How to measure work engagement
Managers often face a need to quantify people-related data when it comes to measuring employee happiness and other psychological states predicting productivity and well-being. The most commonly used measure in scientific literature recommended by the trustworthy HR institutions, such as CIPD, is Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES). Unlike other measures, this one proved by the research to have positive relationships with organisational and task performance, customer satisfaction, productivity, innovation, staff retention, efficiency and health and safety performance.
What is Work Engagement
Work Engagement is also called task or job engagement, focuses specifically on a psychological state experienced by employees during work. It has 3 dimensions:
- Vigour - energy, resilience and effort put in work
- Dedication - enthusiasm, inspiration and pride of work
- Absorption - concentration and real interest in work
It is also seen as the antithesis to burnout – an exhaustion and cynicism associated with chronic stress at work.
How to measure Work Engagement
The UWES methodology is easy to apply, following the next steps:
1. Using pre-defined UWES statements, prepare and conduct questionnaire
Usually named as ‘Work and wellbeing survey’ to avoid answering bias related to the definition of ‘work engagement, it includes several pre-defined statements. The original measure is 17-item (UWES-17). Later shortened versions are 9-item (UWES-9), and ‘ultra-short’ 3-item ersion (UWES-3) were recently produced and proved to be also reliable and valid indicators. The latter includes following statements:
- I feel bursting with energy at my work (vigour)
- I am enthusiastic about my job (dedication)
- I am immersed in my work (absorption)
2. Ask employees to fill in the survey, it will take them up to 5 minutes
You can use a simple Google Form tool to collect the responses. An employee evaluates each of UWES statements using the scale 0-6, which represents how often they experience a feeling of engagement at work:
0 - Never
1 - A few times a year or less
2 - Once a month or less
3 - A few times a month
4 - Once a week
5 - A few times a week
6 - Every day
3. Analyse and interpret scores using the UWES methodology
Results show the work engagement levels for each respondent and for a team in general. The UWES comes up with three subscale scores for each of the mentioned above dimensions, that obviously ranges between 1 and 6, and a total score. In order to interpret the scores, the mean score from the database is used. The database is available for a number of countries worldwide, including statement templates in different languages.
4. Use the results as evidence for HR planning
Having this results as a baseline, managers can use the predictors of work engagement to plan people management activities that influence how happy they feel at work.
Example
Below are the results of UWES-3 evaluation, that is calculated as the average of scores provided by each employee evaluating three of the mentioned above UWES-3 statements:
- Vigour: 5.2
- Dedication: 4.5
- Absorption: 4.1
The Total Score is 4.7 - calculated as the average of scores on three UWES subscales.
In order to interpret the scores, the mean score from the UWES-3 database is used:
- M 3.74
- E 0.01
- SD 1.17
As we can see, UWES-3 score for this team (4.7) is far above the mean (3.74). Therefore, this team is highly engaged and decent levels of job satisfaction, productivity, and other positive people-related outcomes can be expected from this group, given the team environment remains unchanged.
To conclude, the UWES methodology is used to evaluate work engagement as the most common construct and measure in scientific research. It gives the strongest evidence base, includes valid predictors or drivers, scientifically proven to predict performance, and valid cross-culturally. With a little training to implement and use in house by HR team and people managers, UWES can be used as the valid tool to plan people-related activities in order to leverage employee happiness and other psychological states predicting productivity and retention.