There are many ways that employers typically determine if their employees are doing well, and they usually involve some kind of questionnaire. For example, many employers use the employee engagement survey (or a management survey) to assess the workplace climate each year. They hope that, by comparing the results of that yearly survey year over year, they can show whether employees are more engaged in the most recent year than they were in past years. However, even with a longitudinal employee survey in place, it's hard to attribute which business practices that are used to manage the organization are really responsible for any positive or negative fluctuations in worker engagement. In this piece, we recommend three strategies for understanding if your employees are doing well based on common HR practices:

1. Study the impact of additions to and deletions from each employee work team

For example, a business can use a common feature of many contemporary HRIS solutions to determine if employees with certain traits will make engagement measures go up or down on each team. This is only going to work if your organization is tracking data on each prospective hire and then tracking the recruit's engagement before, during, and after their membership in a particular work team. Remember, this isn't an exact science because each change to a work team will alter the chemistry and functioning of the group.

2. Ensure employees have access to appropriate working conditions so that they can safeguard their health and maximize their productivity while working in the building

For example, employees can sustain long-term health problems from sitting at their desk too long and performing repetitive work. You want to schedule them to take frequent breaks and to provide alternative workplace settings, such as standing desks. This can improve each employee's circulation, prevent neck aches and backaches, reduce eye strain and headaches, and keep them more generally relaxed and breathing more efficiently. If your employees are required to sit too long, especially because of unreasonable workloads, too many meetings, or excessive amounts of training, they will not be as healthy or productive.

3. Give employees tools to show how their particular performance objectives align to the company's strategic goals

For example, if employees perceive that their repetitive tasks are meaningfulness, they will not be inclined to work hard to achieve them. If they can see how their tasks impact the company's bottom line, they might be inclined to work harder to meet performance objectives. You want employees highly motivated and engaged in their work so they will meet or exceed all of their assigned objectives, not just motivate them to work hard enough to earn the minimum satisfactory ratings on their essential tasks and objectives to keep their jobs.

Your employees are going to be more successful if they have clear performance objectives that relate to a well-defined company vision. If they don't know why their work matters, then they don't feel crucial to the organization. Alternatively, they may feel disconnected from their co-workers and that they must force themselves to go to work each day. You can use technology solutions to help employees have more control over their jobs and to make better use of their time, but you can also use different management techniques to ensure they are assigned to the right tasks. For example, an employee may have to focus on a job that requires frequent data entry, but you could rotate his or her assignments to work with various data teams. One employee may get bored with the same data entry tasks year after year. You can also give the same worker training in using different productivity apps, so they do things such as file reviews and answering customer inquiries, not just adding information to a database. Engaged employees are better for your profit margin.