How to Measure Culture and Engagement A Framework for Understanding Data, Methodologies, and Software Providers in the Culture and Engagement Space Author: Catherine Spence, co-founder and head of product at Pomello pomello.com | hello@pomello.com
How to Measure Culture and Engagement KEY TAKEAWAYS THE PROBLEM? The market hasn’t successfully educated HR • Culture and engagement are related, but leaders with a framework for understanding different: Employee engagement is how new data and tools that focus on culture employees FEEL, whereas culture is what and engagement. Many leaders don’t fully employees BELIEVE and how they ACT. understand what types of data are available, • One type of culture isn’t necessarily better or and how that data can be used. To further worse than another. Different cultures attract complicate things, the terms ‘culture’ and certain people, and repel others. In that ‘engagement’ are often used interchangeably, way, your cultureDNA™ plays a large role in when in fact, they are two distinct concepts. determining who gets hired, who is promoted, In this article, we’ll untangle the often- and who departs from your organization. confused concepts of culture and engagement, • Because beliefs and behaviors are slow to and provide that missing framework for change, culture is typically more consistent understanding different types of data, over time, whereas engagement can fmuctuate methodologies, and survey and analytics frequently from month to month or even week providers, so you can be intentional about to week. building a highly-engaged, culture-driven workforce. • The stronger the culture, the higher the employee engagement. A blow to FIRST, UNDERSTAND THE engagement on a team with a strong culture DIFFERENCE will rebound over time—but low engagement accompanied by a trend toward lower culture strength indicates that there’s a breakdown in CULTURE ENGAGEMENT beliefs and behaviors. Because employee engagement and company INTRODUCTION culture both involve an individual’s relationship Company culture and employee engagement with their workplace, it’s easy to see why they are critical in understanding how individuals are often confused. That said, there is a clear relate to your organization. The good news is, distinction. there’s a whole new body of data available to Employee engagement is how employees HR and business leaders, beyond traditional FEEL, whereas culture is what employees performance metrics, that captures a pulse BELIEVE and how they ACT. on employees and reveals deeply-rooted perceptions about your organization. By You might be wondering if one is more analyzing this data, you’ll gain deeper insight important than the other, or why this distinction into the employee experience, as well as the even matters. Let’s take a deeper dive strengths and opportunities of your workforce. to explore the differences, as well as the underlying relationship between these two concepts. 2 pomello.com | hello@pomello.com
How to Measure Culture and Engagement WHAT IS EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT? The most important characteristic to remember when thinking about employee engagement is Employee engagement is the commitment the that it is a point-in-time assessment of how employee has to the organization and its goals. employees are feeling about their company and their work. Employee engagement The term ‘employee engagement’ was fjrst can fmuctuate frequently depending many coined in 1990 when Dr. William Kahn, factors. Your engagement score might professor of Organizational Behavior at Boston change from month to month or even week University, explored the conditions under which to week. Every company is different, and we employees engage physically, cognitively, and see companies increasingly moving away emotionally with their work. Since then, several from annual surveys because of this reason. additional concepts for engagement have Typically, companies move towards a quarterly emerged: or monthly pulse survey when modernizing their engagement metrics. NEEDS SATISFACTION: to what degree do HOW DO I MEASURE EMPLOYEE employees get to express their preferred self in ENGAGEMENT? their work Regardless of which BURNOUT ANTITHESIS: engagement is approach to engagement defjned as energy, involvement, and effjcacy you’re endorsing, almost all in work vs. burnout concepts of exhaustion, engagement data is captured cynicism, and lack of accomplishment via online surveys. It might seem obvious, but this is SATISFACTION-ENGAGEMENT: engagement is equivalent to job satisfaction the fastest way to scale your approach to understanding MULTIDIMENSIONAL: this approach employee engagement. distinguishes between job engagement and organizational engagement As far as providers go, we seen a range of difference approaches. Some companies take a DIY approach and use a generic survey tool like SurveyMonkey to build and administer their With so many different defjnitions out there, engagement surveys. Other companies use which one is right? There isn’t a correct answer out-of-the-box or customizable engagement to this question. If you naturally gravitate surveys from providers like CultureAmp, towards one of these defjnitions, then in our TinyPulse, Gallup, and us at Pomello. experience that’s probably the one that’s most appropriate for your employees. That said, The advantage of going with a provider is it’s always helpful to understand the range that you have the opportunity to benefjt of potential metrics that exist so you can from their expertise in survey design, which periodically affjrm that you are using the best you may not have in-house. In addition, an one for your current strategic challenges. engagement-specifjc provider will typically 3 pomello.com | hello@pomello.com
How to Measure Culture and Engagement provide analytics to accompany the data you values tend to be more conceptual in nature, collect. These analytics should allow you to then norms and behaviors are the more tell a story. For example, if you’re monitoring concrete building blocks that give these engagement and retention on a sales team, values meaning. Think about innovation as you might track whether engagement moves a potential core value. What does that mean with sales performance. If you have several in terms of behavior? At Pomello, we’d argue down months in terms of performance and you that innovative cultures are characterized by see this refmected in your engagement scores, employees who are willing to experiment, who you want to be sure that you retain your top are comfortable with risk, and who are quick performers by taking action to boost these key to take initiative—these are the behaviors that individuals’ level of engagement. underpin this value. When selecting a survey engagement provider, An additional critical element in understanding here are a few questions that you can ask to organizational culture is the way that an understand their approach and their offering: individual may relate to workplace culture. Just as employee engagement allows for an employee to interact on an individual level with their workplace and their job, • What model(s) of employee engagement form our understanding of culture allows for the basis of your survey? individuals to view different cultures as • Do you allow customization of your survey in being more or less attractive. terms of content and frequency? Think about the much-vilifjed culture at • Do you provide analytics in real-time? Are Amazon. Is it possible that rather than being these analytics dynamic, e.g. can I segment a culture that is fundamentally “bad,” it is just my engagement data by different employee a culture that doesn’t work for some people? cohorts? Perhaps it is the type of culture that works for hard-driving, aggressive, and results-focused individuals—these are the people who will thrive WHAT IS COMPANY CULTURE? at a company like Amazon. Company culture, or cultureDNA™, can therefore be thought of Company culture is a system of shared in the HR framework of attraction, selection, values defjning what is important, and norms, and retention by effectively narrowing the ideal defjning appropriate attitudes and behaviors for employees for a workplace based on alignment employees within an organization. around cultural values and norms. Company culture emerged as a concept in the When taken as a whole, company culture is a 1980s and 1990s. Similar to engagement, there set of shared beliefs around what is expected, are a number of different functional defjnitions valued, and rewarded in the workplace. This of organizational culture, but most center shared understanding plays a large role around the concepts of values and assumptions in determining who gets hired, who is that contribute to the development of norms, promoted, and who departs from a specifjc behaviors, and other cultural activities. If organization. 4 pomello.com | hello@pomello.com
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