Employee Engagement Strategies using Talent Assessments & Data Analytics

The question of how to improve employee engagement is one that has been on the table for the past several years. Whether you’re in the C-suite or on the front lines, keeping employees engaged can be challenging. However, making employee engagement a priority can lead to both increased productivity and revenue in your business.

{{cta(‘755ebdd1-1027-485c-8d29-8d721450f97d’)}}According to a recent Gallup poll, a mere 13 percent of employees were engaged at work worldwide. Only 32 percent of U.S. workers were engaged in their jobs during 2015. While it’s a slight increase over 2014’s 31.5 percent, it’s still nowhere near the percentage required for a business to flourish.

As a business leader, you know statistics, facts and logic are the ideal foundation for decisions that affect your company, but how can you practically utilize technological tools and resources to drive increased employee engagement and ultimately help your business achieve new levels of success?

To find a solution, you need not look any further than talent analytics. 

Unleash Employee Engagement with Data Analytics

In an age where technology develops faster than most people can grow accustomed to each new feature, it can be both overwhelming and exciting to harness the power of analytics to determine how to improve employee engagement. You might have a “gut feeling” about what it will take to boost employee motivation, however, emotions and hunches aren’t enough to connect with each individual ” you need a data-driven solution.

The following pointers can help you assess and reform your current operations and strategize for the future, creating a comprehensive employee engagement strategy that will deliver results, both on paper and in the day-to-day performance of every individual on your team.

1. Use Engagement Surveys to Collect Data from the Source ” Your Employees

How can you tell if you have a company filled with engaged, excited employees? Ask them.

Have each member of your team fill out an engagement survey once each quarter. Employee engagement surveys allow you and your team to capture targeted data that can help you develop and refine your training and retention programs, promotions, and more.

Gallup recently reported that the quality and level of engagement of managers has a profound impact on the engagement of the workforce. By implementing surveys, you can identify managers who are engaged, versus those who are disengaged, and take measures to evaluate your managerial criteria or determine the best ways to incentivize disengaged leaders. Attitude reflects leadership, and if your workers are disengaged, chances are their managers are disengaged, too.

2. Pinpoint Characteristics of Engaged Employees with Assessments

Keeping top talent around is critical in driving an organization forward, however it’s also one of the biggest challenges organizations face. 

When you hire an individual for a specific position, you’re making two judgments ” one on their work ethic and character and one on their skill. You believe you know they will fit well with your company’s goals and value system, and you think you know the exact role they can play to suit your purposes.

But what if the role you select for them doesn’t suit them?

This is where talent assessments enable you to use a data-driven strategy to find, hire, and keep employees with the highest likelihood of engaging with both their work and your organizational culture. Instead of hiring on impulse, assess both your top performers as well as your bottom performers.  Use talent assessments to determine what makes your high-performing employees more productive and engaged, then integrate these criteria into your talent selection strategy. By the same token, analyzing the skills, knowledge, and abilities of your bottom performers enables you to understand any variance in performance.

Once you’ve established key personality traits that lead to success in a specific role, you can utilize personality assessments and predictive analytics in your hiring process to narrow down the list of candidates and end up with a team member that’s more likely to thrive in their new position.

3. Pair Data with Solutions

Collecting data is only one part of an analytical approach. Next, you must take the facts you have mined and put them to work, using them as the foundation for change.

For example, Gallup reported in 2015 that in 82 percent of managerial hiring decisions, U.S. companies select candidates for managerial positions that show no talent for leading others. If, through the process of employee assessment, you’ve found that you’ve made this mistake, it’s time to assess your hiring process.

If your employees like those surveyed by the Society for Human Resource Management feel that “respectful treatment” is the most important factor as it relates to job satisfaction, but they report a lack of attention to this in the workplace, there is work to do. Once you’ve identified problems, the data is useless unless it is formed into actionable strategies for improvement.

Fostering a culture of engagement requires time, testing, and most importantly, taking a big step back to examine the effectiveness of your talent acquisition process.

Investing in strategies that increase employee engagement is always worth it, and if you find that your company’s employee engagement strategy is non-existent or non-working, it’s time to find data-driven solutions that will help you build a framework for future success.

Click below to learn how to integrate data into your hiring process to find, hire, and keep employees who are more likely to engage, or schedule a free consultation with one of our talent selection specialists today.

{{cta(‘2f193e9c-1e1a-4a53-b8cc-ac5974034777′,’justifyleft’)}}