How to Measure Employee Engagement: Methods, Metrics & Best Practices

When you’ve got hundreds or thousands of employees across a number of locations, it’s near impossible to understand who’s engaged, motivated, or lacking in resources.

Here, we’re not just talking about managing employees – we’re talking about keeping them engaged over time and proactively inspiring those levels of employee engagement.

How do you achieve that?

That’s exactly what we’re going to explore in this guide.

But before we jump into the ‘how’ and ‘how not’ of measuring employee engagement, let’s make sure we understand the why.

Why measure employee engagement?

Measuring engagement isn't just about collecting data and presenting fancy charts. It's about understanding the health of your employees and identifying opportunities to improve their motivation and engagement levels.

Here’s why it’s crucial:

• Improved employee retention: Engaged employees are less likely to leave, reducing costly turnover rates.
• Increased productivity and profitability: Engaged team members are more focused, innovative, and contribute more effectively to business outcomes.
• Stronger company culture: Measurement helps identify what's working and what's not, allowing you to proactively shape a positive and supportive culture.
• Enhanced employee wellbeing: Understanding engagement levels can highlight issues related to stress, workload, and work-life balance, enabling targeted support initiatives.
• Better customer satisfaction: Engaged employees typically provide better customer service, leading to happier clients.
• Informed decision making: Data-driven insights allow leaders to make strategic decisions about policies, benefits, and management practices.

Things to do before you start measuring employee engagement

It’s tempting to start tracking how your employees are doing immediately.

After all, the more you know the more you know, right?

However, it’s important to lay the foundations for successful employee engagement tracking so you don’t end up chasing the wrong metrics or having unrealistic benchmarks.

Here’s what to prioritize before you start measuring employee engagement:

• Define your goals: Set a specific purpose to your employee engagement measurement. Document and communicate what you wish to learn or achieve. This might be improving retention, boosting specific KPIs, or understanding wellbeing. Align your measurement with broader business objectives.
• Build trust and communicate clearly: Explain why you are measuring engagement to senior stakeholders to gain buy-in. But also communicate to employees how the data will be used, how it will be anonymous, and the targeted improvements for employee wellbeing.
• Choose your measurement tools: Select a mix of methods (quantitative and qualitative) that fit your culture, size, and goals. There’s no one size fits all employee engagement tool so be sure to choose wisely.
• Commit to action: Measuring engagement without planning to act on the survey results is worse than not measuring at all. You could end up with a ton of negative data that sits idle. Instead, develop a process for analyzing feedback and creating tangible action plans.

9 ways to measure employee engagement

Annual employee engagement surveys

Once a year, conduct a deep dive into how your employees feel about their job roles and performance. These are typically made up of multiple choice questions with the option to add commentary.

Tip: To ensure high completion rates, make the survey as easy to complete as possible. This means not making text responses mandatory and incentivizing taking part. This may take the shape of simply communicating the wider benefits to staff or you may include monetary or work-based initiatives.

Annual surveys are excellent for establishing a baseline engagement score. From this figure, you can then take shorter “pulse” engagement surveys to draw comparisons throughout the year.

You can also see the improvement or drop off in engagement year on year. Take Woodies, who increased its employee engagement rate from 57% to 88% since it started measuring employee engagement and taking action.

Pulse engagement surveys

Short, frequent surveys allow you to track engagement levels more regularly and gather quick feedback on specific topics or recent initiatives.

These pulse surveys show more timely insights rather than waiting for a holistic overview of how the year has gone.

Use the types of surveys following company events, periods of high concentrated effort (like pressured projects), and periods of change.

When you’ve gathered results, use this employee data to effect quick win changes to remedy any smaller problems across departments.

Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS)

If you’ve spent any time focused on customer experience, you may be familiar with Net Promoter Score (NPS).

This question asks how likely customers are to recommend their business to peers or friends to do business with.

The internal employee version uses the same question:

‘On a scale of 1-10, how likely are you to recommend this organization as a place to work?’

Responses categorize employees into promoters, passives, and detractors, offering a benchmark of loyalty and happiness within the business:

• A detractor: someone who responds with a 0-6.
• A passive: someone who responds with 7 or 8.
• A promoter: someone who responds with a 9 or 10.

To calculate your eNPS score, use this formula:

Employee experience platforms

Modern employee experience platforms (like Workvivo) offer data-driven insights based on actual platform usage.

If your organization is using a built-for-purpose employee platform, this means you get first-hand data that analyzes communication patterns, employee recognition rates, and participation in company initiatives.

