Employee Engagement
Employee Engagement looks at finding meaning at work and being proud of the organization that the individual works in. It is the involvement level of every individual at work.
As a People Manager, understanding the level of engagement or disengagement of one’s employees at work can help in designing and delegating work appropriately. It can also help you to engage the employees on the right track in order to keep them motivated and work well together. Working together leads to good team work which in turn results in a more productive workforce.
An engaged work force is more likely to take on challenges on a positive note. These challenges lead to a meaningful work experience. Standing up for one’s organisation and taking pride in the organisation will also lead to loyal employees who stay with the organisation for longer.
By measuring Employee Engagement, the organisation will have a clear understanding of the employee’s level of involvement at work. This can impact attrition levels, productivity levels and help in the growth of business as well.
Work Life Blend
According to the findings almost a third of workers in India report that they have to sacrifice sleep to fit in personal and work commitments, either by waking up too early or by burning the midnight oil. Also, 22% of Indian workers feel they have to overcompensate for time taken off for personal matters.
In a situation of this kind, measuring Work-Life Blend is about the extent to which the individual is able to blend one’s personal and professional/work commitments. As People Managers, you are expected to ensure there is adequate work-life balance in the lives of your employees. However, the fact is that with the advent of technology, our lives have got blurred and work-life balance as a concept does not have any relevance any more. In fact, research indicates that up to 45% of employees feel obligated to check-in after business hours or while on vacation, and another 26% feel guilty for using their vacation time, not working from home or if they’re sick.
Blending the two lives and managing priorities is the way forward and as a People Manager, you are expected to guide your employees in this pursuit. Measuring this pillar will help you understand your employees better and managing their priorities with an effective blend will in turn make them more productive at work as well. Measuring this pillar helps other managers because it helps them understand their team better and chalk out their work schedules better. Work-Life Blend is an indicator of how productive the employees are. As a result of its inter-linkage to the employee’s health, measuring it matters to the organization because it implies how productive the employees are at work.
Being able to ensure employees are able to blend their lives and manage their priorities is also an indicator that the organization respects their employees and has their best interests in mind. When Work-Life Blend gets measured, the health of the employee gets impacted. If there is a major spill-over of work in both domains where the employee is unable to manage one’s priorities, s/he is likely to work overtime. Commitments on the personal front could impact one’s work life as well. In both cases, it is likely to result in fatigue in the employee. The research is clear. Working beyond 40 to 50 hours per week results in the marginal returns from additional work to decrease rapidly and ultimately become negative.
Driving Force
Driving Force © understands what drives an individual in life and more specifically, at work. It is what motivates and pushes an individual to perform well. Research shows that in reality, people quit for reasons such as lack of trust and confidence in senior leaders, insufficient opportunities for personal career growth and learning, talent under-utilization, job-person mismatch, and so on. Essentially, factors related to one’s Driving Force.
As a People Manager, Driving Force can help in giving some insight as to what motivates an individual. By understanding this pillar, you can help the employees to stay motivated and drive them to perform their best. This pillar can also be used to develop goals based on what motivates the employees extrinsically and intrinsically. Knowing these motivators makes employees feel understood and has a positive impact on their life at work. It is important for an organization to understand what drives different segments of the population at the workplace. Understanding their needs and preferences is an essential step to take while pushing them to perform better and be more productive.
By measuring Driving Force, the impact of it affects productivity directly or indirectly because motivation is what drives an individual to get results at the workplace. It also helps employees feel understood which directly affects their happiness quotient.
Under the pillar Health of an Individual both physical health and mental health based on the requirements at the workplace is focused on. Health ties up with all other aspects at work in several ways.
By measuring mental and physical health, you can understand what services and products to provide that aim to help them lead healthy lives. By measuring health in the organisation, awareness about staying healthy prevails throughout the organisation. Under a parameter as broad as health, a wide spectrum of topics such as nutrition, exercise habits, and multi-tasking need to be looked at.
Absenteeism and presenteeism can also be understood through this pillar. With a poor focus on health, work habits get affected which is why other managers can benefit by measuring this pillar. The organisation will benefit by having a strong workforce that is physically and mentally fit. This, in turn, will translate into a happy workforce with high levels of productivity.
