It's about time: measuring the pulse of engagement
| Date | 11 June 2018 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/SHR-01-2018-0010 |
| Pages | 164-165 |
| Published date | 11 June 2018 |
| Author | Steven Winton,Sarah N. Palmer |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour,Employee behaviour |
Metrics
It's about time: measuring the pulse of
engagement
Steven Winton and Sarah N. Palmer
Employee opinion surveys,
commonly branded as
measuring employee
engagement (EE), are a key tool for
HR strategic efforts. From an HR
perspective, it is essential thatEE
survey data be useful, actionable and
accurate. Unfortunately,self-reports
are notoriously flawed. Schwarz
(1999) contended that self-reportsare
often as much about the questions as
the answers. For HR practitioners
implementing EE surveys, thismeans
that careful attention must be givento
questionnaire design issues suchas
item order, question wording and
response options. Given the dynamic,
fluctuating nature of EE (Bledow etal.,
2011;Reis et al., 2016), we contend
that one element of employeeopinion
surveys is often overlooked –a clear
and explicit understandingof time.
The intention of HR efforts to measure,
track and act on EE is contingent on it
being time-bound. There is a clear
difference between being an
engaged employee and being
engaged in the moment, the past
week or the past month. This
distinction is all the more important
considering that many organizations
are beginning to supplement their
annual or biennial survey with smaller,
more frequent pulse surveys as
organizations pursue more timely,
actionable data (Van Rooy et al.,
2011;Welbourne, 2016). Such
surveys cannot, and should not, rely
on self-reported measures that
purportedly measure a stable
characteristic. If the surveydata are
not accurately capturing the attitudes
and behaviors of employees, then
recommendations or action plans
could be addressing the wrong
issues. For HR leadership –especially
as organizations move to more
frequent pulse surveys –it is critical to
understand how steps can be taken
to improve the accuracyof
measurement in current survey
efforts.
Measuring the pulse of the
engaged workforce
HR practitioners tasked with
measuring EE have generally
neglected time-bound surveyitems.
The measurement of EE is too often
left at the discretion of the respondent
to interpret the length of time the
measure is alluding to. For example,
take the item “I am often inspired to
do my best work.” Without a frame of
reference, this measure may implicitly
suggest that engagement is stable
over time and can be captured by an
individual thinking about “often.”
For organizational survey efforts,
adding a time frame to a question
prompt could potentially be usedas a
means of limiting social desirability
and self-presentation bias.Consider
an item such as, “I am always ready
to help my coworkers.” Such items
essentially ask the rater to makea
global evaluation of their behavioror,
in this case, helping behavior (i.e.
I am an altruistic person). If, on the
Steven Winton is Director of MA
Leadership and Organizational
Development Program at the School
for Professional Studies, Saint Louis
University, St Louis, Missouri, USA.
Sarah N. Palmer is based at Saint
Louis University, St Louis, Missouri,
USA.
PAGE 164 jSTRATEGIC HR REVIEW jVOL. 17 NO. 3 2018, pp. 164-165, ©Emerald Publishing Limited, ISSN 1475-4398 DOI 10.1108/SHR-01-2018-0010
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