Many organizations run staff surveys to understand how much engagement their staff have. They measure all manner of things from job satisfaction to attitudes to pay to confidence in leadership to their understanding of the organizational strategy.
What usually follows is some focus groups on the low scoring areas and action plans to tackle the points raised. Sometimes these are acted on, but often they get filed away and forgotten about as normal work takes over. Then it is time for the next staff survey and the whole cycle begins again.
The problem with staff surveys like this is that they catch people when their judgement is clouded by day to day hassles and their fluctuating emotional attitudes toways the organization. They also try and understand everything, with long lists of questions, when the attitude of the member of staff is often affected by one particular issue. For example, if you had a pay freeze this year, this may affect the member of staff's confidence in leadership even though it is not specifically connected.
Staff surveys are not therefore very useful for understanding staff issues. What works instead? There are three staff metrics that count:
- Staff turnover. What percentage of your staff are leaving? In what job types? In what locations? Who are the managers? The right turnover will vary from industry to industry. Too low is as bad as too high. What is the trend? How long have they been working for you?
- Rationale for leaving. What reason do they give? More pay? To study? To work for a competitor? No opportunity to develop? Unhappiness with their boss?
- Reason for joining. While most new employees are likely to have rose-tinted views of a new employer, you can track their reasons for joining and map against their reasons for leaving. So if someone gives their reason for joining as to develop professionally then gives their reason for leaving as lack of opportunities to develop, there is a clear statement on your organization.
Tracking these three metrics will give you hard data to act on. The employee has taken concrete action (to leave and to join) so it is trustworthy information not tainted by day to day attitudes or open to interpretation. Study the data over the year. Trends should emerge and based on this you can either take steps to change something or accept it as normal.
You can automate the collections of the data giving reasons by designing quick surveys for staff to complete before they finish probation or before their final working day. Make them compulsory for all new and leaving staff and compile into a simple report.
With these three staff metrics, you will get the best idea of what you should be concerned about when building a highly engaged workforce.
What metrics do you use?