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Employee Experience Metrics
Employee experience was a top metric for cause of the Great Resignation. Since then, the people have spoken and now employee experience is just as important as benefits packages, company culture and career growth. Measuring and analyzing key employee experience metrics can help your organization ensure that you are providing a world-class employee experience from attraction through exit. Here’s what you need to know.
What Are Employee Experience Metrics?
Before we get into employee experience metrics, it’s important to understand what employee experience (EX) is. Employee experience can best be defined as all of the things that affect an employee, from their initial attraction to your organization through their exit from your organization. This includes all of your systems, your people, your policies, all workspaces (hybrid, on-site, virtual), and your culture. We can even break it down further to include all of the small details of an individual’s day — words that are spoken to them, their workload, the support they receive, etc. The overall employee experience is holistic and subjective and it includes how an employee feels, how they perceive their work, and the overall effect on their well-being. Employee experience metrics are qualitative data to determine how employees feel at work. These metrics measure criteria such as employee satisfaction, employee productivity, employee retention, employee wellness, recruitment, engagement, and employee net promoter score. While this is not an exhaustive list of employee experience metrics, measuring this criteria is a great start to understanding EX within your company.
Why Are Employee Experience Metrics Important for HR to Track?
Measuring and keeping track of employee experience metrics is vital to your organization. These key performance indicators (KPIs) are not only a valid indicator of employee happiness and your ability to retain your talent, they are also an excellent mechanism to understand if your organization is moving in the right direction and how employees are performing. In order to set your organization up for success, keeping track of employee experience metrics will keep your employees excited about the mission, empowered to do their best work, connected to their colleagues, and striving for outstanding results. Here are some additional reasons why tracking these metrics is critical for your organization:
- Indicates employee engagement. Exceptional employee experience indicates that employees are most likely engaged in their work as well. Employees that are happy perform well, so increased employee engagement leads to increased productivity.
- Gauges employee satisfaction. Since Covid-19, the EX movement has gained incredible momentum. Employees are now placing the employee experience, from attraction to exit, at the top of their list when searching for new employment opportunities. The Great Resignation—the mass exodus of employees quitting their jobs post the Covid-19 lockdown—had employee experience at heart of it, with individuals recognizing what is most important to them after enduring a global pandemic. Deeper tracking of these metrics and a stronger focus on EX prior to Covid-19 could have prevented some, although not all, of the Great Resignation.
- Aids in strategic planning. Gathering this data can help leadership strategically plan and execute on identified areas where employee experience could be improved in order to prevent larger issues in the future. Collecting this information provides an early warning sign that employees are struggling, which allows leadership time and opportunity to correct before employees or customers become negatively impacted.
- Increases company promotion. Happy and engaged employees promote your company and your products. Happy employees implement employer branding (for free!) which attracts future talent and customers to your organization. Word of mouth matters. A lot!
Useful Employee Experience Metrics to Track
As discussed above, while this is not an exhaustive list of criteria that can be tracked within your employee experience metrics, these metrics are a great start and ones to prioritize at the top of your list.
Employee Satisfaction
Employee satisfaction gauges the overall extent to which employees are happy and satisfied with their work and their work environment.
Employee Productivity
This metric indicates whether or not employees are able to get through their work and a reasonable amount of tasks in a timely manner. Are they effective, efficient and utilizing their time wisely to produce more and better results in less time?
Employee Retention
This metric measures potential retention and employee turnover.
Employee Wellness
Healthy employees have a positive impact on the bottom line. Employee wellness tracks the overall mental, physical, emotional and financial health of your employees.
Employee Recruitment
There are a few key performance indicators you could measure under this metric. A few of these recruitment KPIs include percentage of employee referrals, time to hire, new employee impact, satisfaction with the onboarding process and if new employees have made it past the “early hire” period of employment.
Employee Engagement
This metric measures the strength between the mental and emotional connection an employee feels toward the work they are conducting, their team and the company.
Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS)
The employee net promoter score or eNPS is a metric that looks at the overall employee engagement and their loyalty to the organization. The eNPS provides a short- to medium-term correlation of the employee’s intentions.
