Engagement is a word you hear a lot nowadays, you might even describe it as a bit of a buzz word. “How engaged is the team?”, “do you feel the group engaged?” and “should we be working on our engagement?” It’s becoming so common in the workplace to hear and discuss ‘engagement’, but do we really know the true meaning of the word?

What is engagement?

In the workplace, ‘engagement’ can get overused. Similarly when you consider the word ‘innovation’ – people tend to use it a lot without truly understanding what precisely it means and what impact it can have on the workplace.

When we talk about engagement in the context of an organisation, it’s generally referring to how connected and aligned teams can be each other and subsequently, the company they are a part of. Are they contributing? More so, do they believe in the vision of their company, do they have a purpose and find meaning in their work? Are they passionate?

Society as a whole has changed a lot  – things that were important yesterday are no longer important today. And the things that motivate us tomorrow might be different again in a decade or two According to the Global Human Capital Trends 2015 report, “today’s workers have a new focus on purpose, mission, and work-life integration". Research shows that a variety of complex factors contribute to strong employee engagement, including job design, management, work environment, development, and leadership.”

So how do you put a value on engagement?

Engagement is a two-way process. If you have a connected and aligned team, it will help create tremendous value for your organisation. But in order to create that value, it’s important to ensure you’re creating value for your teams first. It has to be about understanding and giving them the things that matter to them and helping them find their own purpose and meaning simultaneously. And, if we want our teams to be connected and aligned with the company and its vision, it’s about having the right people.

There are a range of studies out there – the Great Place to Work Institute being one of them –  that note highly engaged companies experience benefits including the ability to deliver stronger customer service, hire more easily, have lower turnover rates and be more profitable.

More so, work can be so much more fun when you achieve this together – when your people are passionate, they have a clear purpose and that aligns with your company. They get more done but the best part? Are truly enjoy doing it at the same time.

You generally see the companies that have their culture right doing well in the market. There are many great examples of that. Look at Laszlo Bock and what he and the team have created at Google right through to organisations like Zappos, Airbnb or Buffer. But again, the key with all of this is in the detail – getting the specifics of what you and your people value.

How do you measure it?

So how do you measure engagement? Remember that a lack of specificity creates problems when it then comes to measuring engagement. It’s hard to put a number on something if you don’t know what you’re actually measuring.

So to that point, you need to define what engagement looks like to your team and what it really means for your company. There’s no point measuring something that has no relevance or impact on the way you work. Otherwise, you’ll be eternally chasing this idea of ‘engagement’ and never really getting there.

Measuring ‘engagement’ like this also requires greater access to information; a move to the real-time rather than point-in-time. Getting a better read on your teams and how they’re feeling, will tell you a lot about either where your problems exist or where things are going well. It’s why we’re seeing performance reviews move to this model and why we invented Heelix – we’re focused on creating a better way for teams to provide feedback and how they can improve overall, together.