Engagement with The Organization measures how engaged employees are with the organization as a whole, and by extension, how they feel about senior management. This factor has to do with confidence in organizational leadership as well as trust, fairness, values, and respect - i.e. how people like to be treated by others, both at work and outside of work. | Engagement with "My Manager" is a more specific measure of how employees relate to their direct supervisors. Topics include feeling valued, being treated fairly, receiving feedback and direction, and generally, having a strong working relationship between employee and manager based on mutual respect. |
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The two Organization factors deal with how employees relate to and connect with the organization. | The two Manager factors look at whether managers display the essential skills and behaviors needed to be effective. |
Employee engagement surveys provide organizations with invaluable information. Knowing whether employees are engaged or disengaged is only the first step. You also need to be able to take action on the results. You need to understand the key drivers of engagement and disengagement, and you need to be strategic in order to be able to plan activities or initiatives that will have the greatest impact on increasing engagement.
The elements that drive engagement are usually similar across most companies, but the specific concerns and level of importance are unique and specific in every company and even in different demographic subgroups within a company.
We employ two techniques that enable you to identify the key drivers of engagement in your company and to understand what to focus on and how to improve in those areas.
1. Priority Level - we look at the statistical patterns across all groups in your organization to determine which items are impacting overall engagement within each demographic group. Items with low scores that are strongly linked to engagement are the areas where you will want to focus your change initiatives and engagement strategy.
2. Virtual Focus Groups - next, we ask targeted follow-up questions at the end of the survey that ask employees to provide examples of problems as well as suggestions for how to improve. Once you have identified an area that needs improvement, you can turn to the comments where you will often find detailed information that provides the specific what, why, and how so you can take action.
Pockets of Discontent - An employee engagement survey can identify "at-risk" demographic groups within your companyEven companies with high overall levels of engagement will have areas that are struggling. These problem areas can have a big impact on company performance, with high levels of localized turnover and employee apathy.
Understanding what is happening in these different demographic groups within your organization is at least as important as the overall level of engagement. When you find an at-risk group or an area where engagement is low, you can quickly drill down and look at the specific issues and dynamics within that group.
Sample scores in each of the four factors related to org and employee performance are illustrated below. In this example, we see that there is a high level of engagement with managers, but there are problems with how employees feel about the organization. The most problematic area appears to be strategic alignment.