Input Requested on Employee Engagement Impact Metrics
An Open-Source Approach
Draft Employee Engagement Metrics
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ESM readers are invited to provide their input into a set of open-source evaluation metrics any organization can use to measure the impact of their investments in people engagement strategies. Below is a preliminary draft of metrics to be evaluated by the growing council in the coming months before formal publication later this year.These are not disclosure standards. These are standardized metrics organizations can use internally and privately appropriate to their lines of business to evaluate the impact of their people investments.
Before publication, any input will be shared with the growing committee of veterans in all aspects of engagement whose input will help guide the final published documents. Other areas of engagement will include sales, customer, channel and supply chain partner, and community engagement efforts, as well as tactics such as motivational events, trade show, learning, communications and other endeavors to engage people.
Please provide any suggestions or observations to Bruce Bolger at Bolger@TheEEA.org.
An Open-Source Approach
These metrics, drawn from ISO (International Organization for Standardization) standards, total quality management practices and other sources, can help any organization more objectively measure the impact and correlations of any types of engagement activities, including rewards and recognition, incentive programs, motivational events, etc. While many of the metrics were developed for sustainability reporting, this effort focuses on metrics organizations can use internally to better understand the impact of their investments in people.
As announced in July, the Enterprise Engagement Alliance has begun to develop a transparent, voluntary set of metrics by which any organization can measure the impact of investments in efforts to engage sales and non-sales employees, customers, distribution and supply chain partners and any stakeholders critical to organizational success.
US organizations combined spend hundreds of billions of dollars each year on efforts to engage stakeholders, with often little in the way of clear impact metrics. Financial managers do a good job of measuring the potential and actual impact of mergers and acquisitions, factories, real estate and other material expenditures but often a very poor job of measuring investments in people engagement. As a result, engagement solution providers often tout general estimates of the cost of disengagement or make claims about the impact of engagement efforts without providing any specific data related to their own clients.
These EEA open-source standards exist for the personal use of management and their solution providers to evaluate the true impact of their investments in people, not for public disclosure. By providing a variety of metrics, organizations can select the metrics that make the most sense for their initiatives, including causational metrics tracking the targeted activities and results, the specific desired outcomes. In the world of total quality management, planners seek to understand how efforts to promote desired actions affect targeted outcomes.
Rather than lock organizations into a rigid framework, this approach enables organizations to select the input and output metrics best suited to their purpose, goals, objectives and values.
Draft Employee Engagement Metrics
Here is a preliminary list of proposed metrics for employee engagement efforts useful for evaluating the impact of rewards, recognition, learning or other tactics. Please send suggestions to Bruce Bolger at Bolger@TheEEA.org.
1. Engagement and Sentiment Metrics
These metrics measure how invested employees feel in their work or organizations.
- Employee Engagement Score (via surveys like Gallup Q12 or custom pulse surveys)
- Net Promoter Score (eNPS) surveys identifying how likely are you to recommend this company as a place to work.
- Number and value of actual employee referrals.
- Participation rates in engagement initiatives (e.g., town halls, feedback sessions) or training and communications.
- Sentiment analysis or internal communications or feedback platforms.
- Internal or external customer satisfaction surveys.
These metrics show whether engagement efforts translate into specific outcomes.
- Productivity per employee – output or revenue divided by headcount.
- Goal achievement rates – percentage of employees meeting or exceeding performance goals.
- Innovation metrics – number of ideas submitted, implemented, or patents filed.
- Cycle times – time required to complete projects.
3. Retention and turnover metrics
- Voluntary turnover rate.
- Retention rate of high performers.
- Time to fill roles.
- Training hours per employee, success rates.
- Utilization rates of engagement, communications, and learning platforms.
- Internal promotion rate.
- Career path satisfaction scores.
- Well-being Index – self-reported mental, emotional, and physical health
- Absentee rates
- Diversity and Inclusion sentiment scores
- Safety—days or other losses due to accidents
- Human Capital ROI (HCROI), a calculation of the return on investment of all people expenses.
- Human Capital Value Add (HCVA), a calculation of value added by employee expenses.
- Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) – including internal and external customers.
- Revenue and profits per employee
Please provide any suggestions or observations to Bruce Bolger at Bolger@TheEEA.org.
Enterprise Engagement Alliance Services
Celebrating our 15th year, the Enterprise Engagement Alliance helps organizations enhance performance through:1. Information and marketing opportunities on stakeholder management and total rewards:
- ESM Weekly on stakeholder management since 2009. Click here to subscribe; click here for media kit.
- RRN Weekly on total rewards since 1996. Click here to subscribe; click here for media kit.
- EEA YouTube channel on enterprise engagement, human capital, and total rewards since 2020
Management Academy to enhance future equity value for your organization.3. Books on implementation: Enterprise Engagement for CEOs and Enterprise Engagement: The Roadmap.
4. Advisory services and research: Strategic guidance, learning and certification on stakeholder management, measurement, metrics, and corporate sustainability reporting.
5. Permission-based targeted business development to identify and build relationships with the people most likely to buy.
Contact: Bruce Bolger at TheICEE.org; 914-591-7600, ext. 230.
