Employee confidence: Is this the new metric of the future?

As the HR industry continues to evolve, data-driven approaches are fast becoming the norm. Pulsing surveys have played a key role in measuring various employee metrics over the last 12 months, providing real-time data into what is working and perhaps more importantly – what isn’t.

But while pulsing surveys capture data from a past moment or a period of time, a new metric is offering business leaders the opportunity to look forward. K3 Consulting’s newly launched Employee Confidence benchmark survey aims to measure business sentiment from those within the organisation.

Speaking to HRD, Marcus Morrison, director at K3 Consulting, said the idea for the concept came to him long before the global pandemic, but the last 12 months have crystalised the importance of employee confidence.

“The genesis of the idea was how do we create something that is really meaningful, which looks forward and is predictive of behaviour?” he said. “From my perspective as a business owner, I think a tool that is predictive, is actually more powerful. While it's great that an employee has felt good about the business over the last 12 months, will you still have a business in another 12 months’ time?”

Read more: A finger on the pulse of employee feedback

Morrison said the pandemic has been a stark reminder that the future of an organisation is impacted by forces both within and outside of our control. The uncertainty of COVID-19 caused a crisis of confidence for many New Zealand business owners as to whether their organisation could adapt to meet the changing market demands. Even when life seemed to be returning to normal, the Auckland outbreak and subsequent lockdown have proved how quickly things can change.

“I think it's timely now for businesses to take stock from an employee's perspective because the driver of our success is our ability to flex, to change and to serve customers and that is really going to depend on the buy-in from our employees and their willingness to really drive those outcomes,” Morrison said.

“We've always looked at metrics in terms of business confidence or consumer confidence, but the real engine of a business ultimately is its employees.”

K3’s Employee Confidence survey comprises of 12 questions designed to capture employee sentiment. It creates a benchmark which can be measured against local and national data, and analysed in the context of micro and macro-economic factors, like COVID-19.

Read more: Pulsing in 2021: How to gather feedback with intention

Morrison said over time, this new benchmark will provide a unique dataset which can be used to look at the effect of employee confidence. They plan to compare data in different regions across New Zealand, as well as analyse the impact of employee confidence among different types of professions. Depending on the trends that emerge, he said confidence could become a lead indicator to other metrics like consumer confidence.

“In my mind, it’s a vat of information that hasn't been more widely studied yet,” he said.

Take the single question version of the Employee Confidence Survey below: