The Employee Engagement Survey (EES®) is designed to assess the levels of employee commitment to their organisation’s goals and values as well as their levels of motivation to contribute to organisational success. The questionnaire was developed by Dr Gary C. Townsend of Skillworx Africa (Pty) Ltd.
Why measure employee engagement
Understanding the engagement levels of an organisation is fundamental to achieving company success and developing employee skills and talent toward future goals. In much the same way that companies attach importance to measuring revenues and sales, measuring employee engagement in real-time helps companies achieve tangible results. Apart from the obvious benefit of having employees that are vested in the well-being of the company, an engaged employee, functioning in a supportive work environment, benefits the entire system through higher employee satisfaction, higher retention and lower turnover, higher productivity, increased profitability, less absenteeism, and increased employee loyalty.
Assessment scales
Organisations undertaking the 133-item EES® assessment receive a detailed report containing the following 6 dimensions divided into 4 people, 5 work, 6 leadership, 3 ownership, 4 policy and procedure, and 2 reward subscales namely:
PEOPLE: skills & ability, alignment, diversity, and staffing
WORK: external environment, mission & goals, org structure, cooperation, and values
LEADERSHIP: change, planning, authority, leadership, communication, and decision-making
OWNERSHIP: status, ownership, and job satisfaction
POLICIES & PROCEDURES: processes, workflow, technology, and coordination & control
REWARDS: remuneration and performance
Benefits for the individual
Understanding the pulse of the people helps leadership ensure that the organisation drives a mutual end-game based on common values and shared success. This ensures a working environment that is underpinned by fairness, opportunity, structure, respect, leadership, and security. In addition, engaged managers further foster “relationships” based on trust and partnership in pursuit of clear, organisational objectives which translates into relationships underpinned by trust in judgement, respect of opinion, encouragement, direction, inspiration, and removing obstacles. So, ensuring an engaged workforce helps foster a workplace sense of “pride” based on the employees’ internal frame of reference driven by personal satisfaction, value, ownership, empowerment, buy-in, and capability.
Benefits for the organisation
In Organisations there are deep-set beliefs about the way the business should be organised, the way authority should be exercised, how people should be rewarded, and how they should be supported. The culture of an organisation can sometimes be visible in its buildings and its offices. It can be manifest in the kinds of people it employs, the kind of career aspirations they hold, their status in society, their level of education and their degree of mobility. A large multinational will have a culture quite different from that of a local manufacturing firm or a retail store. Similarly, different kinds of businesses have different cultures, reflecting the environment in which they are placed. Even within an organisation cultures will vary. The Sales department, for example, will have a different atmosphere than the HR department, which will be different from that of Marketing, etc..
Because these various sub-cultures combine to set the tone of the entire organisation, by being able to understand these micro-climates, management will be able to proactively work, in a targeted way, to align any disparate agendas to that of the overall company.
Reports
EES® Development Report
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