There are some obvious ways employee engagement can be revealed:

• Annual surveys and/or questionnaires
• Tracking changes in the staff attrition rate
• Increase in the number of employee referrals for recruitment and commercial purposes
• Growth in productivity

Employee Satisfaction Surveys (ESS) used to be considered the most popular method for measuring how happy an employee was in the organisation. But a happy employee is not necessarily a productive employee. Even an employee who is doing his or her best might not be fully productive or aligned with the organisational golas or values. Anyway ESS is gradually being replaced by surveys that do genuinely measure employee engagement.

For example, an Employee Opinion Survey across the organisation designed and analysed by an independent body backed up by an Action Planning Group formed from within the organisation that comprises a cross-section of people from across the company. This group works on different projects leveraging the strengths identified by the survey and resolving the identified weak areas. This measures employee engagement from a number of dimensions:

• How employees feel (their emotions toward the company, the leadership, the work environment, etc)
• How they intend to act in the future (will they stay, give extra effort, etc.)
• How committed they are to work with the orgnaisation to improve things.

Employee engagement needs to be measured at regular intervals, twice a year to once every two years, in order to track its contribution to the success of the organisation. Enterprise wide surveys can be supplemented by conducting dipsticks surveys on specific issues concerning employee engagement and morale. Weekly or montly questions can be hosted on the organisation's Web site to create and ongoing flow of data. Two things are vital

• The fairly analysed findings of any surveys or questionnaires made freely avialableinternally
• Action follows as quickly as possible to address the points raised.

Conducting research or an intitative on employee engagement without planning how to handle the result can lead employees to disengage. Now enough of my ideas, how about you?

What are the ways you test and evaluate engagement?