Employee engagement is a leading indicator of satisfaction, enjoyment, and retention. And engagement doesn’t just impact our employees. It’s good for our clients.
We survey our staff semi-annually to measure engagement because of our commitment to solicit feedback, benchmark our performance, and be transparent. And because our employees are one of our stakeholders and their voice matters. We want to know if we’re providing for our team’s basic needs so they can be successful. We want our staff to feel supported by management. We want to know if they feel like their part of a team and have a sense of belonging. And we want to know if we’re providing opportunities for them to learn and grow. So what did we learn?
Survey Says! We do these 2 things really well:
- Our people know what’s expected of them at work. It sounds elementary but setting clear expectations is critical to a team member’s ability to be successful.
- Our team members know that someone at work cares about them as a person. Be it a supervisor or a co-worker, they have connected with someone on a personal level and they feel valued.
Survey Says! We can do these 2 things better:
- “I have a best friend at work.” Year after year, this is our lowest scoring survey question. At first glance, the question seems out of place. But having friends at work means that you are connected to the people with whom you spend most of your time.
- Our team members want more recognition or praise for doing good work. It’s easy to take good work for granted and it’s no surprise that we don’t say thank you enough. All people want to be recognized for doing well.
Our first employee engagement survey of 2023 told us that our team’s engagement is strong. In fact, it ranked well above the 75th percentile and, in the US anything above the 50th percentile is considered good. But it also highlighted a few things we could work on. And that’s just what we’re going to do.