Here, you’re not just monitoring ‘busy work’ levels but getting real-time indicators of engagement levels.

One-to-one meetings

Meaningful check-ins between managers and their direct reports are invaluable for qualitative insights.

These conversations can uncover individual motivations, challenges, career aspirations, and overall job satisfaction.

However, you must ensure you don’t fall into the trap of having too regular and insignificant catch ups for the sake of it.

Instead, develop an agenda that means these conversations will extract the most value for both manager and employee.

• Set clear goals and objectives beforehand.
• Prepare an agenda.
• Send any pre-work so both parties are prepared and can use the time productively.
• Start and end on time.
• Encourage participation and open conversation.
• Note action items and follow up.

Post-meeting, ensure you action those take away items to make sure employees feel their time is valued and they’re being listened to.

Performance reviews

While focused on performance, these discussions can incorporate elements related to engagement, like alignment with company goals, job satisfaction, and barriers to success.

Performance reviews usually take the shape of a one-to-one meeting—though they may also include other relevant stakeholders like supervisors, senior peers, or any department-adjacent stakeholders.

Before you meet with an employee for a performance review, ask for written feedback from staff. Here, you’ll use detailed questions like, “How satisfied are you that you are personally developing in your role?”

Using role-specific questions, you can gauge levels of engagement, satisfaction, and happiness within your employees.

Exit interviews

The trouble with internal surveys, when staff may feel pressured to say everything is fine, is that there is always an underlying undercurrent of “what happens if I say the wrong thing?”

During the employee exit experience, you have the chance to gain valuable unbiased feedback without that nagging feeling at the back of an employee’s mind.

Your goal here must be to uncover their reasons for departure, potentially highlighting systemic issues causing disengagement or a high turnover rate. (It could also be something positive, like they progressed so quickly or found their dream job.)

Tip: These interviews aren’t designed to encourage an employee to change their mind and stay. Use these as a valuable way of collecting genuine information about your business.

Exit interviews can be online, virtual, face to face, written, or a mixture of all these methods.

Questions to ask when conducting employee exit interviews

Job satisfaction

• Were there aspects of your role that you found particularly enjoyable or frustrating?
• Did your job align with your expectations when you were hired?
• How would you rate your work environment when working here?

Company culture

• How would you describe the overall company culture during your time here?
• Did you feel included and supported by your colleagues and the organization?
• How do you feel about the company’s efforts to promote work-life balance?

Management and leadership

• Did you feel your manager supported your success?
• Was your feedback valued and acted upon by leadership?
• What advice would you give to the company’s leadership team?

Growth and development

• Were your personal growth goals met in your role?
• Did you have access to the training or development resources you needed?
• Do you feel there were enough opportunities for career advancement?

Employee experience

• What did you think of the way you were managed?
• Did you feel recognized enough for your accomplishments?
• What benefits or programs did you feel were missing from the organization?

Voluntary employee turnover rate

Tracking the rate at which employees choose to leave is a critical outcome metric. A rising voluntary turnover rate often signals underlying engagement problems.

If you have a high employee turnover rate, use the information gained from your exit interviews to create a focused campaign to reduce employee turnover.

Employee absenteeism rate

For your employees who choose to stay with your business, monitoring unscheduled absences can be an indicator of disengagement, low morale, or burnout.

A high or increasing absenteeism rate warrants further investigation. But you can only do so when you have the data to prove this.

Employees who feel engaged within their companies are noted as being happier, healthier, more productive and less likely to leave, with Gallup reporting employee absenteeism drops by 41% at highly engaged businesses.

Key metrics for measuring employee engagement

• Overall engagement score: Typically derived from annual employee engagement surveys or pulse surveys.
• eNPS: The score calculated from the eNPS question, factoring in promoters, passives, and detractors.
• Participation rates: The percentage of employees completing surveys or participating in various company initiatives.
• Voluntary employee turnover rate: The percentage of employees leaving voluntarily over a period.
• Employee absenteeism rate: The rate of unscheduled absences, like sick days, stress-related illnesses, or industrial action.

Obtaining these metrics is one thing. Having clear access to them, with dynamic pattern and trend analysis is another.

Make sure your employee engagement platform comes complete with high-level analytics and the option to drill down into finer details to understand why you’re missing or outperforming benchmarks.

Common mistakes to avoid when measuring employee engagement

As well as learning what metrics and methods to use when gauging employee satisfaction, it’s important to learn from others what not to do.

The following practices often lead to poor measurement and lack of employee participation.