By measuring health, every other domain in an individual’s life is impacted because being physically and mentally stable helps in bringing some stability to the individual at the workplace as well. As supported by a study having a higher number of ‘healthy days’ results in being more actively engaged at work as well. Being healthy impacts work-life blend patterns of the individuals and this can make them a productive and happy workforce!
Interpersonal Relationships
Interpersonal Relationships at Work indicate how much the individual values relationships with others at the workplace. It includes the interactions and relationships that every individual builds with one’s colleagues. As a People Manager, Interpersonal Relationships at Work leads to stronger bonds between one’s team and higher work productivity. Team work also affects collaboration and the strength of a team which helps in delivering a strong work output.
By measuring Interpersonal Relationships at Work, other managers can understand team dynamics. Team dynamics play a crucial role in leading a healthy work environment because when a team works together, results will show high levels of improvement. The other managers will also have an understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of each individual when interpersonal relationships are strong. Effective communication is another factor that helps other managers in carrying out projects smoothly when interpersonal relationships are strong.
The impact of measuring Interpersonal Relationships at Work can be seen on communication patterns across management levels in the organization. A doctoral thesis by researcher Helen Stockhult found that social relationships between colleagues are at the root of an employee's willingness to take on responsibilities beyond their formal job description. Positive Interpersonal Relationships at Work result in better rapport at work among colleagues. This has a direct impact on work productivity as well.
Recognition & Rewards
Rewards and Recognition is about examining how much the individual values the monetary and non-monetary benefits provided at the workplace. As a People Manager, you probably have the best understanding of how important R&R are for every employee. It is one of the main driving forces at the workplace. R&R directly comes under your purview and each of its strands can make or break an employee’s career in the organization. Irrespective of which department the other managers might work in, R&R has a significant role to play. Measuring it helps managers understand if they are motivating their team well enough.
In fact, according to a study about employee feedback from managers, employees ignored by managers are twice as likely as likely to be actively disengaged as compared to workers whose managers focus on their weaknesses. While managers focusing on employee strengths are 30 times more likely to manage actively engaged workers, managers giving little or no feedback to employees result in 4 out of 10 workers being actively disengaged. The onus of effective R&R doesn’t just rely on the manager though.
Recognition can come from one’s peers as well in the form of getting due credit for work being done, A lot is at stake while measuring R&R. A macro approach needs to be adopted to understand the benefits of measuring this pillar. This is because satisfaction with one’s monetary rewards can be understood on two levels. Firstly, understanding if one’s salary and benefits are on par with what others in the organization are offered. Secondly, if one’s package is at par with what the market offers. If not at par, it is likely to impact attrition. Besides what one receives from the organization, awareness about systems in place such as appraisal matters too. Not having enough clarity on the processes that reward and recognize employees can result in a negative perception towards the organization as a whole. This dearth of information gets perceived as a lack of accountability by the employees.
R&R is interlinked to the employee’s driving force, their perception towards job security and their sense of ownership as well. According to a survey, employees that receive regular recognition and praise increase their productivity, increase engagement among their colleagues, are more likely to stay at their company, receive higher satisfaction scores from customers, have better safety records-fewer accidents on the job. Integrating these factors can result in an employee’s satisfaction towards R&R leading to a happier workforce.
Sense of Ownership
Sense of Ownership is about measuring how accountable the employee is for the work being done and how much the organization trusts him/her. As a People Manager, it is your responsibility to ensure employees are functioning in a space that allows them to be their best at what they do. This situation can only arise when other elements that this pillar measures are considered. These elements might appear to be diverse in nature but they are all interconnected.
Factors such as ensuring the employees understand their role in the bigger picture, are aware about what is happening in the organization and feel accountable towards the organization are factors that you need to look after to ensure employees have a sense of ownership and are happy at the workplace. Measuring this pillar helps other managers because it serves as an indicator of how well they are interacting with their teams. As a manager, are they trusting the judgment of the employees they work with? Is specific feedback being given regularly for employees to realize the impact of their work? It also helps them understand the degree of freedom they are providing to their employees at the workplace.
