Everyone is talking about company culture and employee engagement. These are hot topics in HR, especially now as employers are seeing the impact that a strong culture and high engagement can have on the bottom line.
But what are you doing about company culture and employee engagement? There’s a whole new world of HR technology dedicated to measuring these aspects of the employee experience. Such tools can capture the moment-to-moment pulse of your workforce, or reveal employees’ deeply-rooted perceptions about your organization.
When it comes to measuring culture and engagement, there are a lot of new technology providers to evaluate, and the learning curve can be daunting. Because technology in this space is so new, many HR leaders don’t fully understand the methodologies involved in measuring culture and engagement, or how data on culture and engagement can be used to improve your workforce or solve business challenges. To further complicate things, the terms ‘culture’ and ‘engagement’ are often used interchangeably, when in fact, they are two distinct concepts.
Before you dive into the world of DIY survey building or begin vetting technology providers, here are four important things to know about company culture and employee engagement:
- Culture and engagement are related, but different: Employee engagement is how employees feel, whereas culture is what employees believe and how they act.
- One type of culture isn’t necessarily better or worse than another. Some cultures attract certain people, and repel others. In that way, your cultureDNA™ plays a large role in determining who gets hired, who is promoted, and who departs from your organization.
- Because beliefs and behaviors are slow to change, culture is typically more consistent over time, whereas engagement can fluctuate frequently from month to month or even week to week.
- The stronger the culture, the higher the employee engagement. A blow to engagement on a team with a strong culture will rebound over time—but low engagement accompanied by a trend toward lower culture strength indicates that there’s a breakdown in beliefs and behaviors.
To learn more, and become your organization’s culture and engagement ambassador, download our white paper: How to Measure Culture and Engagement.
