Our latest research uncovers more insights than ever about the value and impact of employee engagement, showing the many interconnected ways it can be influenced and nurtured as part of your employee experience (EX) management program.
What is employee engagement?
Employee engagement definition: we can define engagement as how committed an employee is to help their organization meet its goals.
Engagement is an emotional and attitudinal quality of the employee’s relationship with their employer. It describes how they feel about working, whether they personally identify with their organization, and how much effort they want to put in on their employer’s behalf.
Gallup identifies 4 levels of basic development needs, which cover getting benefits, making a contribution, belonging and growing. As the levels are met, an employee becomes emotionally more invested in their organization and more engaged in their role. It’s worth noting that every level of the hierarchy, including the basic one, must be maintained for the relationship to stay strong.
Employee engagement and employee experience
We see engagement as part of a wider EX (employee experience) picture. It’s an important element of the employee lifecycle, coming into play once an employee is hired and onboarded. Engagement helps to cement each person’s ongoing role in their company.
Employee engagement can be seen as the definitive KPI for a positive employee experience. It goes hand in hand with other important EX outcomes, such as
- Inclusion
- Well-being
- intent to stay (which captures whether engagement is sustainable)
- how an individual employee’s experience of work measures up to their expectations
Drivers of employee experience
We have identified 25 drivers of employee experience, each with its own measurements and levers.
1. Authority and empowerment
Employees need to feel they have the appropriate freedom to exercise their judgment in order to do their jobs well. Having autonomy at work is widely recognized as a powerful driver of positive employee attitudes.
2. Collaboration
Employee engagement rises when there is a general sense of cooperation between employees, both within teams and across the organization. Employees tend to value being able to work with others in order to meet goals at work. For employee engagement to flourish, company culture and management attitudes should affirm that collaboration is valued and celebrated.
3. Communication
Open communication is an important driver of trust. Communication should work well in all directions, including feedback to senior leaders from their employees, communication within an employee-manager relationship, and being provided with the right information at the right time.
4. CSR (corporate social responsibility)
Company values have grown in importance recently as employees look for a workplace that shares their beliefs and acts in ways they can be proud of.
5. Customer focus
People who feel proud of the products and services they are selling, especially if they’re front-line employees, are more likely to be engaged at work. This driver links to authority and empowerment too, because these employees can have the opportunity to use their initiative and make decisions to provide good customer experiences.
6. Ethics
Ethical standards which are upheld consistently and equally applied to everybody make the employee experience better. Ethical integrity contributes to a sense of pride in where you work, and also helps employees feel confident that whistleblowing is taken seriously and that they will be treated appropriately.
7. Growth and development
Offering employees a career development path and an opportunity to grow means they are more likely to want to stay. Positive relationships with managers and a sense that their career goals are seen and supported are behind this engagement driver.
8. Innovation
Innovative cultures give employees an opportunity to meaningfully contribute to progress and put their own stamp on processes and roles. Innovative company culture works best when employees know it’s okay to fail if they take a risk and try something new.
9. Living the values
Company values – the explicit ideas and behaviors a company sets out as its preferred way of working – have a positive effect on engagement when they align with an employee’s personal values. When company values are evident in behaviors and decision-making, rather than just a list of words, employees are more likely to take them to heart.
10. Managing change
Employees are more likely to tolerate and adapt to change if they feel supported through it. Understanding why change is happening and being given advance notice of change are also engagement drivers.
Discover the newest trends in employee experience
11. Pay and benefits
The relationship between pay and employee engagement isn’t a linear one – you can’t make people more engaged by increasing their salaries. However, pay that feels fair and is tied to performance is an important basic element underpinning a good employee experience.
12. Strategic alignment
A company that has a strong and consistent long-term strategy will be more likely to drive employee intent to stay, as people will be able to visualize their future with a company and feel confident that it will thrive long-term. Another aspect of this driver of engagement is being able to see how your role fits into the company strategy.
13. Survey follow-up
Collecting employee feedback via surveys isn’t just valuable for the information it provides. The interaction itself can also have a positive impact, when employees see that their input has been acknowledged and acted on by senior leadership. This driver is also connected to communication, covered earlier in this list.
Discover what to do with employee feedback.
14. Training
Having adequate training to do the job is an important foundational component of employee engagement.