There is a lot that an organization can benefit from if it takes the conscious effort to instill a sense of ownership in its employees. For instance, making sure to acknowledge its employees always gets positive returns in the long run. The organization can gain the trust of the employees when the latter feel likewise about the former.
When Sense of Ownership is measured, employee engagement gets impacted. With a high sense of ownership comes greater responsibility and accountability towards the organization resulting in higher engagement, and vice versa. In fact, research has shown that being able to accept failure and learn how to deal with it will make one happier in the long run. The work environment is interconnected to having a sense of ownership as well. In a situation where there is a positive work environment which is linked to higher engagement and a sense of ownership, a happier workforce is bound to exist.
Work Environment is about the impact of certain tangible and intangible factors in the work culture on the performance of an individual. These factors have an important role to play when an employee decides whether s/he would like to continue working for an organization, or not. Measuring Work Environment helps other managers as it has a real-time impact on the work output and productivity of the employees. If the work environment is not conducive towards performing optimally, work gets hampered.
Managers need to ensure the employees are not in a situation where they are likely to encounter this. By understanding the approach-ability of the leadership team in this pillar, other managers get a better understanding of how successful top-down management initiatives are likely to be in the organization. Several studies cite poor team working environment as an important source of stress for employees. Measuring elements that come under the purview of this pillar has real-time impact on the work output and productivity of the employees. The organization gets an accurate picture of whether the employees are in sync with the vision of the leadership team. The strength and impact of the work culture in terms of whether the employees can relate to the policies and values of the organization can be studied as well.
The employee’s alignment to the job and organization gets impacted when Work Environment is measured. Interpersonal relationships get impacted as well as interactions with the leadership team are studied in this pillar. A great work environment, clear alignment to the organization and positive interpersonal relationships all lead to one major outcome-a happier workforce!
Job Security is about understanding the extent to which your employees feel secure about their jobs and their career path in the organization. Knowing your employees feel secure at work truly matters. If they were constantly under the fear of getting fired, would they be able to perform well? Unlikely.
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Having that sense of security will enable your employees to be more confident at work. It will give them a better clarity of what needs to get done. They will be able to function independently and this autonomy will empower them to be their best. Studies also show that a majority of Indian employees are willing to compromise on the salary provided they have job security and pleasant colleagues at the work place. That is the extent to which employees place a priority on this pillar.
In a competitive market where a war for talent is aggressive, your organization needs to be able to
make its employees feel secure by supporting them and having their best interests in mind. This
support can be either intrinsic or extrinsic in nature. By measuring Job Security, you can understand whether employees are headed in the right direction or not. Their perception towards how the organization takes care of them can be understood.
This learning can then be applied while understanding the phenomena of attrition in the organization. When employees are secure about their jobs, they are more engaged at work. Also, by knowing what is expected of them through better role clarity and having the belief that they have the ability to perform well, their health (physical and mental) gets positively impacted as well. This, in turn, has a positive relationship with your Happyness Quotient.
Alignment is the individual’s belief in what the organization offers and stands for. It also examines the relationship between one’s personal and professional goals and the extent to which they are in sync. The business angle of the tool comes in through Alignment when the individual understands the offerings of the organization.
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As a People Manager, you will realize that Alignment has a direct impact on certain workplace behaviours. Some of these include loyalty towards the firm and standing by the organization in spite of its highs and lows. A loyal workforce where employees take pride in the organisation lead to them being more intrinsically motivated. This has a positive impact on performance which drives the company forward.
Research suggests that senior leaders must continuously focus on inspiration by talking about the future, sharing their vision and translating business strategy into meaningful and personal concepts. By doing so, leadership can become an important driver of engagement. This study indicates the importance that other managers play while measuring this pillar. By measuring Alignment in the organisation, the understanding of business offerings plays an important role to determine the strength of the workplace culture. For other managers, self-awareness about the individual’s understanding of his/her work in the bigger picture provides for employees staying highly motivated and doing great work.
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When employees are aligned in terms of personal and professional goals, they are likely to stay longer and more engaged at the workplace. It also brings in a feeling of being understood when alignment is strong between their personal and professional lives.
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