Measuring Employee Engagement

Measuring employee engagement is essential to an organization when it gets beyond a few people.  I usually write about information technology, so you may ask why is he writing about this? But measuring employee engagement is essential in any information technology initiative, where it disrupts, so having a way to measure it is critical.

This post may seem like a commercial for OfficeVibe; I do not intend that, but stick around and see why I like it! 

When there are a few people in the organization (probably less than fifteen), it is reasonable to walk around and connect and find out how everybody is doing and if they have any concerns.  And of course, managers should always walk around and check in with people (or in the era of COVID-19 social distancing) use texts, phone calls, Zoom meetings, or hand-written notes sent through the postal service mail to connect. But when an organization gets around fifteen employees, some are lost in the shuffle affecting them personally, and the organization is at risk of not reaching its goals for itself or its employees.

I found a tool in 2019 that is FANTASTIC for leading and making improvements for people in an organization.  It is called OfficeVibe, and it surfaces what employees think about the organization’s various aspects. That’s always difficult to do because, frequently, people will not openly say what they are thinking. They fear reprisal, or being singled out, or looking silly.  People have concerns; they may be legitimate or not, but both generate the same result: distraction from goals. Leaders must know what the people they lead think, so they can understand issues, address concerns, and communicate what is vital to the team.

OfficeVibe is straightforward to sign up and is free at a level that provides helpful feedback. You sign up yourself as an administrator and then create the team you want.  It will then send the invites out and start surveying.

Everything is anonymous, except where noted below.

Each month OfficeVibe sends every person who accepted the invitation one question, like “Do your peers recognize your work?” They can select an answer of 1 to 5 using various means like a slider, some buttons, etc. When they answer that question, it will take them to the website and then give them 19 more. The questions are always fun, and the interactions a whimsical joy!  The whole survey takes less than five minutes, which is vital because more than that will cause people to avoid completing it. One of the questions will also allow them to provide more info in a comment box; this seems random and is welcome.

Measuring employee engagement is a multifaceted approach. The questions represent various business areas, like wellness, recognition, relationship with a manager, etc. OfficeVibe calculates scores for ten segments of the relationship between the employee and the organization, these are:

1. Relationship with Manager
2. Ambassadorship
3. Feedback
4. Happiness
5. Satisfaction
6. Personal Growth
7. Recognition
8. Relationship with Peers
9. Wellness
10. Alignment

The admins can check to see how the organization is doing in each of these ten areas and view a report/scorecard. Here is a sample:

I took three actions with OfficeVibe to improve the organization

First, to see how we were generally doing and line it up with actions we took or the environment forced on us.  Measuring employee engagement is essential in change management! For example, when Covid-19 happened, we saw the impact on employees and our culture.  Also, we brought on several large clients in a short period, and I wanted to see if people were overwhelmed.  It was beneficial to see shifts and think about what occurred in that period.

The second use was to have more intentional conversations in two ways.

• First, if the employee provided feedback in a comment, then I could review it and communicate it back to them. If they had revealed who they were when they asked it, I could directly talk to them about it. But even if they did not and stayed anonymous, I could reply to it, and they could decide if they wanted to continue the conversation. I would not know who they were when I responded to it.
• Secondly, if we saw a trend in the numbers, I could simply ask people about it. I may not have known about the movement if we did not have the tool, but because I knew the general direction, I could start inquiring about why that was and its impact. We created initiatives that would improve it.

The third way I used it was to look at the lowest scores, which, if improved, would make a difference for the organization, and then coming up with a way to improve it. This process was very profound in two initiatives.

• The first was our Wellness score was the lowest one across all the ten areas, at a 6.4 out of 10. As a result, we established a Wellness program and talked a lot about it with the employees encouraging them to use the program and pursue wellness.  We used a wellness coach, Your Best Fitness Friend, an incredible asset to our relationship with employees.  We also made changes in the office, using healthy snacks, providing stand-up desks, etc. The score went from a 6.4 to an 8.4 – moving from the lowest score to the highest of the ten areas! We received a lot of highly positive feedback from the employees about our interest in their wellness.  These initiatives make a difference in their lives and business goals like employee retention. Measuring employee engagement will create new opportunities for improvement.
• The second one was employee recognition. That was a low score area, so we created a separate survey and sent it out to all in the company, which asked them various questions, among them: “Do you prefer private or public recognition?”, and “Do you prefer recognition from your manager, leadership, or your peers? “We got that feedback which was more specific about than OfficeVibe provided, and then identified a tool available in Microsoft Teams called HeyTaco!. HeyTaco allowed employees to recognize each other by simply giving tacos to each other in the team so all could see. People had a lot of fun doing that and enjoyed both receiving and giving recognition.

The main thing is that this tool allows you to understand better what’s important to employees and then start zeroing in on how you can improve that. I highly recommend it.

My specialty area is aligning information technology with the business.  But leadership I essential to this; hence this post into a different interest requiring the same skills.  My philosophy is that what I know is available to you. I hope you found it as helpful to read as I found to write! 

Let me know if you have any questions.