Employee engagement metrics aren’t just about providing a real-time KPI for HR.

It’s about showing the whole company how their colleagues feel at work. It’s about where you’re coming from, and where you’re heading in order to create a smooth, money-making organization.

So how come so many from HR hold on to just a once-per-year metric?

 

Track employee engagement progress in real-time

There’s a growing trend of HR harvesting numbers that look good on spreadsheets, but don’t really give key insights to move your company forward.

For HR Business partners to make an impact in the board room and engage people consistently, you need a people KPI that hits the bull’s eye: How do your people feel at work?

Yearly employee surveys let you dig into detail about employee engagement, working conditions, etc.

But when it comes to actually doing something about it – how do you know you’re on track?

Here are 5 reasons why HR should love realtime employee engagement metrics:

Are you really improving things at work? How much value are you getting out of each dollar spent on your HR initiatives?

Let your employees guide you as they daily tell you how they are feeling.

With systems like wall-mounted devices, HR and team leaders get real-time feedback from employees to the online dashboard, encouraging coworkers to give their opinion in 2 seconds:

How was your day? Press the green or red smiley.

They are then shown the collective mood among coworkers, today’s results.

Your current employee engagement metrics are your starting point, your baseline.

Your future metrics will monitor if you’re on the right track so you can continuously make changes and improve HR programs, processes, etc. to sharpen organizational effectiveness.

By HR having tangible metrics to support their “I think” and replace it with “I know”, it will be easier to reach company goals and make sure that team leaders ACT on the results.

The methodology is to Measure, Talk, Improve, repeat.

The key to success?

Involve your team leaders. Without people who lead in the day-to-day, you won’t go far. Your role is more to coach them.

HR Directors often appear nonaligned with upper management who use near real-time KPI’s to run the business.

Sales and financial numbers are tracked and analyzed on a frequent basis.

With a People KPI that monitors how your employees are feeling at work and how they react to key events, you can focus on things that are most likely to generate an impact on the decisions being made at the top.

“We use Daily Pulse in our leadership meetings to discuss what we can do to make people stay positive on any given day, and long term,” says Unilever Kleve’s Dutch factory manager, Eugène Kusse.

Metrics are an indication of the type of service your employees are giving your customers today, this week, or this month.

In one company that uses real-time employee feedback, providing customer service for one of the hottest companies around, they compare their service levels with their employee mood.

They continuously take action when needed to avoid a further drop in employee morale.

That drop in employee morale would most likely impact further how the customer on the other side of the line experiences a brand worth billions.

They also use their People KPI to make a case for why their outsourced customer service is better than their competitors when attracting new clients. Transparency is key.

With the data flowing in from each office, HR and interested parties can remotely keep an eye out to act timely.

Companies typically have a couple of small or big crises per year.

Comparing your employee mood statistics will help you the next time something RED happens.

It’s valuable as you can compare how low you typically go, and how fast you get up.

Your metrics are your starting point for further investigations.

“Last month our mood dropped 14%” doesn’t automatically mean that the new branch manager isn’t liked by her or his peers. But it’s an indicator that something is up, and that you should investigate further.

In today’s world, your coworkers are likely to be publishing their opinions on sites like glassdoor.com.

Are they having good days or bad days at the office?

Make sure you hear the answer before the rest of the world does.

We’ve heard many stories from HR Directors where their real-time HR analytics have given them surprising insights.

One company had 100% green employee mood for 3 consecutive days.

HR had no clue as to why they suddenly spiked.

Asking around it turned out that their employees had themselves organized a table tennis tournament. During every lunch break, they would get out their rackets, and coworkers would join to watch the games.

This sparked a positive effect among the workers that left a measurable effect even several days after.

This in turn can have a positive impact on productivity and revenue. When employees feel engaged and inspired, it’s easier to find your best strategy for customers.

There are also stories where company events have backfired.

For example, ‘fun’ parties organized by the company can produce more red feedback than green.

Oops..!

Why is this?

Do your employees prefer to spend celebration dollars differently? Do they feel obliged to stay after hours at the office to participate?

If HR (you!) organized the event and ask them how it went, would they be truly honest when answering?

Getting people data in real-time means you can quickly take action and correct your course.

Anonymous real-time analytics helps team leaders and HR find out what brings your culture forward.

“Metrics are a tool, an indicator – they’re not the answer and may have multiple interpretations.” – Martin Klubeck

 

 

Hej! I’m Rebecca. HR analytics enthusiast and co-founder at Celpax, a for-profit helping workplaces continuously improve employee engagement, using real-time people data. I might appear in our chat, or say aloha on Twitter?