How to discover and develop your employees’ engagement factors thanks to HR Data?

How do you measure your employees’ commitment?

Social indicators are indicative of the health of a company. We talk about the absenteeism rate and the turnover rate. While these rates are high, they indicate a low level of employee engagement. Human resources must then interpret the HR data that may reveal what is not working in the workplace (deteriorated social climate, increased absences, overwork, etc.).

Performance-related indicators are essential to measure employee engagement. For example, if the participation rate in training is high, employees are interested in their career development. The engagement rate is therefore good. If not, the company’s strategies must be reviewed.

Human resources can also submit questionnaires or social barometers to employees several times a year. Based on the results, strategies are adjusted. Finally, HR can seek support from an external organization, such as Great Place to Work to conduct internal audits on employee engagement. These audits are often combined with anonymous employee surveys resulting in a numerical summary and a ranking or certification. Based on these results, HR can develop an action plan for each department and function, involving employees in its implementation.

In addition to surveys, one-on-one feedback is ideal for finding out what employees think and feel about various company issues. Their opinions provide HR departments with analytical elements to promote engagement. Indeed, the feedback from employees allows us to collect a lot of data to refine the indicators.

How to improve employee engagement?

The hiring of an employee can be seen when he is fully involved in his work and his professional life. If not, HR departments need to put in place powerful tools to analyze specific data to identify engagement drivers.

Increasing the rate of engagement means reducing absenteeism and turnover to increase productivity, as well as improving the quality of life in the workplace and developing a sense of belonging. In order to make employees more involved and feel well integrated into the company, let’s look at some examples of engagement factors that need to be developed or perfected.

Performance and development interviews must be conducted regularly throughout the year. These individual interviews make it possible to define and monitor the employee’s missions and objectives. They provide feedback to employees to adjust actions and deadlines. This will also allow the company to understand their motivational levers in order to be able to engage them further (need for life balance, need for meaning, etc.)

Beyond these meetings, the company shows that it values human capital resource management. Managers must encourage their teams and congratulate them collectively and individually when good results are achieved. Recognition is one of the most important engagement factors for a company that wants to value human capital.

In addition, the creation of an employer brand is a strong example of how to engage “disengaged” employees. Another way to engage employees is to give them a sense of the company’s mission. This can be done by co-constructing the company’s raison d’être with the employees.

The development of new talent management skills is indicative of a company that wants to move forward and encourage its employees to grow. Talent management is an excellent approach to indicatevidual to retain employees, increase their skills and develop their careers. In addition, there are other solutions to increase employee commitment in a collective way.

In addition, corporate events help strengthen the employer brand among employees. The provision of a break room and the use of internal social networks or participative information platforms that give employees a voice to communicate are also two solutions that are generally appreciated and tend to encourage employee engagement.

HR Data: using data to engage employees

From all HR data, it is important to identify the most relevant data to measure employee engagement. Within big data, HR departments can fill in all the information they deem useful. Then, the collected data extracted from the big data must be analyzed to define several indicators.

For example, the cross-referencing of HR data should make it possible to discover the reasons for departures and, if possible, to anticipate future resignations. Another example: the trainings were not followed? What are the reasons for this? The type of training offered may need to be reviewed. Another issue: information published on the company’s internal social networks is neither seen nor read by employees. How do we get employees to access it? Perhaps the communication is not clear enough?

These are just a few of the many elements that need to be improved to foster employee engagement. In other words, when employees participate in corporate life, it is a sign that employee commitment is real.

Analyzing data reveals many areas for improvement. Once this HR data is aggregated, it becomes a meaningful set of indicators. From this observation, they can be interpreted and help anticipate. Resource management is therefore becoming more precise with more adapted business strategies. In fact, to increase employee satisfaction, it is not enough to recognize talent; you must also be able to stimulate and understand it and empower it to use its potential to the benefit of the company’s productivity.

Also read in our "HR strategy management tools" file:

• Digitization of HR services: the key to overcoming the crisis
• How to conduct a managerial innovation process?
• CSR as a leverage for performance and innovation
• 7 HR trends for 2023
• From "customer centric" to "employee centric
• Employee experience: why are HR and employees not aligned?
• What are the major issues facing HRDs today?
• Organization, talent management, recruitment: priority HR projects?
• Human resources management: what HR strategies for the future?
• Best practices to manage your HR strategy in an optimal way
• The different HR management tools to carry out your HR strategy
• HRIS software: the different areas of intervention for the HR function
• How to convince your management to invest in an HRIS tool?
• Is it necessary to be accompanied in the management of an HR strategy?
• What indicators should be defined to measure the performance of an HR strategy?
• HR strategy: how to achieve effective HR reporting?
• Who should drive HR projects in the company?
• Setting up a working group for an HR project: who should be involved?