Are you connecting the dots? 5 data sets to link with your engagement survey

Running an engagement survey gets you a lot of data – staff perceptions on topics including Culture, Diversity and Inclusion and Wellbeing . But the value of your employee engagement survey doesn’t end there.

We live in the age of big data, and technology is getting better and better at supporting HR professionals to identify trends across datasets. Connecting the dots by combining datasets multiplies the power of that data. And in the context of employee surveys, it can amplify the employee voice across many aspects of their experience in your organisation.

It’s not just a one-way relationship. You can use other data sources to make sense of your survey data (“Why are our results so low in Department B?”), but you can also design your survey to answer questions raised by your other data (“Are staff aware of our new wellbeing services?”). Thinking about the data you already have can make your engagement survey a more powerful diagnostic tool.

There are (at least) 5 kinds of data you should consider linking with your engagement survey.

1 Organisational Context

The most valuable source of data is, of course, you – the expert on your organisation. Before your survey, make a list of your assumptions about what the results will be based on your knowledge of recent changes, turnover, and other internal context.

Keep this information to hand when you’re looking through your survey data, and test those assumptions. Does the data tally with those assumptions, or challenge them?

2 External benchmarks

When we provide survey results, we always include a comparison to a group of other organisations. This provides an external benchmark that helps to set the context for survey results – for example, Reward is a survey topic that is often negative, so we shouldn’t necessarily expect high scores.

You might also have access to a sector-specific benchmark data, or to role-specific benchmarks. These can provide invaluable context for expectation-setting.

Specific benchmarking exercises can also be useful  – for example, salary or benefit benchmarking. Having this information alongside staff perceptions’ of their reward package will demonstrate whether staff understand how their reward compares with other organisations. For example, the issue might be with communication rather than with a pay policy.

3 Service Quality

Cross-referencing your survey results against performance metrics for your teams and departments is a powerful way to see the impact of engagement, wellbeing and more on organisational performance. For example, we would expect the most engaged departments to have higher scores on KPIs such as ROI, beneficiary impact or donor retention.

We also expect a positive relationship between engagement survey results and measures of stakeholder satisfaction – for example, NPS scores or satisfaction surveys from your customers, service-users and volunteers. Evidencing that high engagement is tied to higher satisfaction builds up a strong business case for engagement in your organisation.

As well as external stakeholders, you can link your engagement survey results with internal customer surveys – which measure the uptake and satisfaction with particular in-house services, and the services provided by different departments (e.g. Finance or HR). Having the complementary data about how those staff feel and how their service is being perceived can reveal the underlying issues or solutions that might otherwise be missed.

CASE STUDY

Our colleagues in the People Science team at WorkBuzz worked with one organization to analyse three surveys –of frontline staff, of staff in central/support roles, and of clients/beneficiaries.

The analysis that customer advocacy correlated strongly with staff engagement, and demonstrated that when staff felt change was well communicated, service-users agreed.

4 Workload

Engagement survey results often reveal issues around workload and working patterns – especially as not-for-profits are being asked to do more with less.

Where your survey shows high levels of stress or staff finding their workload unmanageable, it can be helpful to compare any hard data you have. For example, data from timesheets including hours worked, TOIL built up, and time spent in meetings or on administrative tasks. That comparison might quantify the scale of the problem, but also show where changes can be made.

Similarly, metrics around annual leave and sickness absence, as well as the uptake of wellbeing support services (e.g., through your EAP) may be indicators of issues with workload, pressure and stress. If you’re seeing red flags in this data, it is worth asking more detailed questions about wellbeing in your next engagement survey.

5 Retention

More engaged teams have a lower flight risk: when staff are advocates of an organisation, and motivated to give of their best, they are less likely to leave. Correlating your engagement survey results against your voluntary turnover data can demonstrate that connection – and your recruitment costs can give you a lowball estimate for the cost of a disengaged workforce. This can be a great way to bring more hesitant leaders on board with the value of engagement.

Another place to look is at onboarding and exit surveys. What are the reasons why people joined your organisation, and what are the reasons that they’re leaving? How does that match up with your engagement survey data? Having this employee lifecycle perspective can help you identify those teams with hidden flight risk.

CASE STUDY

By comparing engagement survey results with retention and absence metrics at an organisation with 13,000 employees, we found that disengaged colleagues were 3.4x more likely to leave the organisation. 25% of disengaged colleagues left within just 3 months.

We also found that disengaged colleagues took around 62% more sick leave per year than engaged colleagues – amounting to a substantial euro cost for the organization.

Key takeaways

Combining your engagement survey with data you already have available multiplies its impact, and amplifies the employee voice.

Valuable datasets include your organisation’s internal context, external benchmarks, and metrics of service quality, workload and retention.

Have you seen the impact of engagement on your organisation’s other KPIs? Or have your people metrics raised questions that your engagement survey could help answer? Get in touch to speak to a survey expert at Agenda about designing a holistic approach.