With the rise of "quiet quitting," employee engagement has become the new holy grail for many leaders and HR teams. They expect increased productivity, better talent retention, an enhanced company reputation, etc.
As we highlight in our latest white paper from our Insign - Ipsos study conducted this year with 500 decision-makers, one in three business leaders considers the employee engagement rate, known as the employee Net Promoter Score (subtracting detractors from promoters), a key performance indicator for employee experience.
Download our white paper: Employee Experience, The Great Paradox
For some HR teams, maintaining this indicator at a good level has even become one of the criteria for awarding their own variable compensation.
But is "self-reported" employee engagement a truly relevant indicator to measure an organization's employee experience performance?
What if the engagement measured by eNPS was only contextual?
The employee Net Promoter Score is a "self-reported" indicator as it measures, albeit anonymously, team adherence to the company, its economic outlook, products and services, management, culture, etc.
But it seems evident that two essential factors can influence employees' "self-reported" engagement.
The Tenure Effect
Conversely, employees who have spent several years in a company may develop a sense of boredom in the face of stagnation or lack of new challenges, experiencing what is known as the "engagement plateau." Paradoxically, they may simultaneously develop a strong sense of belonging or loyalty.
These are phases where direct local management plays an important role in mobilizing their engagement.
Can we imagine that this tenure effect doesn't influence the measure of a "self-reported" employee Net Promoter Score?
The Business Life Cycle Effect and Their Cultural Focus
Let's take a moment to consider the life cycle of a company.
Companies go through life cycle phases that have an undeniable impact on their "cultural focus." The cycle the company is in obviously affects employees’ perceptions of the company's performance and prospects; and thus indirectly their adherence to strategy, confidence in their products or services, their management, etc.
Can we imagine that the life cycle doesn't influence the measurement of a "self-reported" employee Net Promoter Score?
Thus, subjected to both tenure and company life cycle effects; one might wonder to what extent tracking a self-reported engagement indicator alone is relevant for measuring the performance of the delivered employee experience.
In our Insign White Paper "Employee Experience: The Great Paradox," we present the most monitored employee experience performance indicators by decision-makers (retention rate, job satisfaction, company recommendation) and offer alternatives focused on economic performance like collective and individual productivity, retention rate, or Employee Lifetime Value.
