Key Metrics To Better Understand Your Employees

The sad fact of the world is that most businesses don't truly understand their employees. Many managers think they do, but in reality they're often living in ignorance and not really getting a full picture of what they're thinking and feeling. Because of this, it's critical to use data metrics and proper survey methods. When you have operational and sentiment data telling you what employees are doing and how they're feeling, it allows you to better manage them and understand how they operate. This can reduce turnover and make your entire organisation more effective and efficient.

So what are these metrics?

Sentiment and engagement metrics

Most brands begin by tracking a collection of sentiment and engagement metrics. Please provide deep insights into your team's emotional connection to the work they do and the company they work for.

One option is to provide them with an employee engagement survey. These allow you to figure out whether your employees have burned out and whether they're managing their workflows and stress levels. You can also try doing an employee net promoter score on a scale of 1 to 10, telling you how likely people working for your organisation are to recommend you as a place to work. This allows you to categorise your team into:

• promoters (who provide a score of 9 or 10 out of 10)
• passives (who provide a score of 7-8 out of 10)
• detractors (who give your company a rating between 0 and 6 out of 10)

You can then use this information to figure out who is positive about working for you and who is not, and what you can do to help team members who aren't as keen on working for you change their minds. Finally, you can use annual or bi-annual surveys to measure whether employees feel they have a future with the company. This metric tells you their overall satisfaction levels right now and their feelings about opportunities for the future. If you see a drop here, it can be a sign of increased turnover in the following months.

Retention and stability metrics

Another key data point you should focus on is your retention and stability metrics. These tell you whether your long-term workplace culture is sustainable.

The easiest one to track is your internal mobility rate. This tells you how many open roles are filled by current employees. The higher this number, the healthier the culture in general because it means that team members have the opportunity to rise through the ranks and go through a series of promotion and development steps.

Another key indication, key statistic you should track is the retention of your high performers. These are people who are in the top 10% of your talent according to other metrics that you collect. These workers are often 2 to 10 times more effective in their roles than their colleagues, so when you lose them it represents a significant hit for your firm. Ideally you should be doing everything you can to maintain relationships with these employees and ensure that they stay with you long term.

Finally, you should track the voluntary turnover rates. This is the percentage of employees who choose to leave. Breaking it down by tenure (for example, looking at the percentage leaving in under 90 days and comparing that to those leaving after two years) tells you whether there is a problem with long-term culture or something short-term like issues with onboarding.

Wellbeing and operational stress metrics

Well-being and operational stress metrics are another important factor to consider. How employees feel is a major determinant of the amount of work that they're willing to do and their contribution to your company.

Historically, firms tracked absenteeism rates. This measures unplanned absences resulting from health issues, burnout, and low engagement. This metric remains critical today, as more employees than ever are willing to pull sick days if they aren't happy with their role.

Overtime hours per employee is another proxy for overall well-being. The odd bit of overtime here and there is perfectly normal in most businesses, as seasonal demand changes. If an employee is consistently putting in extra hours every week for months on end, it could be a sign that they're working too hard and may experience imminent burnout.

Finally, if you notice an increase in one-on-one meeting frequency, it may be an indication that something's wrong. For example, increases could mean that managers are pulling aside a specific colleague more often to correct their work. A decrease might mean a loss of engagement or interest in team projects.

Satisfaction metrics

You can also collect overall satisfaction metrics, similarly to how you would do so for your customers. These are often the simplest to collect, although they can be impenetrable and not tell you a lot about what's going on for employees internally.

The easiest satisfaction metrics to collect are to get your workers to rate their job roles on a scale of 1 to 5 in terms of how they feel about doing them. Don't be surprised if you get a lot of 4s out of 5s, as many people aren't really happy with the work that they do completely and would rather be doing something else most of the time. Do pay attention if you get a lot of 1s and 2s out of 5s. This suggests that there's something really seriously wrong with company culture and that it's way below expectations.

Whenever you collect information from employees, make sure that you build trust natively into the process. The metrics you can create are only as good as the information that you're able to obtain from colleagues. If they feel like they can't give honest feedback because surveys are not truly randomised, then they'll be less likely to provide you the information that you need in order to move forward effectively. Because of this, you need to be careful. Make sure that:

• All feedback is randomised, and that colleagues trust that you won't be able to link feedback responses to them.
• The majority of feedback is just yes-or-no answers or ratings out of five.
• Avoid anything that requires a long commentary, as employees may worry that this will identify them and harm their future prospects.