Employee Engagement Benchmark Trends

[@jesmith9975]

Wouldn't it be more reasonable to benchmark employee engagement trends by whether business metrics improved? Measuring engagement by survey results is nothing more than a subjective measure. Until a company can be shown to have transformed engagement ( not just measured) to the extent business metrics improved, what's the point? The problem with all surveys is that HR is not empowered to force change on disinterested leadership irrespective of the survey. Unfortunately, employees seeing the lack of change year after year contributes to greater employee disengagement. Is it just a coincidence that no one reports on business improvement arising from EE/EX initiatives? Luckily for the EE/EX service industry, CHROs are not compensated based on business improvements from HR-sponsored EE/EX initiatives. Checking the box is sufficient.

[@Decision-wise]

Agreed. It's difficult to benchmark business performance because each organization measures results differently and don't always provide us metrics to work with. We frequently tie engagement results to turnover and see significant correlations between engagement and retention. The key is to garner support from senior leadership to hold managers accountable to the survey results as part of their performance criteria. When managers are invested in engagement as their people metric, employees become invested in taking the survey because they see results.

[@jesmith9975]

@@Decision-wise Here's the way to look at this. If a company had a solution to the employee engagement problem, would they sell that solution to HR knowing HR has almost no authority to implement change, or would the CEO be the better sales target.? The reason CEOs are being ignored is that there’s no proof anyone is transforming employee engagement to the extent that business metrics are being impacted. Imagine if you had an opportunity to sell your approach to the CEO. What examples would you use for where it has worked, how long did it take, who leads the initiative, how were the results measured, and how do you overcome the blocking that’s always getting in the way? How much will it cost and are the fees tied to the business metrics? Looking at these questions it’s easy to see why the EE/EX/HR Tech services market is focused on HR where pesky results questions aren’t likely to be asked. Thus, "ours is better than theirs" becomes the decision point.