How can SMEs approach measuring employee engagement?

Measuring employee engagement can bring many benefits to a business. It is a way to give employers a much better picture of how their workforce is performing and how staff feel about their career paths within the firm. However, it’s important to know how to effectively approach this task to collect the most useful data.

Whether or not your company uses employee engagement software, understanding the approaches necessary to properly investigate the commitment of staff within your firm helps make this nuanced task simpler. It is also vital to ensure the analysis of engagement captures an accurate picture of a business. 

In this article, we examine why measuring employee engagement is important and how it can be performed effectively. We also examine some of the most important considerations to plan before starting.

How can SMEs measure employee engagement?

To adequately measure employee engagement companies first need to plan the parameters they want to measure and then must collect data from their workforce. The data can then be used to identify patterns of engagement or disengagement. 

There are a few ways that companies can collect data to measure employee engagement in their staff. They can use forms such as surveys or meetings to collect their own information from employees. They can also use dedicated software to gather information from workers in the business, or a mix of all these techniques.

Why measure employee engagement?

Measuring employee engagement is important for several reasons. 

First of all, it can help a business understand the level of emotional or psychological attachment team members have to the company. This in turn can help provide insights on employee retention in the short-to-medium term.

Understanding engagement can also help companies understand their performance and productivity better as well as employee satisfaction. Naturally, the more engaged employees are within their roles and inside the organisation the more likely they are to perform well.

Additionally, analysing core employee engagement metrics can provide insights into the strengths and weaknesses of the business. This research can focus on the company as a whole or can be used to compare the engagement within different teams in the firm.

What are the best employee engagement measurement methods?

When looking at ways to measure employee engagement a number of possible methods are available to SMEs to gather the data to the best effect. These can involve both in-person feedback gathering and digital surveying of the workforce. 

To gather the most qualitative information possible companies will usually use one or more of the following data sources: 

• Employee engagement surveys

Surveys carried out to analyse factors such as work satisfaction organisational commitment and motivation. 

• People analytics

Analysis of employee data to assess engagement based on absenteeism, employee turnover, and performance metrics.

• Pulse surveys

Short surveys to quickly get a better understanding of employee motivation and satisfaction at work at regular intervals.

• Feedback systems

Regular touchpoints set up with employees such as check-ins, feedback sessions, or employee engagement platforms that give staff a chance to share their thoughts and opinions.

• Employee performance metrics

Reviews of employee KPIs to assess performance in specific roles to get a better view of how engaged staff members are.

Once the data is gathered it can be analysed and an employee engagement score calculated. This allows companies to get a much better understanding of their strengths and weaknesses from an organisational perspective.

Additionally, once those areas for improvement have been identified, it is important to put in place measures that can address any issues that were noticed during the analysis. 

This could include actions such as:

• Creating/highlighting growth opportunities for employees
• Defining more ways to recognise and reward top performers
• Encouraging better work-life balance if employee stress levels are high
• Enhancing company culture to drive positive staff engagement 
• Giving employees more chance to voice concerns and feedback

Questions to measure employee engagement

It is important, to ask the right questions when measuring employee engagement in a survey. This helps gather the most useful data from employees to fully understand their feelings within the organisation.

Gartner reflects that factors affecting engagement have changed somewhat over the past few years, as aspects such as remote/hybrid work and inflation shake up workplace expectations. This makes gauging employee engagement levels even more crucial as the job market gets more competitive. A disengaged employee in this context may be more likely to look elsewhere.

To accommodate recent trends it is recommended to focus employee engagement analysis on key performance drivers especially. These include factors such as trust in an organisation, commitment to coworkers and understanding the capability of employees of adaptation within evolving workplaces.    

Five effective example questions SMEs may want to consider asking on an employee engagement survey include the following:

• Does your team inspire you to perform at your best?
• Are you given enough assistance to successfully complete your work?
• Do you feel like your manager/supervisor is invested in your success?
• Do you find your work meaningful?
• Would you recommend [ORGANISATION] to your friends/family as an employer?

What are the tools for measuring employee engagement?

There are many tools available on the market that can help managers of SMEs tackle the task of measuring engagement.

These include focused software that is solely dedicated to the task of calculating employee engagement. However, there are often employee engagement measuring tools included as features within more expansive HR software platforms too.

Choosing the right software usually depends on how extensive the engagement analysis will be and how large a company is. Therefore it is wise to carefully plan how the organisation wants to approach studying employee engagement, what the research will achieve and how this fits the size/mission of the company as a whole before getting started.