How to Record and Analyze Employee Experience Metrics
Consider utilizing a survey that remains relatively consistent in order to collect more accurate data trends over time. There are a multitude of survey tools and resources you can use to collect this information. Asking employees to answer questions on a scaling system can turn the employees’ opinions into measurable and useful data points. Survey questions should be categorized into separate sections, such as an employee’s overall satisfaction with the organization, their direct manager, their day-to-day responsibilities and their department. It is important to highlight that responses should be collected anonymously so that you are able to receive honest feedback and employees feel safe doing so. There are several resources to record and analyze employee experience metrics. Below are four resources with important data for tracking and analyzing your organization’s employee experience.
Resource 1: Utilize Your Internal HR Systems
Almost every organization has some type of HRIS or HCM platform. These platforms store valuable information about employees that you can use to gain more understanding of the employee experience. For example, you can withdraw data on employee turnover rate, referrals, complaints, absenteeism and performance.
Resource 2: Implement the Use of Surveys
Surveys can supply critical data for measuring the employee experience. There are several types of surveys you can deploy, depending on which area of the employee lifecycle you would like to explore more deeply. Types of surveys to utilize are:
- Pulse surveys
- Exit surveys
- Candidate experience surveys
- Onboarding surveys
- Employee engagement (feedback) surveys
- Net promoter score (eNPS)
Resource 3: Conduct Interviews
Directly interviewing your employees can provide deep insight into their overall employee experience. There are three types of interviews specifically designed to extract data for analyzing your employees’ experience:
- Stay interviews. Having managers conduct stay interviews can help an organization understand what factors are contributing to employee retention and can help the organization understand what is working well.
- Exit interviews. These interviews are often a reactive way to extract reasoning from an employee who is exiting the company and to understand areas for improvement.
- Skip-level interviews. These are powerful interviews that often reveal a lot of valuable information about the employee experience. These interviews take place between an employee and the employee’s manager’s manager. Hence, skipping a level. These interviews typically take place when senior leaders are looking to understand or gain insight into what is taking place at the organization from the experience of employees. Some examples questions that may be asked during these calls are:
- What do you like most about your job?
- What things would you change about your job?
- What would you improve about your department?
- What would you improve about the job as a whole?
- What are your career aspirations?
- Where do you go when you need support?
- Is there anything that we could be doing to support you better or differently in your work?
Resource 4: Focus Groups
Focus groups offer employees a group setting to discuss thoughts, ideas, feedback and questions as a collective. This is an alternative way to understand the organization’s employee experience for particular groups, departments, specific events or shared backgrounds and characteristics.
Methods to Improve Employee Experience Metrics
People are the heartbeat of every organization. It is critically important to keep that heart beating for survival. There are several life-saving techniques your organization can deploy to not only keep the heart beating, but to help it beat even stronger.
Method 1: Ask Your Employees for Feedback
Implement the above mentioned surveys and resources, and build open and transparent communication streams for employees to share their experience.
Method 2: Embed Employee Experience Into Your Culture
Place the employee experience at the forefront of your culture and then create from there. Putting your people first will keep the heart of the company beating and will infuse empathy, engagement, productivity, shared values and focus on outcomes for the business.
Method 3: Identify Your Opportunities
Analyze the collected data and outline your areas of opportunity to make a stronger, more positive impact on the employee experience. Strategize ways to implement change to correct an area where employees are struggling. Communicate understanding and willingness to address the concern and provide transparency to your organization about steps you’re taking to make a stronger impact on the employee experience.
Method 4: Ensure Inclusivity and Belonging
EX is not a one size fits all. Ensure that your strategy is inclusive and supports belonging for all employees, not just some.
Method 5: Provide Learning and Development Opportunities
According to BetterUp, access to learning and development opportunities contributes to 31% to the EX model. Without development opportunities, employees will seek employment elsewhere where they have the tools they need to continue to grow, both professionally and personally.
Topics
Katie Potter, MAIOP
Katie is an executive People & Talent leader with strong demonstration of building and scaling HR teams from startups to corporate teams. She has experience in building strong, globally focused culture & inclusion across remote, hybrid and onsite teams with a strong passion for people, engagement, & talent development.
