How to interpret employee engagement scores in companies

Abstract

Purpose. The purpose of the article is to clarify how to interpret employee engagement scores resulting from corporate employee engagement surveys. Method. The key academic papers in the field of employee engagement are addressed in the article. Consulting approaches to employee engagementare reviewed. The gap between academia and practice in studying engagement is discussed. Due to many methods offered to the companies to study employee engagement, the decision was made to analyze four techniques of major providers: two international (Gallup, Aon Hewitt) and two Russian (ECOPSY Consalting, Happy Inc). Findings. The variety of approaches to defining employee engagement in academic discourse is followed by many different methodologies to study it in practice. The review of consulting approaches to measure engagement has resulted in a suggestion to identify two types of employee engagement surveys: surveys focused at analyzing drivers of engagement and surveys focused at analyzing engagement as a multidimensional construct of relations between employees and organizations. The type of a survey that a company uses determines the interpretation of the employee engagement score. In the first case, the engagement score reflects the extent to which the environment for the development of engagement is formed but does not reflect the real level of employee engagement. In the second case, the engagement score cannot be unambiguously interpreted without taking into consideration the indicators of those components of engagement that were included in the employee engagement score and their theoretical basis. Value of the results. The theoretical contribution of the paper is to suggest a critical perspective on practical instruments of studying engagement. An attempt ismade to classify corporate engagement surveys. Implications for practice. This work can help managers and HR practitioners to interpret employee engagement scores more precisely and to make correct managerial decisions based on them.