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Building a thriving workplace culture doesn’t end with hiring the right people. The real way to achieve a culture that works is by keeping your employees engaged. And no—pizza parties usually don’t cut it.
As a business leader, you should think of employee engagement as the beating heart of your operations. Happy employees keep the company alive and thriving, and if you maintain them, you are sure to reap benefits on all fronts.
A team is likely to be more productive and loyal when they feel like a valued part of the company. In return, they reward you with excellent retention and performance. On the other hand, they are also more willing to champion your brand and represent it proudly outside office walls. They become strong advocates of your brand, essentially building a powerful extension of your marketing efforts.
One strategy to help you achieve this is to understand the Employee Engagement Index (EEI) and how calculating it can empower your company to harness the benefits of maintaining staff members’ satisfaction.
What is the Employee Engagement Index?
The Employee Engagement Index measures how committed employees are to their company, how motivated they are to support its mission, and how connected they feel to the overall vision. The EEI is often derived from employee engagement surveys that capture insights on factors influencing employees' workplace experiences.
Common employee engagement metrics used in these surveys include how satisfied they feel about their job, how well the management communicates, and whether the employer offers learning opportunities to further staff members’ careers and skill sets.
Companies that keep track of the EEI are better equipped to understand what drives engagement among their staff and where they can make improvements.
8 Steps to Calculate the Employee Engagement Index
Each company can craft its own Employee Engagement Index, but the process of developing one begins with a standard approach. Here are the usual steps organizations take to effectively measure and calculate their EEI.
1. Identify your employee engagement metrics
One reason why EEIs tend to vary per organization is that they gauge very different metrics. Every company has their own unique priorities and values that are central to their culture. These factors help define what should be covered by your employee engagement metrics. Start by first identifying these factors.
Some common examples are promotion opportunities, work-life balance, and recognition. If you’re a company with active employee advocacy programs, you may want to look into whether your employees feel like they’re fully able to share genuine feedback on their respective platforms. If you’re a digital-first company, you can include social media sharing as a key metric to observe.
Whatever you have on your list, the crucial part is that these metrics align well with the organization's core values to keep your survey relevant and actionable.
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2. Design a targeted survey
Once you finish identifying your metrics, it’s time to design the actual survey. This could be a pulse survey, an annual engagement survey, or even targeted feedback sessions—any format works, just as long as it comprehensively captures the detailed insights you require. You can use a variety of question types to cover the full scope of your identified metrics. A Likert scale, for example, can be helpful for gauging employee satisfaction, while open-ended questions are ideal when having to provide qualitative insights.
3. Collect data across the organization
With your survey designed, distribute it across the organization and encourage everyone to participate. The more comprehensive the data you get, the more accurate your engagement score will be. You should aim for high response rates to ensure that the insights are truly reflective of the workforce's overall engagement level.
4. Assign weights to your employee engagement metrics
Each engagement factor contributes differently to overall employee satisfaction and retention. One approach to allow you to prioritize them accordingly is assigning weight to each one. For example, career development may carry more weight in your company compared to internal growth. To quantify this difference in their strategic importance, your assigned weight for career development should also be higher than internal growth’s weight.
5. Calculate scores for each metric
Now, analyze the survey responses to calculate a score for each engagement metric. This is often done using a numerical scale or an index that reflects employee responses accurately. You can simplify this process by using tools that convert survey responses into a standard score.
6. Calculate a weighted average
Once you have individual scores for each factor, you should calculate a weighted average next. Multiply each factor's score by its assigned weight, then add them together for a composite engagement score. This weighted average serves as a holistic view of the employee engagement level.
7. Normalize the engagement score
To make the index easy to interpret, normalize the EEI within a fixed range. In simpler terms, this means adjusting the raw scores from the survey data into a more standardized format that falls within a consistent range, such as 0–100. Doing this makes it simpler to track changes over time and compare data within the organization, as well as against industry benchmarks, regardless of differences in the original data scales.
8. Interpret and take action
Finally, review the resulting employee engagement analytics in light of your organizational goals. Here’s a quick rundown of what your EEI score can mean:
- 70 percent and above (high) – This indicates strong engagement, which means your employees are deeply committed and enthusiastic.
- 30 to 69 percent (moderate) – A score within this range suggests a need for improvement in key areas.
- Below 30 percent (low) – This suggests that there are crucial issues causing burnout or dissatisfaction within the company, and that you must address them promptly and with great care.
You can break down scores by departments, job roles, tenures, or other segments to better understand the strengths and areas to work on for different aspects of the company. Properly looking into the results can inform your next steps and enable you to plan targeted interventions to improve engagement within the company. For example, if scores are low in career development for a particular department, consider providing tailored opportunities for that group.
Engage Your Workforce More Actively with Clearview Social
Churning the numbers can only go so far if you have no concrete strategy to improve your employee engagement index score. One compelling approach you can take is to gamify your employee advocacy efforts. After all, who doesn’t like winning?
Clearview Social is a top-of-line software you can leverage as an employee engagement measurement tool. We enable businesses to harness the potential of employee advocacy within your organizations through streamlined social media sharing, discovery of relevant content, and gamification options that make the process a lot more fun for the team.
By gamifying your employee advocacy program using Clearview Social, you can reward your most consistent brand advocates online. Host contests among employees and encourage them to climb up the leaderboards to win incentives!
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Employee Engagement Can Be More Fun With Clearview Social
With Clearview Social’s gamification features, you can inject some excitement and a sprinkle of competition into your employee advocacy program and incentivize your top performers for a job well done.