15. Trust in leadership
Although employees won’t necessarily have personal interactions with the c suite, they will develop a sense of trust in leadership if they see good decisions and consistent, ethical behavior at the head of the organization.
16. Trust in manager
The importance of the employee-manager relationship cannot be overstated. Managers who are seen as dependable, fair, honest and genuinely caring by their teams can help drive employee engagement through interpersonal trust.
17. Work process
Employees are engaged when processes are efficient, logical and effective. A process that is over-complex, stagnant over time, or too loose and vague will block productivity and frustrate employees. Again, managers can play a role in preventing these issues by removing barriers for their teams and supporting prioritization and focus.
18. Work-life balance
Without work-life balance, even the most enthusiastic employees are at risk of burnout. A sustainable level of work-life balance, supported by a company culture that honors people’s lives inside and outside work, is crucial for employee engagement over the long-term.
19. Performance and accountability
Transparency matters. Employees need to know what is expected of them in their role and what they will be held accountable for. Feedback and conversations about performance with managers help make sure this happens.
20. Psychological safety
Linked to communication and ethics, a sense of psychological safety comes from feeling able to voice your opinions without negative consequences, even when they differ from other people’s, including those of senior leadership.
21. Recognition
Being seen and having work recognized is a fundamental part of an employee’s relationship with their employer. Without it, engagement cannot develop.
22. Resources
Another baseline requirement for employee engagement is having the right resources to do the job and an environment that enables productivity. This engagement driver has taken on a new dimension with the rise of remote working.
23. Respect
In work as in life, respect is essential. A culture where respect between individuals is a given is more likely to create an engaged workforce. In the best cultures, respect can be maintained even when there is conflict or disagreement.
24. Role fit
No matter which other drivers are in play, if an employee feels they are not a good fit for their role it will have a significant impact on whether they stay long-term.
25. Safety
Feeling safe at work is a fundamental requirement for employee engagement. This driver relates to hygiene and health considerations, especially in the context of COVID-19.
Taking action on employee experience drivers
As we’ve described, employee experience and employee engagement drivers are often interlinked. This means an integrated approach where multiple drivers are addressed can yield useful employee engagement strategies. Here is an example of how this might look in a business.
- The traditional business
This organization has a long history and may be grappling with legacy processes and culture that no longer serve it. Measuring engagement might happen on an annual basis, meaning that change is slow. Employees don’t expect to see change as a result of their feedback, but they are willing to be pleasantly surprised. For this business, the leadership and HR have an important role to play in championing employee feedback and putting their weight behind cultural changes towards employee experience. Provided baseline engagement drivers are taken care of, the focus will be on communication and survey follow-up. Work process may also play a role, with employees feeding back and contributing to changes and improvements.
- The typical business
This company already has a basic handle on employee engagement but would like to sharpen up its ways of measuring and taking action on feedback. Leaders may be frustrated with the lack of ROI on EX management and feel hesitant to invest in it further. To move forward and capitalize on more of its engagement opportunities, the company needs to see ROI. This could come in the form of customer focus, authority and empowerment, and collaboration, where employees are offered the chance to prove their potential and add value to the business at the same time.
- The non-traditional business
A forward-thinking company that wants to be at the bleeding edge of business and is keen to take advantage of the latest thinking. Feedback is recognized as highly valuable at all levels, and there is a strong culture of collaboration and communication. For this organization, it’s a question of building on a strong foundation and honing the strategy further in an agile, iterative way. This may be a company that frequently pivots and adapts to its market, so managing change and strategic alignment could be fruitful areas of focus for improving engagement and job satisfaction. If the business is strong on innovation and empowerment, making sure employees understand their performance and accountability expectations may provide a useful balance.
EX management with Qualtrics
Experience management is our passion, and we have developed a comprehensive platform for measurement, feedback, collaboration and action that is trusted by businesses around the world of all sizes and in all kinds of sectors. Our powerful yet easy-to-use tools are known for their versatility and performance in capturing insights and driving change.
But it’s not just about the tools. We can help you design an EX management program that fits your culture, goals, and available resources, using expert-validated metrics and a proven framework that can be tailored to your goals and challenges. What’s more, you’ll be offered expert, responsive support to help you grow and scale your EX program over the long-term.
Encourage employee engagement within your organization