best practices

Eight recommendations for turning engagement measurement into results

Best Practices | Eight recommendations for turning engagement measurement into results

As an HR leader, youre expected to achieve and sustain the highest possible levels of employee engagement. The reason is simple higher levels of engagement lead to better business results. Not only do organizations with higher levels of engagement experience 22 percent higher productivity, they experience double the rate of success of lower-engagement organizations in many areas. Engaged employees produce higher-quality work, experience fewer accidents, miss less work, and are less likely to leave your organization. 1

At SAP, we measure employee engagement regularly and take action on what we discover. The recommendations in this document are based on what we have learned over time. The rst step in engaging employees is measurement. Your initial engagement survey is an important snapshot of employee attitudes that helps you to identify specic areas of the employee experience on which to focus your attention, such as development, career planning, or compensation. As you conduct future surveys, you can contrast new ndings against your baseline measurement and see engagement change over time. However, its important to remember that measurement without action is a waste of your time. Too many organizations dont take action after surveying their employees. Although 71 percent of organizations include an engagement metric on their scorecards, only 35 percent believe that their current engagement measurement process has led to positive business outcomes. 2 Whether your organization is just getting started with measuring engagement or is looking to improve what youre already doing, we hope these best practices based on our own experience will help you make a positive impact on engagement in your workforce. When measuring engagement, you should:

Although 71 percent of organizations include an engagement metric on their scorecards, only 35 percent believe that their current engagement measurement process has led to positive business outcomes.

1. Dene engagement and involve stakeholders from the start. Engagement is an abstract concept that means different things to different people. At SAP, we work with the common denition that engagement means commitment to the company, a willingness to go the extra mile, and alignment with the overall strategy. We found that these criteria highly correlate with outstanding performance. To get started in your organization, dene engagement in a way that can be measured in terms of attitudes, behaviors, and beliefs. Involve key stakeholders at this early stage to get feedback and buy-in, which makes it more likely that they will trust the survey ndings at the end.

1 2

Baldoni, John. Employee Engagement Does More Than Boost Productivity. Harvard Business Review Blog. July 4, 2013. http://blogs.hbr.org/2013/07/employee-engagement-does-more/ Kowske, Brenda. The Employee Engagement Primer. Bersin by Deloitte. 2012. To purchase the report, go to http://www.bersin.com/practice/Detail.aspx?id=15197

Best Practices | Eight recommendations for turning engagement measurement into results

2. Ask questions that will lead to emotional connections. Survey questions should focus on strategic goals and put an emphasis on performance and outcomes. However, to determine how engaged employees are, you must also be able to measure what is in their hearts and minds. Ask questions that are designed to elicit emotional responses. Do employees love their work? Are they inspired? Do they believe they are adding value for customers and to society? 3. Use third-party partners to safeguard privacy. Data privacy is on everyones minds today. If employees dont believe their condentiality is being protected, you wont get valid survey results. Ideally, you should run your survey through a thirdparty partner to handle data processing and reporting. The third party provides a natural rewall and can avoid accidental disclosures. Youll need to build extra time into the process, but youll see the benets in the form of better data. Also, global companies must be aware of local data privacy laws, such as those in the European Union. 4. Eliminate survey bias with stratied samples. In a large company, getting 100 percent survey participation isnt always possible or even necessary. With a stratied sample, you can measure a smaller, random group that is representative of the entire workforce. As a result, you can prevent bias in your survey, such as a disproportionate number of responses from highly engaged or highly dissatised employees. To create stratied samples, identify an accurate proportion for key workforce groups such as male/female, managers/ employees, salary/hourly, full-time/part-time, top performers/average performers, and so on. Then, make sure you get a representative sample of each group. In global companies, its important to be mindful of cultural differences across geographies when designing surveys. For example, an employee in a culture that prioritizes group achievement such as India or Japan might answer a question about individual goals differently from one in North America. 5. Choose benchmarks carefully. When you get the survey results, you should compare them not just against your own previous results, but against those of other organizations in your industry, especially those of a similar size and from highperforming companies. When choosing a third-party survey provider, make the ability to deliver benchmarking data one of your key selection criteria. If youre trying to do benchmarking on your own, make sure that the normative groups used for benchmarking purposes include at least 300 responses for statistical stability. 3 6. Understand HRs role in the process. An employee engagement survey is an opportunity to make an organization better. But although HR can drive the process, it cant lead the change. Change requires that executives respond to the ndings with appropriate strategies, planning, and processes. For example, low scores around compensation questions could result in total compensation statements or adjustments to the incentive pay structure. It is at this stage where you see the benet of getting buy-in at the beginning of the process; it sets the stage for executives to take ownership of the results and take action to drive change.

Kowske, Brenda. The Employee Engagement Primer. Bersin by Deloitte. 2012. To purchase the report, go to http://www.bersin.com/practice/Detail.aspx?id=15197

Best Practices | Eight recommendations for turning engagement measurement into results

7. Communicate the results. Anytime you do an employee survey, you raise expectations among executives, managers, and employees. Communication back to stakeholder audiences is vital. Within a month of the survey closing, you must communicate results to executives, the board, leaders in HR and business units, and employee representatives. Then, your most important communication goes out to the line managers. At SAP, communication is core to our culture. Our line managers get individual reports about their departments that they can use to communicate with their employees. We then ask managers to walk employees through the results, interpret what they mean to their team, and conduct an analysis of activities they should start, stop, or continue. We want employees to understand the why behind their jobs what theyre expected to achieve and why its important to the greater good. 8. Use ndings to guide employee goals and development. Collecting data and communicating the results is only half the story. At SAP, we believe that engaging employees means involving them in making data actionable. We typically time survey results to roll out at the end of the year so teams can use them in their planning and goal alignment in the coming year. The ndings can also be used to improve individual development and career planning. They show managers and employees which areas need improvement, allowing them to determine coursework or other activities. Its easier for everyone to get where theyre going because they begin with the end in mind. For HR, measuring employee engagement is an important step in improving both engagement and the culture of an organization overall. If you need a partner in improving engagement in your organization, talk to us. As part of SAP, SuccessFactors is the global leader in HR technology and employee engagement. No matter where you are today with employee engagement, we can get you where you want to go.

SuccessFactors, an SAP Company

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