Communities management
January 5th, 2021

How to Use Employee Metrics to Ignite Workplace Engagement

by Grytics

Employee metrics from enterprise social networks (ESN), such as Workplace from Meta, can be HR’s secret sauce for engaging staff.

Which matters, considering that keeping staff motivated this year, in particular, has been both challenging and unpredictable.

For instance, in early May 2020, employee engagement shot up, with 38% of employees engaged (and 13% actively disengaged), Gallup reported.

However, by June, the number of engaged employees dropped to 31%, according to Gallup.

With 2021 just around the corner, staying ahead of engagement fluctuations will be critical.

With an ESN analytics tool, you can gather member insights to measure and improve employee engagement—from seeing which groups in the org are most active to understanding a dip in a department’s mood in real-time. Let’s take a look at how that works.

Measure, measure, measure

Your ESN generates a ton of data. That said, the information is only useful if you can accurately measure the activity and understand what it means in terms of engagement.

Your analytics tools will allow you to measure engagement using various metrics — from individual members’ activities to leadership’s interactions with staff.

An excellent place to start is with your most active contributors.

Harness the power of your top ESN contributors

Some employees (and leadership) are just more active than others on the organization’s social networks.

Using your analytics tools, you can track your top contributors’ activity to understand better who’s active and to what degree.

For example, your top influencers are the people who motivate other members to comment on and react to their posts.

On the other hand, your top viewers—while not super active—are seeing posts. Knowing what they’re viewing can guide your approach to engaging them with specific content.

As you shore up your communications strategy with insight from your most active members, here are some questions to consider:

  • Top influencers: Who are they (leadership, new employees), what are they saying, and how are people reacting?
  • Top publishers: What are they posting, and how much engagement are they getting?
  • Top engaged: Is one group interacting regularly and with positive sentiment, while another group’s engagement is low?
  • Top commenters: What are they saying in the comments? Are people continuing the conversation?
  • Top reactors: How are they reacting (e.g., with likes)? Are they contributing in other ways as well?
  • Top viewers: Which posts are grabbing their attention—the CEO’s weekly report or a video shared in their group?
Drill down to understand specific member activities

To get the most out of your employee metrics, you must understand the why behind the results. That’s where your analytics tool comes in.

For example, in a group, you can get insights into each member, including their engagement scores (which are based on the number of comments, reactions, shares, and posts).

As part of the comms strategy, the team members with a high engagement score can connect with group members who are in spectator mode or possibly disengaged.

Additionally, if an individual’s engagement score drops, HR can dig deeper to understand the change.

For instance, a change in workflow or management could create anxiety and slow down their activity. Picking up on these cues in real-time will allow you to reach out to support that individual immediately.

It takes a community to build a dynamic work environment

In 2020, workplace engagement see-sawed, which probably had many in HR wondering how to kickstart their internal comms strategies and help employees feel supported and connected.

With the help of member insights, communication leaders have a go-to tool to build a stable community of employees that are committed to the organization’s goals and ready to support all members.

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