Tracking employee engagement metrics can help you prevent absenteeism, build your brand, reduce employee turnover, and make more money.
It can also help you spot issues within your workforce which could turn into bigger problems if left unaddressed.
What employee engagement metrics do you need to track, though? Which are going to show you what areas need work, or how employees really feel? Let’s take a look.
Absenteeism
How often employees are out sick—and how long they’re out for—can be huge indicators of employee engagement.
Stress can weaken our immune systems, meaning we’re more susceptible to germs and infections.
Not to mention there’s the psychological toll of stress, which can cause long-term absences.
A controlling, closed-off, and judgmental company culture can make employees feel uncomfortable sharing that they’re stressed. When employees don’t mention their concerns to colleagues, it makes it harder to find solutions.
Negative company cultures that don’t support employees’ mental health reinforce stigmas and can make stress worse.
Of course, stress isn’t the only thing that can cause employees to repeatedly miss work. There are lots of reasons, and if an employee is frequently absent, it’s worth finding out why.
Companies often use formulas to track employee absences, but they offer a very black and white picture. You can’t compare the health of someone who’s chronically ill or disabled with someone who hasn’t had a cold in a decade.
Instead of relying on a formula, look for patterns. Are employees out after certain events? Or at a particular time of the year?
Patterns will help you identify issues. Investigating the story behind them will allow you to make more informed decisions and accommodations.
Net Promoter Score (NPS)
NPS measures how likely someone is to recommend your business to another person, on a scale of 1 to 10.
How an employee rates your business on this scale will tell you more than you might be comfortable with.
Especially when only scores of 9-10 count as promoters. Scores of 7 and 8 are neutral, and scores of 6 or below are detractors.
These scores can be a real indicator of whether employees are happy in their roles or not.
If your NPS goes down over time, it may be worth tracking backwards to see how things have changed. Investigating what measures were put into place before the score trended downward will help you turn the tide.
You can apply the Net Promoter Score approach to almost any element of your business, giving you a standardized way to compare across your employee engagement metrics.
Employee turnover rate
What’s the average time someone spends working for your company? Do they progress through the ranks, or do they leave when it’s time for a promotion? Or maybe there’s a trend of employees failing their probation period?
The longer someone stays, the happier they’re likely to be in their working environment.
Tracking turnover not just company-wide, but by department, role, etc. may expose issues you wouldn’t have otherwise discovered.
It could be that some departments have a faster churn rate than others, which can be a sign of a problem within that department instead of the company itself.
Productivity
Disengaged employees are 18% less productive. So, if your employees aren’t hitting their goals, it’s time to dig deeper.
Managers can’t fix poor productivity levels simply by shouting at employees to work harder. This will lead to more disengagement, and increased absenteeism.
Instead, it’s time to investigate why productivity has gone down. What’s missing? What are employees dissatisfied with?
You want to ensure employees can have an open and honest dialogue with you about what’s going on in their lives and how it’s affecting their work, whether it’s a personal or professional issue.
A wide range of things can affect someone’s productivity, and it can continue to deteriorate without the right support. Maybe they need some training, a change in their working environment, or a switch to a new department.
Sometimes all it takes is a short conversation to make employees feel heard. You never know until you ask.
Social media advocacy rates
You’ll never stop employees from using social media during the working day. How you encourage employees to use it, and what they say as a result, will tell you more about your business than you might think.
Employees are 20% more likely to stay at a socially engaged company. They’re also 27% more likely to feel positively about the company’s future.
And, the happier those employees are, the more likely they’ll be to share how they feel online.
You’ll never get 100% of employees onboard—it’s likely to be around a third—but it only takes a handful of advocates regularly posting to speed up the purchasing process, improve the quality of candidates you attract, and build your employees’ brands within the industry.
Employee advocacy only works if employees are willing to share their honest opinions, and if they’re encouraged to do so. If businesses tell employees to repeat what upper management says, it isn’t advocacy. It’s a loudspeaker designed to draw attention to the business instead of lifting employees up and encouraging them to help their network.
This loudspeaker puts employees off becoming advocates and misses the key part of social media: being social.
Conclusion
Employee engagement is about so much more than the stats in front of you. It’s about the stories behind those statistics, too.
You have to dig into the trends and issues behind the statistics to build a thriving and inclusive employee experience.
Engaged employees are a sign of a positive company culture. It’s hard for employees to be happy in their roles and want to stay if they feel dictated to, controlled, or otherwise disconnected from what they’re doing.
While putting numbers to things with employee engagement metrics makes life simpler on paper, what employees say about your company both on and off the clock matters, too.
An engaged employee will recommend your company to both customers and future hires. They’ll be happy to spread the word about your business online and offline, attracting more of the right kinds of people and improving time to hire, reducing how long someone takes to make a purchase, and much more.
If you’re looking to supercharge your employee experience and ensure your employee engagement metrics are always just a click away, check out Workrowd. Our automated data collection and customizable dashboards make it easy to see which employee programs and events are driving engagement, and which could use some tweaking. Drop us a note at hello@workrowd.com to learn more.
