Recognise This! – Measuring employee engagement and employee satisfaction are not the same thing.

What’s the point of employee engagement? Why not just measure good-old trusty employee satisfaction?

Have you ever been asked (or asked yourself) these questions? The answers are many.

   1. Employee engagement is a “better metric and more strongly related to business outcomes” according to Towers Watson analyst and author of the Mumblr blog, Abhishek Mittal. His analysis showed managers in the top 25% for engagement had half the attrition rate of managers in the bottom 25%. But when satisfaction was used as the metric, managers in the top 25% had an attrition rate only 10% lower than the bottom 25% of managers.

   2. Engaged employees have a greater sense of connection and understanding of the meaning of their work. Bret Simmons has said, “It’s very difficult for employees to be engaged when their jobs are mundane and they have not been shown how what they do really matters.” Whilst you can’t always solve for mundane jobs that must get done, you can always help employees understand why those jobs are important and valuable within the bigger picture.

   3. Engaged employees experience greater well being. Actively disengaged workers – those so emotionally disconnected they jeopardise the team – experience the same levels of ill health as those who are unemployed. This is a rate far higher than those who are engaged, according to Gallup.

 
Add to those reasons expectations that increased engagement was the best way to avoid strike and a powerful impetus for trust in the workplace, the value of creating a work environment in which employees want to engage then measuring and reporting on success becomes clear.

What other benefits do you see of measuring and tracking engagement vs. satisfaction?