You don't need to have your dream job to be passionate about your work.

Employee engagement is about feeling connected to the organization, its mission and goals, coworkers, and the work itself. If employees feel connected, they are a lot more likely to feel passionate. And passionate employees are productive ones!

It's essential to keep close tabs on some key employee engagement statistics so you can better understand how to connect with your people.

All statistics in this report that are not otherwise cited were derived from HR.com's State of Employee Engagement 2021 report.

Employee Engagement Today

When you're staring at a screen all day, feeling connected is a lot harder.

We've got constant distractions keeping us from our work.

Disconnection is partly to blame for a rise in mental health issues. And your business can't ignore it.

Poor mental health can cause employees to be even more emotionally disconnected from your organization—leading to employee attrition and a decline in company culture.

Why You Should Be Tracking Employee Engagement

Especially in a remote work environment, it's crucial to stay in touch with your people and how they are doing.

Here are a couple of reasons why you should be tracking employee engagement statistics.

1. To make your case to—and get support from—leadership

39% of highly engaged organizations say that their company leaders prioritize employee engagement.

Company culture starts at the top.

Plus, if you want to get funding for employee engagement, you need executive backing. And they want to see the stats! How are employees actually doing? Why? How is that affecting the bottom line (more on that soon)?

Related: 5 Ways HR Leaders Can Get Executive Team Support

2. So you can make a game plan

Keep your efforts focused, and you will be more likely to succeed. Gathering employee engagement statistics will help you help employees where it matters most. Then you will have clear action items to share with executives and mid-level managers.  

5 Employee Engagement Data Points HR Leaders Should Be Tracking

Using multiple data points is critical. Here are some ways to measure employee engagement, plus some other things to consider along the way.

1. Emotional and Mental Wellness

Unengaged employees are more likely to be struggling with their mental health.

Think about it. When you're feeling disconnected from your company, how do you feel? Poor mental health can lead to disconnection, and disconnection can strain mental health even more.

There are multiple ways you can gather employee wellbeing data:

 
• Surveys
 
• Focus groups
 
• Group mental health sessions with a licensed counselor
 
• Manager one-on-ones
 
• Your mental health program (if they supply HIPPA-compliant utilization and wellbeing data)

If you're looking for hard data, surveys and your mental health program are likely your best options. If you're looking to delve more into why employees feel the way they are, go for one-on-ones, support groups, and group mental health sessions.

Here are some employee engagement statistics that you can gather:

 
• On a scale of 1-10, how burnt out do you feel on a typical day?
 
• How would you rate your emotional/mental wellness?
 
• How stressed have you felt in the past month, on average?
 
• What would help you feel less stressed?

Make sure to specify that this data is anonymous and will not impact how they are evaluated.

You can also encourage managers to talk to their direct reports about mental health during one-on-ones. Managers can start the conversation by discussing how they have been coping recently and what has helped them.

If you find that mental and emotional wellness is suffering, here are some aspects of your culture to focus on:

 
• Building trust
 
• Manager training
 
• Setting realistic expectations
 
• Giving more feedback
 
• DEI efforts
 
• Offering mental health and wellness benefits

2. Employee Productivity

Many HR leaders track employee productivity statistics through the company's performance management or task tracking system.

Productivity can be measured by sales, tasks closed, hours worked, and revenue per employee, to give you some ideas.

You can also dig into presenteeism rates.  If employee productivity is low, you may want to consider looking into:

 
• Quality of employee-manager relationships
 
• How expectations are set within teams
 
• Number of growth and promotion opportunities
 
• Whether employees are getting adequate feedback from their managers

3. Retention and Attrition Rates

Low retention and high attrition point to low employee engagement.

If you already know your attrition rate is high (like many other businesses worldwide in 2021), try asking yourself and your people why

Consider...

 
• Holding exit interviews to uncover why employees are leaving
 
• Asking current employees what they like and dislike about their jobs

4. Customer Satisfaction Rates and Service Quality Ratings

Knowing how well employees perform, especially when talking to customers, will help you understand how engaged they are.  Work with your marketing team to send a survey out to customers. Here are some customer survey ideas to get you started.

If service quality ratings are low, look at the other data points you collected to find ways to support your people better. This will help increase customer satisfaction and engagement.

5. Work-life Balance Statistics

Surveys are great for this one.

Some employees will overwork due to stress, and some with underperform.

Ask employees:

 
• How often they work outside of regular working hours
 
• Average hours worked per week in the past quarter
 
• The number of breaks they take each day
 
• How stressed they are about deadlines and workload
 
• How they would rate their work-life balance satisfaction

Similar to tracking employee engagement statistics around mental health, work with your managers to get answers to these questions.

76% of highly engaged organizations share employee engagement data with mid-level managers at least once every year. Working closely with your leaders and managers is key to gathering employee engagement statistics—and creating solutions to improve them.

Use these employee engagement statistics to determine the best ways to increase engagement for your workforce. For more employee engagement statistics, check out the report below! You can also view an infographic with a summary of the findings here.

Disclaimer

By participating in/reading the service/website/blog/email series on this website, you acknowledge that this is a personal website/blog and is for informational purposes and should not be seen as mental health care advice. You should consult with a licensed professional before you rely on this website/blog’s information. All things written on this website should not be seen as therapy treatment and should not take the place of therapy or any other health care or mental health advice. Always seek the advice of a mental health care professional or physician. The content on this blog is not meant to and does not substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.