One of the many duties of a human resources leader is to determine the level of employee engagement within the organization. And while quantifying employee emotion and commitment represents a unique under taking, it is most certainly not an impossible task.

 

Ask questions.

Asking questions allows the HR leader to glean the sought-after information about employee feelings toward the Company.  Examples of more useful questions include queries like “Are you mostly happy when you are at work?” Another might be, “How likely are you to think about looking for a new position elsewhere?”

 

Define the specific criteria you are measuring.

Measuring employee engagement can be challenging because the concept of engagement itself can be understood in a variety of ways. Therefore, it is vitally important that the HR leader be very succinct about their personal interpretation of “employee engagement.” In this way, areas requiring improvement become more readily identifiable. . Officevibe found that the following ten feelings factor into overall employee engagement:

 

Feedback

Recognition

Happiness

Relationship with peers

Relationship with managers

Personal growth

Alignment

Satisfaction

Wellness

Ambassadorship

 

An HR leader can customize their approach to measuring engagement by always remaining cognizant of the aforementioned criteria.

 

Experiment with different methods.

Additionally, remaining aware of specific office culture, enables the HR executive to employ a great many strategies to “take the temperature” of employees. One such method is a pulse survey. Pulse surveys are short, straight-forward questionnaires which ask how people are feeling and what, if anything, would they change in the office environment.

 

Another approach is to conduct one-on-one meetings. These regularly-scheduled, informal gatherings are advantageous as the HR executive is able to gather further cues through observation of employee body language and nonverbal behavior. This methodology can often be much more effective than simply asking the employee to check a box or number on a survey form. . Conversations are considered private, thereby enabling employees to feel safe and calm about providing candid feedback concerning office environment issues and concerns. Furthermore, employees must be reassured that their comments will in no way result in any form of retaliation or other punishment.

 

Lastly, stay and exit interviews can also be effective ways of measuring employee engagement. These meetings are more structured than an open-ended one-on-one and allow for the human resources department  to gather specific information about why an employee feels content and engaged and or what measures can be taken to prevent an employee from prematurely exiting the organization.,

 

Exit interviews are already popular in the corporate world, but initiating stay interviews could help alleviate an issue before it becomes too big to solve or causes disruption to the business.