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The Empuls Glossary

Glossary of Human Resources Management and Employee Benefit Terms

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Employee Engagement

Employee engagement refers to the level of commitment, passion, and enthusiasm that employees have towards their work and their organization. Engaged employees are more likely to be productive, innovative, and dedicated to achieving both personal and organizational goals.

Engaged employee cares about their work and the company's performance by ensuring they go the extra mile to make a big difference.

It's a workplace approach that results in the right conditions for every member of an organization to give in their best every day, be more committed to the organization's values and goals, and feel motivated to contribute to organizational success with a better sense of their well-being.

What is employee engagement?

Employee engagement refers to the emotional and psychological connection that employees have with their work, colleagues, and organization. It goes beyond mere job satisfaction and reflects the extent to which employees are invested in their roles, committed to the organization's goals, and motivated to contribute their best efforts.

Engaged employees are typically enthusiastic about their work, demonstrate a strong sense of purpose, and actively seek ways to contribute to the success of the company. They are more likely to go above and beyond their basic job responsibilities, show initiative, and remain committed to their tasks even in challenging situations.

Here are the different definitions of employee engagement:

  • From an HR perspective, employee engagement is a concept that describes how passionate, dedicated, motivated, and energetic employees feel about their jobs. It represents the commitment and discretionary effort employees put into their work daily
  • Employee engagement is completely based on integrity, trust, commitment, and two-way communication between an organization and its workforce. It's an approach to increase the possibilities of business success, contributing to individual and organizational-level performance for enhanced productivity while ensuring proper well-being.
  • HRs can easily measure employee engagement, varying from poor to excellent. It's a way to check employees' perspectives on the elements they think are crucial for workplace culture.
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What are the key drivers of employee engagement?

Organizations are different, so there isn't a magic pill to drive employee engagement. However, too often, businesses neglect the key drivers of engagement that can propel them towards their performance and culture-based objectives to help reach their overall vision.

Here are the key drivers that can drive employee engagement levels at the workplace:

  • Transparency and openness
  • Sense of belonging
  • Meaningful and collaborative work
  • Empowerment and support
  • Better work-life balance
  • Motivated leadership
  • Job satisfaction
  • Timely recognition
  • Learning opportunities
  • Fulfilling work relationships
  • Growth and development

What are employee engagement strategies?

An employee engagement strategy is a plan that details how a company will go about keeping its workforce engaged and documents every effort explicitly.

An employee engagement strategy helps create an environment where involvement and engagement are highly likely to thrive. It’s an approach to increase the chances for employees to establish a positive emotional connection with the organization. It’s also worth noting that the actions you plan to take depend on the company’s overall budget and size.

Implementing an effective employee engagement strategy helps:

  • Enhance employee wellbeing
  • Heighten productivity
  • Increase job satisfaction
  • Keep employees happy and cheerful
  • Drive business connectivity
  • Retain employees longer

An effective employee engagement strategy must outline:

  • The ways to measure engagement levels—whether through employee engagement surveys or lagging indicators such as absenteeism, productivity, and turnover.
  • The goals to improve the factors mentioned above.
  • The budget to ensure every engagement-related initiative.
  • The tactics to improve engagement.

How to improve employee engagement?

Employee engagement is a complex and wide-reaching subject. However, it isn’t impossible to attain higher engagement levels. All it needs is the right strategies to make your people emotionally connected and feel more valued at work.

To bring that into action, here are a few approaches to that can help:

  • Purposeful mission: Just having a mission statement doesn't cut it. Instead, make it more purposeful by establishing feelings of value alignment. Your employees should see a clear connection between their work and the company’s greater purpose.
  • Improve communication: Effective communication at the workplace is about keeping misunderstandings at bay and ensuring everyone fulfills their daily tasks smoothly.
  • Give timely recognition: Recognition has the power to make your employees’ motivation reach sky-high. It’s a way to show your workforce that you value every effort and contribution they make to the company.
  • Encourage feedback: Receiving constructive feedback from time to time is an essential part of fostering employee engagement. When you take time to know what your employees feel and think, you will gain better insights into what’s happening at all levels within the organization, which helps you make informed decisions.
  • Build positive company culture: Company culture is vital for employees to enjoy work while developing healthier relationships with coworkers and being more productive. Also, a good workplace culture drives engagement, drives performance, attracts new talent, and impacts job satisfaction.

How to measure employee engagement?

One of the most common ways to measure employee engagement is through surveys. However, that’s not the only thing you should be using.

Here are a few methods to help measure employee engagement levels:

Employee pulse surveys:

These are short surveys that can be sent frequently to check what your employees think about an issue quickly. The survey comprises fewer questions (not more than 10) to get the information quickly. These can be administered at regular intervals (monthly/weekly/quarterly).

One-on-one meetings:

Having periodic, hour-long meetings for an informal chat with every team member is an excellent way to get a true sense of what’s happening with them. Since it is a safe and private conversation, it helps you get better details about an issue.

eNPS:

eNPS (employee Net Promoter score) is one of the simplest yet effective ways to assess your employee's opinion of your company. It includes one intriguing question that gauges loyalty. An example of eNPS questions include: How likely are you to recommend our company to others? Employees respond to the eNPS survey on a scale of 1-10, where 10 denotes they are ‘highly likely’ to recommend the company and 1 signifies they are ‘highly unlikely’ to recommend it.

Based on the responses, employees can be placed in three different categories:

  • Promoters
    Employees who have responded positively or agreed.
  • Detractors
    Employees who have reacted negatively or disagreed.
  • Passives
    Employees who have stayed neutral with their responses.

How to conduct an employee engagement survey?

Conducting employee engagement surveys help assess what’s working well in the organization and what key areas need attention. Here’s a step-by-step process to help conduct an employee engagement survey:

  • Step 1: Define the purpose
    Put some thought and planning before launching the survey. Think of what you want to achieve from it and how the information will be utilized.
  • Step 2: Craft the right questions
    Have a mix of closed and open questions, keeping them relevant and precise. Use straightforward language while framing the questionnaire.
  • Step 3: Keep it short and sweet
    No one prefers taking up lengthy surveys, so keep it short and concise.
  • Step 4: Invite everyone
    Involve everyone to take up the survey. Limiting your survey to only a few members tends to miss vital insights.
  • Step 5: Give enough time for participants to answer 
    Sending the survey during lunchtime or break and expecting employees to fill it out by closing day will only result in fewer responses. Give them at least 1-2 weeks, so they have the liberty to complete the survey with maximum attention.

What is an employee engagement survey?

An organization conducts employee engagement surveys to assess and measure how motivated and engaged its employees are to perform their best daily.

An employee engagement survey helps you:

  • Measure employee engagement levels:
    Measure employee engagement levels: Check how interested, enthusiastic, and happy your employees are.
  • Give your workforce a voice:
    A way to comment on company culture, workplace issues, make observations, give suggestions, and feel heard.
  • Increase engagement:
    Even if you have excellent employee satisfaction scores, there’s always room for improvement, and employee engagement surveys are just the way to see it.
  • Witness business growth:
    Employee feedback via surveys is a great way to unveil critical areas that need improvement.

What is employee engagement software?

Employee engagement software is a collective group of applications that organizations utilize to increase employee work satisfaction and engagement levels to retain them for longer.The key objective of any employee engagement platform is to help a company’s workforce to be more aligned with the mission, core values, and culture to ensure enhanced productivity and performance.

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