Reviewing employee engagement as a concept and how it is measured with an employee engagement survey in an Icelandic industrial production organisation. What do employee surveys tell us about employee engagement?

Abstract

It has now become a standard, recognised thinking within organisations that it is vital to have an engaged workforce to ensure more efficiency, less absenteeism and less turnover. To measure how engaged the workforce is, it is now a widespread practice to use employee engagement surveys to measure the employee engagement levels at an organisation. However, simply measuring the concept by asking the employees to fill in a survey regularly is not a sure-fire way to engage the employee and can lead to survey fatigue and mistrust in management. This study seeks to address the issues faced by employees and employers in an Icelandic organisation when using employee engagement surveys by reviewing current literature and theory on employee engagement and the use of the surveys and researching how this is applied in a mid-sized, Icelandic industrial organisation. The intention is to show that when strategy and action does not follow the survey, it can be more of a hindrance than help. The purpose is to equally review literature available on employee engagement, look at the factors that differentiate employee engagement from other motivational concepts and the barriers that face employee engagement as well determine the levels of employee engagement within an Icelandic organisation and review the methods used there to measure these. Data was collected by reviewing 6 months of employee engagement survey, how this was conducted and the actions of management as well as the reaction of the employees. Qualitative data was gathered with interviews that were conducted with a random sample of employees and the data analysed using a simple coding method.Keywords: Employee engagement, employee surveys