Only a small minority of businesses link employee engagement measures to the impact on the business, according to a report by the Ochre House Network think-tank which includes over 650 major employers including Axa, Balfour Beatty, GE, KPMG and Orange.
Most employers use employee surveys to measure levels of engagement, but only 15% said their companies were proving this with parallel customer satisfaction research.
‘The classic example of how the link can be made in practice is the twin survey approach instituted by Simon Patton during his time as HR director of the Somerfield supermarket chain,’ says Ochre House’s Helena Parry who leads the think-tank. ‘Both employees and customers were surveyed twice a year to establish a direct correlation between employee and customer satisfaction and a measurement of consequent financial results. Negative feedback resulted in immediate and demonstrable action at store level to ensure that both employees and customers felt empowered and that the research was much more than just ‘window dressing’. And to ensure this action happened store managers’ bonuses were directly linked to effectiveness in this area.’
Ochre House blamed the HR function for failing to make the link, although in most businesses, as the people currently hired represent well over half the business value, the key decisions belong at board level. At last year’s Human Capital Forum meetings, some HR managers noted that they would like to combine employee opinion data with employee population and demographic data, but often this was impossible because of multiple IT systems – especially in international firms that had grown through acquisition.