Measuring & Maintaining
Employee Engagement

The measurement challenge
• What are we actually measuring?
• This is why our definition is so important!
“you sort of smell it don‟t you? What goes on in meetings, how
people talk to each other. You get their sense of energy,
engagement, commitment, belief in what the organisation stands
for…” Lord Currie, Dean of Cass Business School
“you know if when you see it” David MacLeod

The Survey
• Useful as a foundation for insights for action
• Health warning – it is only a small part of the jigsaw!
• There are a whole range of different survey tools out
there, exactly what aspect of engagement these tools analyse
will vary:
1. Level of engagement as a scale or percentage – allows
benchmarking
2. Identification of key drivers of engagement via regression
analysis
3. Pre-conditions of engagement
4. Outcomes of engagement
5. Attitudes

What do the different surveys out there look
at?
– Towers Perrin: „Extent to which employees put
discretionary effort into their work‟
– Gallup: „Involvement with & enthusiasm for work‟
– Hewitt: „Intellectually & emotional commitment to
the organization‟
– Sibson: Knowing what to do at work and wanting to
do at work
– Hay Group: „stimulating employees‟ enthusiasm for
their work and directing it toward organizational
success‟

The Survey Health Warning
survey black holeaction plan
Time for a new
approach?

Time for a new approach – but what does
this look like?
What can we learn from
positive psychology?
Champions
Leaders
Employees

The Big Picture

The Big Picture - Sustainability
• Since 1970, the UK's GDP has doubled, but peoples‟
satisfaction with life has hardly changed.
• 81% of Britons believe that the Government should prioritize
creating the greatest happiness, not the greatest wealth.
• "Gross National Product measures everything, except that
which makes life worthwhile." - Robert F. Kennedy
• Rises in GDP over the last thirty-five years have not resulted
in increased human well-being.

National Accounts of Wellbeing - NEF
• A new way of assessing societal progress.
• A cross-cutting and more informative approach to policy-
making.
• More than life satisfaction.
• Personal and social dimensions
• Feelings, functioning and psychological resources.
www.nationalaccountsofwellbeing.org

UK ONS Happiness Survey
Questions included:
• Overall, how satisfied are you with your life nowadays?
• Overall, to what extent do you feel the things you do in your life
are worthwhile?
• Overall, how happy did you feel yesterday?
• Overall, how anxious did you feel yesterday?

So What??
• We don‟t operate in a vacuum
• What lessons can we learn from this work?
• Demonstrates Governments are taking this seriously
• This thinking is beginning to filter through organisations – a
focus on subjective wellbeing, taking a strength based
approach and other areas of positive psychology

What impact are you having?

Measuring impact
• Why bother?
• 3 levels;
– Process – assessment via audience perceptions
– Impact – measurement of the immediate effects of the
engagement activity (useful to use the engagement
curve to craft questions)
– Outcome - measurement of longer term impact of
engagement activities on desired organisational
outcomes

Methodology
Quantitative Qualitative
Objective To quantify data and generalize results
from a sample to the population of
interest
To measure the incidence of various views
and opinions in a chosen sample
Sometimes followed by qualitative
research which is used to explore some
findings further
To gain an understanding of underlying
reasons and motivations
To provide insights into the setting of a
problem, generating ideas and/or
hypotheses for later quantitative
research
To uncover prevalent trends in thought
and opinion
Sample Usually a large number of cases
representing the population of interest.
Randomly selected respondents.
Usually a small number of non-
representative cases. Respondents
selected to fulfill a given quota.
Data
collection
Questionnaires; online, telephone, face to
face, experiments, secondary data
Interviews, focus groups, content
analysis, conversation, observations

Using the engagement curve to measure
impact

What does success look like?
Critical success
factor
How? Measured by
Clarity of purpose Help employees understand
our vision, values, strategy
and brand promise
Over 80% answer positively to:
I understand……
I understand why we are making these changes
I understand the changes that are happening as a result of…….
Create line of sight Clarify individuals role and
position
Over 80% answer positively to:
I understand the I will play in achieving……
I understand the changes that are happening in …….
I believe this direction is right for……..
The role I play Help people understand the
part they play in these
changes
Over 80% answer positively to:
I know how I can contribute to……
I know what changes are coming up
I believe I am able to contribute to the changes happening in……
Behaviour change Drive the behaviour
changes required to XXX a
success
Over 70% answer positively to:
I know what I need to do to make……. a success.
I think I can achieve what is expected of me to make ………… a
success
I see this behaviour happening around me at my level
I see these behaviours happening around me in the managemen
community

Maintaining Engagement
Are your employee
touch-points
supporting or
sabotaging employee
engagement?

THANK
YOU!

Fancy a chat?
Call Emma on 07595465515, or send
your emails to info@peoplelab.co.uk.
www.peoplelab.co.uk