When companies want to improve employee engagement and have the ability to measure makes it even better. Companies must measure before implementing meaningful actions to improve engagement. If they don’t estimate correctly, those actions won’t even count; they won’t have a measurable impact on the business’s outcome or how it may affect their bottom line.

Employee engagement helps companies understand and help them thrive in tough economic times.

Predicting key performance outcomes

A consulting company incorporated, and they conduct extensive analysis research every two to four years using statistical techniques that collect multiple studies — on the investigation. By regularly conducting this research and increasing the number of work and units analyzed, SNRJ Web Marketing Solutions uses different marketing software to stay on the cutting edge of how well employee engagement predicts vital performance outcomes.

Researchers did a study on 49,928 units, including nearly 1.4 million employees. This eighth iteration of the analysis established the connection between employee engagement and came up with the following outcomes:

• customer ratings
• profitability
• productivity
• turnover ratios
• safety incidents
• internal theft
• absenteeism
• patient safety incidents
• quality control

This study also confirmed that employee engagement continues to be a powerful tool that shows company performance even through adverse conditions. Ask what their intentions are in decline in trade, it will be apparent that employees not in tune with the companies motives were sitting around to see what happens. Now ask employees who were in tune; those employees had something to bring to the table that could have gotten something to the company’s attention that would have gone unnoticed. That’s why they’re usually the most productive employees.

Studies have proven the differences in performance between the two—engaged and those that weren’t. And The top half of engaged employees doubled their odds of success compared to those who weren’t. The ones in the 99th percentile had four times the success rate of those at the first percentile. These performance differences are always significant to businesses.

The top employee’s engagement outperformed bottom performance employees by 10% on customer ratings, 22% in profitability, and 21% in productivity. Employers saw significantly lower turnover rates (25% in higher turnover companies, 65% in low-turnover companies), internal theft (28%), employee absenteeism (37%) and fewer safety incidents (48%), patient safety incidents (41%), and quality defects (41%).

A 2012 analysis showed that employee engagement account for each of the nine performance outcomes studied. It also showed that the strong correlations between engagement and performance are highly consistent across organizations from diverse industries and regions worldwide.

Increasing engagement leads to higher earnings per share.

The analysis showed that companies with engaged workforces have higher earnings per share (EPS) and seem to have recouped from the recession at a much faster rate. In a recent study, 49 publicly traded companies with EPS data available from 2008-2012 and analysis data public from 2010 and 2011 in its database. The study found that businesses with increased activity-involved employees perform better than their competitors.

• At an average of 9.3 engaged employees, companies for every actively disengaged employee experienced 147% higher EPS than their competition.
• Companies with an average of 2.6 engaged employees for every actively disengaged employee, in contrast, experienced 2% lower EPS compared with their competition during that same period.

Researchers discovered that as the economy began to bounce back after 2009, having an engaged workforce became a strong differentiator in EPS. Companies with engaged workforces seemed to have an advantage in regaining and growing EPS faster than their industry equals. Introducing companies with average engagement levels witnessed no increased advantage over their competitors in the economic recovery.

Measuring what matters

Without using a standard, there is no logical basis for making a decision or taking action. Companies can understand this to a certain extent, but many measure performance using the wrong mind frame. When leaders work with SNRJ Web Marketing Solutions to measure and manage employee engagement at their companies, they can be confident that the analysis is compiled from years of empirical research.

EPS, profitability, productivity, and customer ratings are critical health and growth potential indicators. The research shows that the analysis is the best measurement tool for initiating companywide transformation to create sustainable growth.

Companies constantly evolve and need new ideas regularly. Employees that are engaged provide the best ideas. They’re thinking about their role within the company and how their input can help make things run steady.

Focusing on measuring and managing employee input using analysis metrics, companies gain an edge and advantage that will help keep them to keep moving forward. Research shows that their input help companies resist — and possibly even thrive — in tough economic times.

Employee Benefit That No One’s Talking About

People leave managers, not companies.

One of two employees has left a job to get away from the current management to improve their career.

Bad management can leave an impression that makes movies like Office Space hilarious but true. Just about everyone can relate to the sense of dread about coming to work when management makes a good job feel uncomfortable. Remember, we spend a good part of our lives working, and if you are not happy working where you are, you will be a miserable person.

Effects of bad management reach more than just engagement; it can undermine your company’s efforts to help employees improve themselves.

Bad managers often are one-two punch: Employees feel miserable while at work, and that misery follows them home, increasing their stress and putting their well-being on.

Companies make substantial investments in benefits programs aimed towards employee retention and cheaper healthcare costs.

The average health benefit cost per employee has gone up by over 16% in just the last five years.

When an employee’s health suffers, your company suffers.

Unhappy, unhealthy employees affect:

• Absenteeism
• Performance
• Customer ratings
• Quality
• Profit

Companies should never promote smoking or other bad habits that are linked to health problems — you’d be undermining all of your efforts.

Think of management the same way a bad manager is damaging to your employee’s health and, as a result, to your company’s bottom line.

According to the State of the American Manager report,

Managers account for at least 70% of the variance in employee engagement scores.

Just as a bad manager can ruin a good job, a great manager can make a good job even better.

So if people leave good jobs because of bad managers, why don’t they seek out jobs that offer great managers?

Companies don’t think about great managers as a benefit or publicize that benefit to prospective employees.

It’s a huge missed opportunity.

Companies should publicize great managers as part of their employee value proposition (EVP) to attract the best employee talent.

To keep the star people you’ve worked are to find and hire, you need to deliver on the promise of excellent management.

Effective people management could be the most challenging aspect of sustaining a thriving enterprise.

Companies need to pay more attention to promoting and developing good managers and then letting the world know they have these good managers.

Here’s SNRJ’s advice for building and maintaining an excellent healthy, and thriving organization that starts with management.

Managers should have the strong natural ability to:

• Placement of people in the correct roles
• Create a culture of clear accountability
• Engage employees with a compelling vision
• Motivate every employee individually
• Coach and develop employees by focusing on their strengths and helping them with their weaknesses
• Make decisions based on productivity, not politics
• Build trust and maintain communication with their employees about both work, especially also life outside of work

18% of people in management roles demonstrate a high level of talent for managing others, while another 20% show raw talent. Their contribution is about 48% higher profit to their companies than average managers.

2. Promote managers for the right reasons.

Two things that usually earn a promotion in management have nothing to do with great management ability: holding their current position and mastery of previous, non-managerial role accomplishments.

An effective manager requires talent of their own and someone who shined in a previous position.

Companies fail to choose the candidate with the right talent for the job 82% of the time.

Hiring great managers takes a rigorous, validated process.

Management is a talent, just like any other job skill, that often goes overlooked.

Development can be effective. The most effective method for obtaining great managers is rigor and finding, hiring, and promoting people with natural management abilities.

These managers can come from inside your organization or be outsourced, and they may often be hiding in plain sight in another role.

It has been studied, tested, and defined as the best method for selecting people with natural managerial talents. The right people in management roles can see significant improvements across your business, most significantly, in employee health.

3. Great managers are your company’s No. 1 benefit.

Managers’ span of influence on your company is finding and hiring talented ones.

Publicize your managers on hiring websites as a significant part of your EVP, make sure employees know the benefit a talented manager can bring to their work and life.

When an individual is deciding between two companies in their job search, they’ll choose the company with better managers.

The effect of having a great manager is the gift that keeps on giving.

Happy, healthy employees mean a better environment, increasing productivity, and a more profitable company. They love their jobs, and spreading the word sets you up to hire and keep more top talent.