Written by Ali Shalfrooshan, Head of International Assessment R&D
Employee engagement is a set of words that have been used repeatedly by leaders across the last 30 years. It is a metric of organizational success and has been seen as a key differentiator. Despite the universal agreement that it is important, there is still an inconsistent understanding of what employee engagement is and how to measure it. Most people intuitively recognize an engaged workforce with the palpable contrast between their commitment, energy, and focus in comparison to a disengaged group. Nevertheless, we want to bring some transparency to what it truly is and highlight why employee engagement is so important.
What is employee engagement?
Employee engagement is the extent to which your employees resonate and feel connected with their role, their team, and the company overall. Defined by many researchers and practitioners as a psychological state, employee engagement is both pervasive and persistent. It is something that organizations are looking to foster in their employees, as the evidence suggests individuals with higher engagement typically:
- Have higher productivity
- Generate higher revenue
- Exhibit greater innovation
- Are less likely to leave
This is why it is such a sought-after quality and is a metric for organizational success. However, despite the proliferation of pulse surveys, historically there has been limited consensus about how it is defined and measured.
The history of employee engagement
William Kahn was the first researcher to use the phrase ‘engagement’ over 30 years ago and advocated that a key component was the sense of meaning an individual drew from their work. Researchers such as William Macey and Benjamin Schneider advocated for more conceptual clarity. They highlighted the need to separate this psychological state of being engaged from the drivers that lead to being engaged (e.g. job and organizational characteristics) and the outcomes (e.g. productivity, innovation), which are historically combined and packaged as ‘engagement.’
The problem with employee engagement
The term ‘engagement’ has been used to refer to overt positive behaviors (e.g. effort), job characteristics (e.g. autonomy), organizational features (e.g. brand), or an amalgamation of them all. This merged set of useful constructs seems to be the most common conceptualization of engagement, with very few keeping the most important element – the human being – at their center, whose experiences and psychological state is what defines engagement.
For almost 30 years, employee engagement has been measured by organizations soliciting employee opinions and asking whether they are satisfied. Despite being used extensively as a core tool for gaining insight into employees, the relationship between organizations and engagement surveys has been relatively complicated.
Many employers have grown frustrated with the process and would argue that they have not got the value they were hoping for. Many employees are similarly frustrated, seeing it as a box-ticking exercise and feeling like the opinions and feedback they share are not being heard.
From an employee’s perspective, the lack of action is probably the largest problem with the employee engagement survey process. However, I would argue that there is another significant problem with engagement surveys that impacts both employees and employers, but is not typically discussed: Are engagement surveys actually measuring employee engagement? Are we measuring it accurately and are we capturing the real issues that are leading people to resign?
What is ‘real’ employee engagement?
Based on our work with organizations over the last 10 years, we define employee engagement as a positive work-related state in which an individual experiences a sense of meaning, enthusiasm, and absorption in their work and identification with their organization. More details of those four pillars are provided below:
- Meaning: The extent to which an individual experiences a sense of meaningfulness and purpose that they can draw from their work
- Enthusiasm: The extent to which an individual draws excitement and energy from their job
- Absorption: The extent to which an employee becomes immersed and absorbed in their work
- Identification: The extent to which an individual feels emotionally attached to their organization
How do you measure employee engagement?
Our own research has shown that the state of employee engagement is actually more predictive of performance, productivity, and a desire to stay at the organization than any job characteristic that is typically highlighted (i.e. effective leadership, salary and compensation, etc.).
Since the state of engagement is at the heart of employee engagement, like any state, it can fluctuate depending on the work environment. In order to quantify this sentiment, you need to have a benchmark of the state of your workforce and then make it a point to collect updated data frequently. Therefore, when trying to address employee engagement you need to understand and measure three explicit areas:
- Drivers of engagement: These are the features of the work environment that drive us to feel connected. Examples of these drivers can be having a supportive manager, having autonomy in your role, having opportunities to learn, and having role clarity to name a few. Ultimately these are job characteristics that help facilitate a sense of engagement.
- Engagement: This is the psychological state of being engaged at work. This is ‘real engagement’ and is characterized by employees who experience a sense of meaning from their work, feel enthused and absorbed by their job, and have an emotional attachment to their organization.
- Engaged behaviors: These are positive behaviors and outcomes that are related to being engaged. Examples of these behaviors are when employees promote the organization among friends and family, proactively support colleagues across the organization, and put in additional discretionary effort.
By being able to measure engagement accurately, not only can we understand the true levels of success, but organizations are also better able to diagnose issues, identify impactful solutions, get to the heart of the human experience, and address phenomena such as ‘quiet quitting,’ ‘The Great Resignation,’ and any future trends that develop.
Why is employee engagement important?
The human element of being an employee is so important and needs to be acknowledged. Organizations need to ask themselves:
- Are we providing a work environment that gives employees meaning?
- Are we creating an identity that they are proud of?
- Do we provide jobs that energize our workforce?
- Are we invested in employee development opportunities and prioritizing the employee journey to retain our top talent?
By focusing on these more fundamental human needs, you will be amazed by how much more employees can contribute and the increase in employee engagement as a result.
