Do Engagement Surveys tell the whole Story?

The harsh truth is NO.

…or at least it is not the only metric to be used to analyse your organisation engagement and whether your organisation is doing well.

I am a strong believer that there is a correlation between engagement and organisational performance, a recent people management research summarised that those organisations with higher levels of engagement, have 40% lower staff turnover and 12% increase on advocacy from customers, doubling their annual net profit.. Those are scores that an organisation should really aim to achieve.

Those organisations who are relying heavily on the engagement score as a statistic or topic for Board discussions are often missing the qualitative and granular side of any engagement tools.

Often it is very hard from a survey to really differentiate teams who are just satisfied in their job and see them as " highly engaged" or teams who have fears to just share what they think, because they do not believe in the actions from the organisation.

In my experience in HR over many years, I have noticed how many organisations may be missing a trick if they fail to take a more granular approach to engagement scores.

HR should provide a more qualitative approach in addition to an engagement survey, which is based on listening groups, asking people on the ground and acting on those focus groups regularly (not a one off before the survey is launched!).

Get in touch if you are thinking to launch a new survey and want to make a success!