Frequently asked questions
Other Related Terms
Eddy’s HR Mavericks Encyclopedia
Employee Experience Metrics
Employee experience was a top metric for cause of the Great Resignation. Since then, the people have spoken and now employee experience is just as important as benefits packages, company culture and career growth. Measuring and analyzing key employee experience metrics can help your organization ensure that you are providing a world-class employee experience from attraction through exit. Here’s what you need to know.
What Are Employee Experience Metrics?
Before we get into employee experience metrics, it’s important to understand what employee experience (EX) is. Employee experience can best be defined as all of the things that affect an employee, from their initial attraction to your organization through their exit from your organization. This includes all of your systems, your people, your policies, all workspaces (hybrid, on-site, virtual), and your culture. We can even break it down further to include all of the small details of an individual’s day — words that are spoken to them, their workload, the support they receive, etc. The overall employee experience is holistic and subjective and it includes how an employee feels, how they perceive their work, and the overall effect on their well-being. Employee experience metrics are qualitative data to determine how employees feel at work. These metrics measure criteria such as employee satisfaction, employee productivity, employee retention, employee wellness, recruitment, engagement, and employee net promoter score. While this is not an exhaustive list of employee experience metrics, measuring this criteria is a great start to understanding EX within your company.
Why Are Employee Experience Metrics Important for HR to Track?
Measuring and keeping track of employee experience metrics is vital to your organization. These key performance indicators (KPIs) are not only a valid indicator of employee happiness and your ability to retain your talent, they are also an excellent mechanism to understand if your organization is moving in the right direction and how employees are performing. In order to set your organization up for success, keeping track of employee experience metrics will keep your employees excited about the mission, empowered to do their best work, connected to their colleagues, and striving for outstanding results. Here are some additional reasons why tracking these metrics is critical for your organization:
- Indicates employee engagement. Exceptional employee experience indicates that employees are most likely engaged in their work as well. Employees that are happy perform well, so increased employee engagement leads to increased productivity.
- Gauges employee satisfaction. Since Covid-19, the EX movement has gained incredible momentum. Employees are now placing the employee experience, from attraction to exit, at the top of their list when searching for new employment opportunities. The Great Resignation—the mass exodus of employees quitting their jobs post the Covid-19 lockdown—had employee experience at heart of it, with individuals recognizing what is most important to them after enduring a global pandemic. Deeper tracking of these metrics and a stronger focus on EX prior to Covid-19 could have prevented some, although not all, of the Great Resignation.
- Aids in strategic planning. Gathering this data can help leadership strategically plan and execute on identified areas where employee experience could be improved in order to prevent larger issues in the future. Collecting this information provides an early warning sign that employees are struggling, which allows leadership time and opportunity to correct before employees or customers become negatively impacted.
- Increases company promotion. Happy and engaged employees promote your company and your products. Happy employees implement employer branding (for free!) which attracts future talent and customers to your organization. Word of mouth matters. A lot!
Useful Employee Experience Metrics to Track
As discussed above, while this is not an exhaustive list of criteria that can be tracked within your employee experience metrics, these metrics are a great start and ones to prioritize at the top of your list.
Employee Satisfaction
Employee satisfaction gauges the overall extent to which employees are happy and satisfied with their work and their work environment.
Employee Productivity
This metric indicates whether or not employees are able to get through their work and a reasonable amount of tasks in a timely manner. Are they effective, efficient and utilizing their time wisely to produce more and better results in less time?
Employee Retention
This metric measures potential retention and employee turnover.
Employee Wellness
Healthy employees have a positive impact on the bottom line. Employee wellness tracks the overall mental, physical, emotional and financial health of your employees.
Employee Recruitment
There are a few key performance indicators you could measure under this metric. A few of these recruitment KPIs include percentage of employee referrals, time to hire, new employee impact, satisfaction with the onboarding process and if new employees have made it past the “early hire” period of employment.
Employee Engagement
This metric measures the strength between the mental and emotional connection an employee feels toward the work they are conducting, their team and the company.
Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS)
The employee net promoter score or eNPS is a metric that looks at the overall employee engagement and their loyalty to the organization. The eNPS provides a short- to medium-term correlation of the employee’s intentions.
