Employees are the cornerstone of your company. Their engagement, loyalty, and work is what drives your success. So, is there a way to actually assess what the benefits are from investing in your employees? In short, how can you measure employee experience ROI (return on investment)? Let’s take a look.

Why measure employee experience ROI?

First, let’s look at why it is important to invest in your employees and to measure the success of your endeavours. As a company, your main assets are your customers and your employees, which we know are inextricably intertwined. The logic of this causality seems simple enough: If your employees are happy and engaged, they provide the best services they can for customers. Your customers then in turn get to have the best possible experience they can have.

While there are nuances to this connection, the overall message is the same: Investing in your employees is investing in your customers, and that’s where you’ll see the return on your investments. In a 2019 Forbes article, Greg Kihlstrom summarises the benefits of great employee experience, with the tangible returns including increased employee retention, greater productivity, and, as mentioned before, increased customer satisfaction. Less tangible, but equally important, ROIs include greater innovation and easier recruiting.

How to measure employee experience ROI

If a great employee experience is comprised of high employee satisfaction, engagement, and loyalty, what are some of the drivers that determine these factors? Here are are some of the most essential KPIs to consider.

Drivers of engagement:

• A healthy company culture: This includes, but is not limited to, such things as communication styles, flexibility of working hours and time, work-life balance, empathy, understanding, the ability to listen, as well as the idea that employees feel like they can incorporate themselves with ideas, etc.
• Growth, development, innovation: Do you provide opportunities for your employees to innovate, collaborate, workshop ideas, as well as training and development possibilities?
• Inclusion and well-being: Part of the overall company culture, but deserve specific attention.
• Alignment of values / ethics: Employees need to know that their values align with those of the company. Is the greater mission or messaging something they are passionate about?
• Office spaces and equipment: This means that all work spaces are equipped with the technology needed; that break rooms and facilities are up to date; and that furniture is ergonomic; etc.
• Leadership style: Make sure the leadership is style clear and focussed, yet approachable; set clear tasks and roles, communicate concisely and with clarity, etc.
• Respect and recognition: Part of the leadership style: are your employees actively recognised and rewarded for their achievement?

These are just a selection of factors that influence your employees’ engagement, satisfaction, and thus loyalty. If you look at the list, it is hard to believe that there is a way to measure these concepts. However, if you go straight to the source— your employees— you will find that their feedback is exactly how you measure employee experience ROI.

Read more about Netigate EX, the complete employee engagement tool.

The power of surveys

Gathering data through surveys is the most direct way to gain actionable insights that will improve your employee experience. As you can tell from the list of drivers, there is no way one survey can cover all of them. There are different types of surveys that will help you gather the information you actually need to improve the individual drivers of engagement. Let’s have a look at some examples.

Annual satisfaction surveys

An annual check-in with your employees about the general levels of satisfaction. This can include drivers like company culture, office equipment, hours and pay, team work and collaboration, etc. Because it is an annual survey, feel free to make it a bit longer, without making it overwhelming. Tracking satisfaction levels across the years will help you see progress over time.

Pulse surveys

Pulse surveys, in turn, are shorter surveys, in which you can evaluate a specific measure. For instance, you might have used some insights from an annual survey to take measures. Pulse surveys will help you check in with everyone how effective or successful these changes are. This could be the implementation of new training opportunities, improved office equipment, etc.

eNPS surveys

Employee Net Promoter Score surveys will help you assess the levels of employee loyalty closer. eNPS explores how willing and ready your employees are to recommend your company as an employer to others. This will help you gather insights on loyalty and thus the likelihood of employee retention.

360-degree-feedback

360-degree-feedback is designed to evaluate management and leadership style from different perspectives. These surveys help you assess many of the drivers relating to leadership style and culture. Because of the multi-perspective data, from colleagues on the same level, the employees, as well as a self-assessment of the managers, you can identify strengths as well as gaps or weaknesses. Read more about our 360-degree feedback software here.

The benefits of a using a dedicated employee engagement platform

All of this different types of surveys will help you get a good ROI on investing in employee experience. A good employee experience is the force that keeps your company running. It means lower employee churn and is therefore more cost-efficient. It also means that your workforce is satisfied in their jobs, which keeps them engaged, and therefore more loyal and productive. However, when you’re only getting started with measuring EX, all of the different survey types and metrics can be a handful. Even more so, if you’re mapping out a larger feedback strategy for your company of which EX is only a fraction.

It can thus be vital to have a dedicated employee engagement platform, which will help you keep track of all your EX needs in one place. At Netigate, for instance, we have just launched Netigate EX, which fulfils precisely that function. This platform will help you measure how employees are feeling, pinpoint problem areas, and get recommendations on how to improve engagement. You can smoothly integrate results into your overall feedback strategy allowing for a closed feedback loop.

Mistakes to avoid

Finally, let’s solidify what you should do to measure employee experience ROI by listing a couple of mistakes to avoid.

DON’T:

• Conduct only one type of survey: To improve your EX, you need to make sure your feedback strategy is comprehensive, integrated, and covers your most important bases and drivers.
• Forget to track your progress or evaluate changes made.
• Send out too many or too few surveys: You want to be able to use the data, but you also don’t want to annoy or overwhelm your employees.

Netigate offers a complete solution for conducting employee experience surveys. From eNPS surveys to onboarding and exit interviews, you can gather feedback at every touchpoint along the employee journey. Feel free to reach out via our contact form or start your free Netigate trial to start testing our Netigate EX platform, employee survey software or VoE software right away!