Engagement is a tricky thing to measure because there are many factors that can play into an employee’s overall engagement. Each company will want to measure engagement in its own way, based on the company values and culture. Apple will care about different things than Facebook. It’s important for leaders to understand the key factors of engagement that matter within their specific team, organization, or community.
Several organizations and studies have come up with their own criteria for measuring employee engagement such as Towers Watson’s “Global WorkForce Study”, Aon’s “Trends in Global Employee Engagement“, Gallup’s “Q12”, Harvard Business Review’s “Impact of Employee Engagement on Performance”, and Deloitte’s “A new model for Employee Engagement“.
In looking through all these studies and our own work on engagement since 2004, there are common themes that arise that apply universally to almost all teams and organizations.
8 Universal Factors of Employee Engagement:
Vertical Relationship – Is this person’s relationship with their superiors collaborative, supportive, and respectful?
Rewards & Recognition – Do this person’s efforts deem worthy of celebration because they are going above and beyond the basic requirements expected of them?
Upward Mobility – Does this person express interest in expanding their career within the organization by increasing their own involvement and/or skill sets?
Meaningful Work – Does this person feel positively challenged by their work and understand how their work contributes to the greater purpose of the organization?
Employment Balance – Does this person believe that their sense of compensation, work load, work conditions, and benefits are fair?
Team Player – Does this person go out of their way to support fellow co-workers, even if it’s outside their own role and responsibility?
Community Builder – Does this person engage in and support the social connections between co-workers to build a stronger sense of community within the organization?
Organizational Pride – Does this person openly express how proud they are to be in the organization and do the work they do?
Together, these eight universal factors of employee engagement can be used to help a leader assess each individual person’s engagement within their team and organization. Once we understand these factors, we can begin to understand the different levels on the Dance Floor Theory Engagement Pyramid. How would you rate yourself on each of these?