How to Record and Analyze Employee Experience Metrics
Consider utilizing a survey that remains relatively consistent in order to collect more accurate data trends over time. There are a multitude of survey tools and resources you can use to collect this information. Asking employees to answer questions on a scaling system can turn the employees’ opinions into measurable and useful data points. Survey questions should be categorized into separate sections, such as an employee’s overall satisfaction with the organization, their direct manager, their day-to-day responsibilities and their department. It is important to highlight that responses should be collected anonymously so that you are able to receive honest feedback and employees feel safe doing so. There are several resources to record and analyze employee experience metrics. Below are four resources with important data for tracking and analyzing your organization’s employee experience.
Resource 1: Utilize Your Internal HR Systems
Almost every organization has some type of HRIS or HCM platform. These platforms store valuable information about employees that you can use to gain more understanding of the employee experience. For example, you can withdraw data on employee turnover rate, referrals, complaints, absenteeism and performance.
Resource 2: Implement the Use of Surveys
Surveys can supply critical data for measuring the employee experience. There are several types of surveys you can deploy, depending on which area of the employee lifecycle you would like to explore more deeply. Types of surveys to utilize are:
- Pulse surveys
- Exit surveys
- Candidate experience surveys
- Onboarding surveys
- Employee engagement (feedback) surveys
- Net promoter score (eNPS)
Resource 3: Conduct Interviews
Directly interviewing your employees can provide deep insight into their overall employee experience. There are three types of interviews specifically designed to extract data for analyzing your employees’ experience:
- Stay interviews. Having managers conduct stay interviews can help an organization understand what factors are contributing to employee retention and can help the organization understand what is working well.
- Exit interviews. These interviews are often a reactive way to extract reasoning from an employee who is exiting the company and to understand areas for improvement.
- Skip-level interviews. These are powerful interviews that often reveal a lot of valuable information about the employee experience. These interviews take place between an employee and the employee’s manager’s manager. Hence, skipping a level. These interviews typically take place when senior leaders are looking to understand or gain insight into what is taking place at the organization from the experience of employees. Some examples questions that may be asked during these calls are:
- What do you like most about your job?
- What things would you change about your job?
- What would you improve about your department?
- What would you improve about the job as a whole?
- What are your career aspirations?
- Where do you go when you need support?
- Is there anything that we could be doing to support you better or differently in your work?
Resource 4: Focus Groups
Focus groups offer employees a group setting to discuss thoughts, ideas, feedback and questions as a collective. This is an alternative way to understand the organization’s employee experience for particular groups, departments, specific events or shared backgrounds and characteristics.
Methods to Improve Employee Experience Metrics
People are the heartbeat of every organization. It is critically important to keep that heart beating for survival. There are several life-saving techniques your organization can deploy to not only keep the heart beating, but to help it beat even stronger.
Method 1: Ask Your Employees for Feedback
Implement the above mentioned surveys and resources, and build open and transparent communication streams for employees to share their experience.
Method 2: Embed Employee Experience Into Your Culture
Place the employee experience at the forefront of your culture and then create from there. Putting your people first will keep the heart of the company beating and will infuse empathy, engagement, productivity, shared values and focus on outcomes for the business.
Method 3: Identify Your Opportunities
Analyze the collected data and outline your areas of opportunity to make a stronger, more positive impact on the employee experience. Strategize ways to implement change to correct an area where employees are struggling. Communicate understanding and willingness to address the concern and provide transparency to your organization about steps you’re taking to make a stronger impact on the employee experience.
Method 4: Ensure Inclusivity and Belonging
EX is not a one size fits all. Ensure that your strategy is inclusive and supports belonging for all employees, not just some.
Method 5: Provide Learning and Development Opportunities
According to BetterUp, access to learning and development opportunities contributes to 31% to the EX model. Without development opportunities, employees will seek employment elsewhere where they have the tools they need to continue to grow, both professionally and personally.
Topics
Katie Potter, MAIOP
Katie is an executive People & Talent leader with strong demonstration of building and scaling HR teams from startups to corporate teams. She has experience in building strong, globally focused culture & inclusion across remote, hybrid and onsite teams with a strong passion for people, engagement, & talent development.
Frequently asked questions
Other Related Terms
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