We’ve all heard about the importance of employee engagement, and focusing on building good relationships with your employees is one of the hottest management trends. Happy employees are more productive and loyal, and showing them that you care is critical to building a strong company culture.
Determining how to actually improve your employee engagement, on the other hand, is anything but simple. Even with performance management software, and other tools, it can still be difficult to gauge your employee’s engagement levels.
The following are some of the most important KPIs to monitor as you attempt to build an employee engagement strategy and figure out what matters most to your workers.
- Absenteeism: Every business expects its employees to take a certain number of days off every year, but pervasive absenteeism can pose a major threat to your company’s morale, finances, and more. Workers who don’t want to be in the office are a clear sign that something is wrong.
- Glassdoor: Glassdoor provides a platform for employees to review the companies they work for, including a star rating system which indicates the consensus view of your business. Your Glassdoor score can have a significant effect on recruiting, and employee feedback can help you identify room for improvement.
- Retention: Attracting and hiring the top talent in your industry is a major competitive advantage, but it can easily be canceled out by a high rate of turnover. Many businesses underestimate the impact turnover can have—in fact, replacing a salaried employee typically costs a company six to nine months’ pay.
- Productivity: It can be difficult to determine the root cause of a drop in productivity, but employee engagement is often one of the most important factors in work performance. Low sales or production can be the most obvious sign that your current engagement strategies aren’t working as effectively as you may have hoped.
- Net Promoter Score: The Net Promoter Score measures your employees’ perception of your business by asking them how likely they would be to recommend a position in your company to someone they know. This is a direct way of measuring employee engagement and the perfect place to start as you begin updating your practices.
- Vacation days: While excessive absenteeism can be a serious issue, overworking your workers is often just as problematic for employee engagement. If your employees aren’t using their allocated time off, this may indicate that they’re being overworked or don’t feel comfortable taking a vacation given the company culture.
- New hire failure rate: The short-term failure of new employees is one of the most costly forms of turnover, especially for workers who leave their role within their first ninety days. Having employees quit in less than three months is a major red flag, either for employee engagement or your hiring practices–or both.
- Employee workload: Different businesses monitor how much their workers are taking on in different ways, but it’s crucial to truly understand the pressures your employees face. You’ll need to schedule regular team and one-on-one meetings in order to build open lines of communication and discuss your employees’ needs.
- Customer satisfaction: Just as your employee Net Promoter Score can indicate how workers view your business, asking the same question to your customers will help you learn more about their interactions with your company. If your customers aren’t engaged with your brand, the same is probably true of your employees.
Employee engagement, while trending in the world of HR, is not to be taken lightly. Understanding exactly how your employees view your company can have a direct correlation to how productive, loyal, and enthusiastic they are about coming to work each day. Having the right employee strategy in place can produce better business results across the board.
Engagement can be hard to track and even more difficult to improve, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t effective ways to build better employee relationships. These are a few of the best KPIs to keep your eye on as you strive to adjust your company culture and maximize employee engagement.