Are Your Employees Engaged? Here's How to Find Out

A new online tool will help you measure the strength of your company culture.
By Paul Spiegelman | Oct 25, 2012

I talk a lot with business leaders about company culture and employee engagement--and the connection they have to financial performance.

I often get asked questions like these: 'How do I know if my employees are truly engaged?' 'I want to build a great culture, but where do I start?' 'How can I determine what gaps I need to fill?' 'How can I track results of my culture efforts over time?' 'How does our company culture compare to that of other organizations?'

To help answer these questions, I've developed a new tool.  It's a simple, two-minute online test that allows you or anyone in your organization to test your company's 'Culture IQ,' or 'CIQ' score.  The test rates your response to 10 statements on a 1 to 10 scale, and gives your company a total score of 1 to 100.  

These are the 10 statements it measures:

  1. Our core values are deeply ingrained into our decision making process.
  2. We have fun at work.
  3. We have a system in place to show that we care about the personal lives of our
    employees.
  4. We hire for fit in addition to skill.
  5. We quickly and appropriately move the wrong people out of the organization.
  6. Our employees get personally involved in our community service activities.
  7. We regularly measure employee engagement, create action plans and communicate results.
  8. We have a robust reward and recognition program.
  9. We regularly demonstrate our commitment to growing and training our employees.
  10. Our employees feel like they are here for a purpose beyond just their job.

When you take the test, you'll get immediate results on your screen, and a report emailed to you in real-time.  You'll see how your score compares with the scores of other organizations, and can request a link to distribute the test to all of your employees.

I've seen thousands of responses so far, and the results have amazed me.  I've noticed that executives at different levels of companies look at culture differently; generally, the higher the position, the better the score.  And just taking the test seems to help teams reveal what areas they could work on.

So I encourage you to take the test, too, and forward it to your peers and your colleagues.  It's quick--and free.  Just click here.

Once you've taken the test, I encourage you to enlist the members of your team to take it too.  This will help you determine whether you and your staff are on the same page about your company culture today, set a baseline of your current position, and an action plan you can then measure going-forward.