly nagging about its progress, they could give their high performance. The science behind this is simple once they start controlling their own work, they become fully responsible for it. In that case, they cannot afford to make any mistakes or miss their deadlines, leaving a bad impression about their skills.

So to ensure that your employees have enough freedom to do their work correctly, you should consider this metric in your employee engagement surveys.

Sample Questions:

• Do you think you’re given enough freedom to decide how to do your work?

• Do you feel you could perform better if you go solo in your task?

7. Perks and Benefits

Keeping employees happy and motivated at the same time is a tough job. However, the best way to ensure the same is by providing them various perks and benefits. These perks and benefits like corporate discounts, subsidized insurance plans, etc., help employees greatly in saving their hard-earned money. It also keeps them connected to their organization if they feel they are taken great care of by their employers.

However, with changing times, you must also update your perks and benefits package for employees.

But, do count your employees' opinions before including or changing anything in the existing perks or benefits.

Thus, forming another employee engagement metric that you should look into properly if you want to find out how much your employees love their organization.

Sample Questions:

• Are you satisfied with your overall benefits package?

• Do you think you’re able to save your money with the perks and benefits provided by us?

8. Work Culture

An organization is defined by its work culture. Having an inclusive work environment within the organization helps in attracting and retaining the best talents. Even the level of employee engagement is impacted by the work culture.

If your organization has a very healthy culture where everyone is respected equally, issues are taken care of with utmost priority, maintain transparency, and ease of communication, then hardly any employee would ever like to leave your organization. But no matter what, things do change. Even if you don’t notice it, your employees will, and so you must try to know if there’s anything wrong so you can act on it to keep things smooth.

Sample Questions:

• Do you feel safe and comfortable around the workplace?

• Are you able to engage socially with everyone around the workplace?

9. Alignment

Alignment here means how much the employees can relate their organizational goals with their own ambitions. When these both connect at a mutual point, the employees will start working as an integral part of the organization. This way they will develop an intrinsic motivation to go the extra mile when it comes to accomplishing goals on behalf of the organization.

Once the employees connect with their organization's long-term vision, there's no looking back. It is them only who'll start taking charge and push their organization forward.

Ensuring that your employees align with the organizational goals includes this and an essential part of your employee engagement metrics.

Sample Questions:

• Do you think the organizational values align with your own value, which you consider important in your life?

• Would you stand up if you realize that your organization is not heading in the right direction?

10. Compensation

Last but surely not the least. The reason I have kept compensation, at last, is because employees now want more than just a big fat paycheck when it comes to their job. And all the metrics I have mentioned above fall in that category. However, everyone works for the money, and employees expect nice compensation in return for their efforts in the workplace. Suppose employees are not paid enough following their job role or skills. In that case, they won't mind shifting to another organization. So, as an employer, you also need to count in compensation as one of your employee engagement metrics to improve employee attrition.

Sample Questions:

• Do you think that taking into account your responsibilities, skills, and local market conditions, you’re satisfied with your overall compensation?

• Are you confident that the process for calculating pay in our organization is fair and unbiased?

These are a few of the employee engagement metrics that are crucial for knowing if your employees feel engaged at work. Most of the modern employee survey tools like Vantage Pulse hits all the metrics listed above to produce a highly reliable data-backed result.

If you want to know more about how we can help you keep your employees engaged and happy, then get in touch with us for a free consultation.

Working as a SEO Analyst and Content Marketer at Vantage Circle, Angshuman always stays curious and is passionate about learning new things. Got any question? Drop a mail at editor@vantagecircle.com