Best Practice: Employee Engagement Survey

16 September 2013, Singapore: When working for a large organziation with employee engagement survey begin 'internalized' in the organization work culture / processes, we don't face any problem in designing or developing the survey questionnaires as it is usually outsourced to a consulting firm. In smaller organization, I used to work for ... we had to develop and design the survey from ground "zero" ... and the hardest was to tabulate the results manually ... 

I would like to share this very short article from Gallup ... which I came across few years back ... happy reading. Some of the questions maybe helpful to some HR professionals who are desperately ... need support.

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The Gallup Q12

(From the Gallup Management Journal, “Feedback for Real” Author: John Thackray)

The Gallup Q12 is a survey designed to measure employee engagement. The instrument was the result of hundreds of focus groups and interviews. Researchers found that there were 12 key expectations, that when satisfied, form the foundation of strong feelings of engagement. So far 87,000 work units and 1.5 million employees have participated in the Q12 instrument.

Comparisons of engagement scores reveal that those with high Q12 scores exhibit lower turnover, higher sales growth, better productivity, better customer loyalty and other manifestations of superior performance.

The Gallup organization also uses the Q12 as a semi-annual employee engagement Index – a random sampling of employee across the country.

The engagement index slots people into one of three categories.

• Engaged employees work with passion and feel a profound connection to their company. They drive innovation and move the organization forward.
• Not-Engaged employees are essentially “checked out.” They are sleepwalking through their workday. They are putting in time, but not enough energy or passion into their work.
• Actively Disengaged employees aren’t just unhappy at work; they’re busy acting out their unhappiness. Every day, these workers undermine what their engaged co-workers accomplish.

The results of the latest engagement index:

• Engaged employees – 28 %
• Not-engaged employees – 54%
• Actively Disengaged – 17%

In other words, 71% of the workforce is either under performing or actively undermining their work.

Exhibit 1: The Gallup Q12

Exhibit 2

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