Common Employee Engagement Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them Using People Analytics
- Apr 20
- 7 min read
Diondra Filicetti is a Learning and Development professional, best-selling author, and two-time TEDx speaker. She specializes in team engagement, leadership effectiveness, and communication, helping organizations create motivated, high-performing teams.
As organizations grow, so too does the complexity they face. Client needs change, product and service mixes evolve, procedures mature, teams grow and communication channels can begin to resemble a labyrinth.
Tech organizations are particularly susceptible to growth and complexity challenges because the technology industry is one of the most rapidly changing landscapes. Keeping up with these changes might surface significant employee engagement challenges, as it can be difficult to sustain the internal infrastructure that once supported engagement when things are evolving so quickly. As the team works to meet new and increasing demands, these pressures grow more intense. With a sharp focus on scaling products, services, and teams, employee engagement often gets caught in the crossfire.
Let’s take GreenLeaf as our fictional example. GreenLeaf Tech is a mid-sized technology company specializing in sustainable and environmentally friendly software solutions. The company has been growing rapidly over the past few years, and with this growth, GreenLeaf Tech has noticed a decline in employee engagement. Let’s rewind for a moment and talk about what employee engagement is.
What is employee engagement?
While there are many definitions for engagement, I prefer to describe employee engagement as the measure of discretionary effort. Discretionary effort describes the difference between what an employee has to do, the minimum requirements of their job, versus what they are willing to do, depicted in the chart below. Employees who are engaged have higher levels of discretionary effort, meaning that they are more willing to go the extra mile to contribute to the team.
Engaged employees are more committed, more collaborative, and often communicate more than their disengaged counterparts. These behaviours and the additional discretionary effort result in tangible performance benefits for the organization. Such positive performance outcomes ultimately impact profitability. Engaged employees are good for business, and therefore tracking employee engagement as a key performance indicator makes good business sense.
If engagement is declining, it may first appear in behaviours that are difficult to quantify, such as a decline in discretionary effort, commitment, collaboration, and communication. However, there are also measurable indicators that can signal a decrease in engagement, including:
Increased absenteeism
Decreased quality of work, missed deadlines, errors, lack of innovation
Increased voluntary turnover
Monitoring these metrics is important for identifying problems that are contributing to disengagement. These metrics also signal rising costs for the organization in recruitment and productivity losses. These, however, are lagging indicators, meaning that these metrics measure the impact of engagement that has already declined enough to affect employee behavior. They indicate the outcomes of disengagement over time.
The ideal situation would be one where engagement is measured using leading indicators and interventions occur before a widespread disengagement problem exists. This is especially important during times of change, such as organizational growth, when engagement is particularly at risk.
Why is engagement at risk during growth periods?
During phases of growth, an organization is at risk of declining engagement because of these common circumstances that characterize growth periods:
Increased workloads
When organizations grow, this means that the client list and production output are also growing. The output demands might not keep pace with recruitment, so existing teams are tasked with taking on more work. This can be stressful, overwhelming, and contribute to disengagement, especially when compensation or appreciation have not also increased.
Immature communication processes
Young organizations generally have more informal communication structures. Communication processes and channels tend to mature with an organization. This might come in the form of formal procedures, tools, or a structured flow of information. In a fast-growing organization, communication processes may not have had the time to mature, leaving potential gaps. These communication failures can cause a range of issues, including blame, frustration, stress, and disengagement.
Unclear advancement opportunities and shifts in responsibilities
As the organization changes, new departments might be formed and old departments might evolve, making pathways for advancement unclear. Also, as the workforce grows, roles tend to become more specialized. Small teams tend to have overlapping responsibilities and wear many hats, while growing teams often have dedicated members for specific functions or tasks. Without clarity on future advancement and with potential feelings of being siloed, employees may struggle to see their current role as a worthwhile investment in their long-term career.
Disconnection between leadership vision and employee priorities
As the organization grows, the vision and mission might shift and new priorities arise. Sometimes the direction can become unclear to employees. With so much change, there are inevitable gaps in communication, leaving employees unsure of what the priorities are. This creates room for misinterpretation of the mission or priorities, potentially resulting in blame, conflicting priorities, frustration, and disengagement.
Cultural and social changes
Team members are moving and new members are being added, so the team culture may change drastically from what the team is accustomed to. The disruption to social relationships can be particularly jarring, and employees may feel that they have lost the connections they once had. I recall working with a large organization that resulted from two companies merging. Post-merger, the team culture had drastically shifted. Absenteeism spiked, and employees from the two organizations had difficulty working with one another because of differing philosophies and communication styles. The drastic cultural and social changes had a significant impact on employee engagement.
