Employee Engagement Definition and Measurement
Thought Leadership from Scarlett Surveys International,
The Survey Company®

Employee engagement is often talked about these days, yet few organizations practically define, measure or apply this concept.  Engagement is a relatively new way of thinking about leading people - a sort of magnetic rather than a coerced approach to getting people to want to do whatever is necessary to ensure the continuous high performance and success of the business.  As a philosophy, "engagement" centers around an individual's degree of dedication to the organization and its goals with a payoff of self-actualization. The assumption in the business world is that engagement level predicts the positive intensity and quality of effort the organization can expect from an individual within job confines.

Practically speaking, measuring engagement is much more complicated than waxing wise or wishing it. Contrary to most published materials, meaningful engagement measurement is derived from tried and true attitude classification psychometrics, and collected via survey responses to a validated, copyrighted inventory of proven questions rather than a host of random opinion questions.

Leading the way in thought leadership, Scarlett Surveys defines employee engagement as an individual's degree of positive or negative emotional attachment to their organization, their job and their colleagues. Fully engaged employees, according to our proven measurement classification formula, have a high tendency to contribute better-than-average individual productivity, innovation and applied learning, plus they remain with the company longer than less-engaged employees. Moreover, the discretionary efforts of the fully engaged are of higher quality and of a more positive intensity then other classifications. (Their enthusiasm is actually infectious.)

While the understanding and nourishment of employee engagement is paramount to an organization's business success and competitive advantage, it is essential to measure and manage both individual engagement and group engagement. Doing so ensures a balance between individual needs and personal motivational fuels with group esprit de corps and synchronized unity of effort.  Managing only individual engagement without managing group engagement risks organizational discontinuity and often promotes individual feelings of entitlement or superiority, contrary to the business purpose of increasing associate contributions in sync with organizational needs while improving the workplace.

Scarlett Surveys has resolved this conundrum by using validated measures of both group engagement (Associate Engagement Research Index™) and individual engagement (Engagement Wheel™) thereby avoiding measurement myopia.  The AER Index™ (group engagement) is calculated from employee responses to battery question sets encompassing 15 engagement factors proven to measure group dedication and unity of effort.  The Engagement Wheel™ (individual engagement) classifies each individual's level of positive or negative emotional attachment to the organization and its goals.  Both engagement profiles show the effect of various employer practices on levels of engagement, individually and collectively, thus simplifying the complicated and making it easy to improve.  When repeated yearly and properly applied, Scarlett Surveys' engagement measurements enable organizations to boost associate economic contribution and improve business performance while enhancing quality of work life!