• Infrequent measurement: Relying solely on annual employee engagement surveys misses crucial fluctuations and timely opportunities.
• Failure to act: Collecting employee feedback and then doing nothing erodes trust and guarantees future disengagement with the process. Always create and communicate action plans to gain employee and leadership buy-in.
• Poor survey design: Asking unclear, leading, or irrelevant survey questions lowers trust and participation levels. Ensure surveys are well-designed, tested, and not overly frequent.
• Ignoring qualitative data: Relying only on numbers misses the 'why'. Use open-ended questions, focus groups, and one-on-one feedback to add context.
• Lack of anonymity/confidentiality: Employees won't be honest if they fear repercussions. Guarantee confidentiality to encourage genuine responses that help shape the future of your business.
• Not segmenting data: Analyze results by department, role, tenure, etc., to identify specific areas that need attention.
• Treating employee engagement as an HR-only initiative: Engagement is everyone's responsibility. Involve managers and leaders in the process and action plans.

Measure and improve employee engagement with Workvivo

If you’re serious about employee engagement (and measuring it the right way), you need a platform designed with employees, admins, and HR in mind.

Workvivo was built with the goal of transforming how you measure and actively enhance employee engagement.

When you choose Workvivo, you make the conscious decision to:

• Gain a holistic view of engagement: Go beyond self-reported survey data. Gain insights into engagement as it happens by showing how employees connect, communicate, recognize achievements, and interact with company initiatives.
• Capture timely sentiment within the workflow: Engaging pulse surveys give you real-time insight when important events have occurred. Short form surveys encourage higher participation and provide immediate feedback on current morale and specific initiatives.
• Understand the qualitative 'why' behind the numbers: The organic conversations, public recognition moments, and feedback shared offer rich qualitative data. This helps you understand the context, emotions, and reasons driving your quantitative metrics like survey scores or eNPS.
• Close the loop between insight and action: Use Workvivo to share results, launch targeted engagement initiatives, amplify positive recognition moments, and build a stronger, more engaged culture.
• Centralize the employee experience: By bringing communication, community, goals, and recognition into one place, Workvivo becomes the heart of your digital workplace.

When choosing Workvivo as your hub for employee engagement, you’re not just getting a place for teams to come together, you’re getting a data-rich platform that totally transforms the future of your business.

Ready to turn employee data into positive business outcomes?

Book your free demo of Workvivo now.

Employee Engagement FAQs

How frequently should an organization measure employee engagement for meaningful insights?

A balanced approach is often best. Consider a comprehensive annual employee engagement survey for deep benchmark data, supplemented by quarterly or monthly pulse surveys to track trends and gather feedback on specific initiatives. Continuous listening through 1-on-1 meetings and employee experience platforms (like Workvivo) provides ongoing, real-time insights.

What examples of employee engagement measurements have proven to be most successful for employers?

Successful approaches often combine methods. Frequent pulse surveys linked directly to action plans, tracking eNPS trends over time, and correlating survey data with behavioural metrics like retention rate and platform activity have proven effective. Frameworks like Gallup's Q12 provide a well-researched set of questions often used successfully.

Which questions should be included in employee surveys to measure employee engagement accurately?

Effective surveys include questions covering key drivers:

• Relationship with manager
• Belief in leadership
• Connection to company mission
• Opportunities for growth
• Recognition and sense of accomplishment

Use a mix of Likert-scale questions (e.g., "I feel recognized for my contributions") and open-ended questions (e.g., "What is one thing we could improve?").

What benchmarks should we use when measuring employee engagement?

Use both internal and external benchmarks.

• Internal: Compare a department's current scores to its past scores (trend analysis) and compare scores across different departments within your organization.
• External: Compare your scores to industry averages or data from providers like Gallup, keeping company size and context in mind.

What are the three types of employee engagement levels?

Based on common definitions (popularized by Gallup), employees typically fall into three engagement levels:

• Engaged: Passionate about their work, committed to the organization, and driving innovation.
• Not engaged: Doing the bare minimum, lack energy and passion, "checked out."
• Actively disengaged: Unhappy at work, undermine engaged colleagues' accomplishments, express their negativity.

What are the top drivers of employee engagement?

While specific drivers can vary, common top drivers consistently include:

• Trustworthy and supportive relationship with one's direct manager.
• Belief in senior leadership's vision and competence.
• Meaningful work and a sense of purpose/accomplishment.
• Opportunities for professional growth and development opportunities.
• Regular and meaningful employee recognition.
• Strong relationships and collaboration with colleagues.
• Feeling heard and valued.