Monitoring employee engagement metrics on a continuous basis is helpful for diagnosing potential hidden problems. This is particularly important during times of change so that we can intervene to preserve engagement.
Collecting data to monitor employee engagement
In order to monitor employee engagement on a continuous and proactive basis, especially during times of change, we can issue formal engagement surveys, pulse checks, and touchpoint interviews.
Engagement surveys. These are longer-form surveys with 25 or more questions that are issued less frequently, such as semi-annually.
Pulse checks. These are short-form surveys with 5 to 7 questions that are issued frequently, such as monthly.
Interviews. These might be structured as short 30-minute interviews to collect qualitative data.
While using these data collection methods, it is also important to monitor lagging indicators such as absenteeism and turnover. These metrics can reveal underlying issues that may not surface in surveys or interviews, helping leaders identify problems that require further attention.
More important than deciding which data collection methods to use is determining what the surveys, pulse checks, and interviews should actually measure and explore. To identify what they should cover, start by understanding the changes in the organization. If your organization is rapidly changing and scaling, you may want to ask questions about workload, communication, clarity, and future direction.
At GreenLeaf, for instance, employees have expressed concerns about increased workloads, communication gaps, and limited career advancement. Therefore, in surveys, you might ask some of the following questions using a Likert scale:
Rate the degree to which you agree or disagree with the following statements.
Is your current workload manageable? | ||||
Strongly Disagree | Disagree | Neutral | Agree | Strongly Agree |
Organizational priorities are clearly communicated | ||||
Strongly Disagree | Disagree | Neutral | Agree | Strongly Agree |
Communication on the team is effective | ||||
Strongly Disagree | Disagree | Neutral | Agree | Strongly Agree |
I have the necessary resources to complete my tasks and projects effectively | ||||
Strongly Disagree | Disagree | Neutral | Agree | Strongly Agree |
I have opportunities for advancement within this organization | ||||
Strongly Disagree | Disagree | Neutral | Agree | Strongly Agree |
During interviews, you might ask the following open-ended questions to better understand the situation and where you can help:
What resources do you think the team needs to support them?
How have you been feeling about the lines of communication?
Do you feel that priorities are communicated clearly?
If there was one thing you could improve, what would it be? How would you approach that?
How would you like your career here to evolve in the future?
Analysis and impact
With data from surveys and interviews, leaders can identify problem areas and determine what actions are needed based on direct feedback from the team. Over time, this data will also help reveal trends, making it possible to see whether employee engagement is improving or declining.
When monitoring this data over time, it is also important to examine results at the departmental level. Are some teams improving faster than others? Which groups are performing well, and where are employees experiencing the most challenges? By narrowing down specific problem areas, leaders can address the concerns of different departments or groups instead of applying blanket solutions that may not be relevant to all employees.
Cross-referencing engagement data with metrics such as absenteeism and turnover can also help determine whether intervention efforts are working. Survey and interview data capture how employees are feeling and what they perceive to be working well or not. Metrics like absenteeism and turnover measure employee behavior. For example, if changes are made to communication processes in a particular department, such as customer service, and pulse checks indicate that engagement is beginning to increase, we would expect to see this reflected in reduced absenteeism and turnover as well. If absenteeism and turnover continue to increase even after interventions, this could indicate that there are further underlying issues affecting engagement. Over time, regularly comparing engagement feedback with workplace metrics helps create a more complete picture and allows leaders to track whether strategies are producing meaningful improvements.
Final thoughts on people analytics in employee engagement initiatives
In conclusion, there are several benefits to using people analytics to support employee engagement initiatives. First, people data helps identify and remove barriers that prevent employees from being fully engaged in their work. Second, the use of people analytics demonstrates to the team that leadership is listening, paying attention to their concerns, and willing to take meaningful action to improve the workplace.
Read more from Diondra Filicetti
Diondra Filicetti, Team Engagement & Communication Expert
Diondra Filicetti is a distinguished Learning and Development professional, best-selling author, and two-time TEDx speaker. As the founder of Driven By Co., she helps organizations enhance performance through engaging workshops, leadership programs, and communication training. Her book Engagement Economics explores how employee engagement drives profitability and success. With expertise in adult learning and instructional design, Diondra has empowered thousands of professionals to lead with purpose, connect effectively, and inspire growth.
