The Conference Board Employee Engagement Survey™

The best known employee engagement research methodologies each take a very different approach to measuring employee engagement, and each delivers wildly different results. Employee engagement scores can vary by 150% solely due to the research method used. Recognizing that existing methods for evaluating employee engagement were too broad, too divergent and too inconclusive to merit use on a worldwide scale.

The Conference Board's mission was to compare the various methodologies side-by-side and use a combination of all the available engagement questions and drivers to come up with a universal definition of employee engagement that could be applied to any industry in any culture around the world. Research was conducted in 11 countries representing The Americas, EMEA and Asia Pacific using 11 international companies. The final results produced an engagement index with 8 items that have statistical significance in measuring employee engagement.

Several statistical tests to confirm reliability and validity of the engagement factors and drivers were performed and show the model has strong integrity, and is reliable across all the 11 cultures where it was conducted.

Also, the 8 factors used to measure engagement were similar across all countries. This is in stark contrast to the measures and definitions used by researchers in other studies that produced dramatically different levels of engagement from country to country.

1)      The eight Employee Engagement Index items are classified into two dimensions: organization and job.

• Organizational related measures include: pride, recommendations, retention, management
• Job related measures include: job satisfaction, accomplishment, challenges, motivation to do more

2)      There are 5 Driver Groups (with 47 individual drivers) that are highly correlated with the engagement index.

Organizational Health: Organizational-level drivers dealing with culture and policies: 

• Shared Values; Employee-Oriented Policies
• Customer Focus
• Fairness; Diversity

 Supervisor Excellence: Components of the employee experience influenced by direct supervisor

• Interpersonal relationship; performance expectations
• Business Acumen
• Manager’s recognition; Career Involvement

Job Design: Focus on the nature of the employee's job

• Line of sight visibility to contributions on company performance
• Defined roles and responsibilities; variety and challenges

Workplace Readiness: Employee’s confidence that he has been set up to succeed

• Training
• Work-life balance
• Time and resources to perform job 

Extrinsic Rewards: Individual’s sense that he is being provided for in terms of financial security

• Confidence that pay will allow employee to meet financial obligations
• Paid fairly for work done; market competitive pay 

A Means to Effectively Benchmark Employee Engagement.

Previous to The Conference Board research, organizations dedicated to the development of human capital and employee engagement had limited means for benchmarking their employee engagement levels against those of other companies. But now companies using E@R can measure their performance using the Conference Board Norms Database, a comprehensive repository of corporate data and best-in-class standards for employee engagement that is continuously updated with data from leading Fortune 500 companies.