HR Best Practices: Employee Engagement & The Success of Your Organization

In hopes of creating a feedback system for employers that would identify and measure elements of worker engagement, The Gallup Organization assembled a group of its social scientists in 1997 to examine the 1 million employee interviews in its database, the hundreds of questions that had been asked over the decades and every variable on performance that organizations had supplied with their employee rosters. The data was analyzed to find out which aspects of work were most powerful in explaining workers’ productive motivations on the job.

As a result, Gallup devised a 12-question survey to measure employee engagement. Since then, the Gallup Organization has surveyed millions of employees in thousands of work units within corporations, measuring employee engagement on a five-point scale indicating weak to strong agreement. The survey questions are as follows:

Do you know what is expected of you at work?

Do you have the materials and equipment you need to do your work right?

At work, do you have the opportunity to do what you do best every day?

In the last seven days, have you received recognition or praise for doing good work?

Does your supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about you as a person?

Is there someone at work who encourages your development?

At work, do your opinions seem to count?

Does the mission/purpose of your company make you feel your job is important?

Are your associates (fellow employees) committed to doing quality work?

Do you have a best friend at work?

In the last six months, has someone at work talked to you about your progress?

In the last year, have you had opportunities at work to learn and grow?

Why are the results to these questions so important? Employee engagement is critical in order for a company to survive. Studies have shown that disengaged employees impact productivity, customer satisfaction, and the company’s profitability. Disengaged employees are not concerned with building strong internal and external customer relationships, which is key for the growth of a company.

One of the human resource manager’s strategic responsibilities is to pay close attention and monitor the work environment on a regular basis.  If you take a proactive approach to listen to employee concerns on a timely manner, the company can address and make the necessary changes with the help of the employees.  In turn, it helps create a better work environment for management, employees and the customers.