What are the best ways to measure employee engagement in application development?

Employee engagement is a key factor for the success of any application development project. Engaged developers are more productive, creative, and collaborative, and they deliver higher quality code and user experiences. But how can you measure employee engagement in application development? Here are some of the best ways to assess and improve the engagement level of your development team.

1 Feedback surveys

One of the simplest and most effective ways to measure employee engagement is to ask your developers for feedback. You can use online tools or platforms to create and distribute surveys that cover various aspects of engagement, such as satisfaction, motivation, recognition, communication, collaboration, learning, and growth. You can also include open-ended questions that allow your developers to share their opinions, suggestions, and concerns. Feedback surveys can help you identify the strengths and weaknesses of your development culture, and the areas that need improvement or intervention.

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Yonas Girma

Internal Control, Senior Accountant, Data Entry, Lecturer, Interpreter and Translator
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Here are some effective methods to consider: Quantitative measures: 1. Employee surveys: Regularly gathering anonymous feedback through surveys (including pulse surveys) provides valuable insights into satisfaction, motivation, and commitment. 2. Performance metrics: Analyze metrics like code quality, bug rates, sprint completion times, and individual contributions to gauge productivity and engagement. 3. Turnover and absenteeism: High turnover and absenteeism can indicate low engagement. 4. Net Promoter Score (NPS): Measure employee loyalty and likelihood to recommend your company as a workplace using the NPS question. Qualitative measures: 1. One-on-one meetings 2. Focus groups 3. Retrospectives 4. Observation

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2 Code quality metrics

Another way to measure employee engagement is to look at the quality of the code that your developers produce. Code quality metrics can include indicators such as defects, errors, complexity, readability, maintainability, security, performance, and documentation. You can use code analysis tools or platforms to collect and monitor these metrics, and compare them with industry standards or benchmarks. Code quality metrics can help you evaluate the skills, performance, and professionalism of your developers, and the impact of engagement on their work outcomes.

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3 Team collaboration tools

A third way to measure employee engagement is to use the team collaboration tools that your developers use to communicate, coordinate, and cooperate on their projects. Team collaboration tools can include platforms or applications such as Slack, Trello, GitHub, Jira, or Google Workspace. You can use these tools to track and analyze the activity, interaction, and participation of your developers, and the quality and timeliness of their deliverables. Team collaboration tools can help you measure the engagement level of your developers as a group, and the effectiveness of their teamwork and project management.

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4 Employee retention and turnover rates

A fourth way to measure employee engagement is to look at the employee retention and turnover rates of your development team. Employee retention and turnover rates can indicate how loyal, committed, and satisfied your developers are with their jobs, and how likely they are to stay or leave. You can calculate these rates by dividing the number of developers who stayed or left by the total number of developers in a given period. Employee retention and turnover rates can help you assess the impact of engagement on your development talent pool, and the costs and benefits of retaining or replacing your developers.

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5 Employee recognition and rewards

A fifth way to measure employee engagement is to use the employee recognition and rewards system that you have in place to motivate, appreciate, and incentivize your developers. Employee recognition and rewards can include formal or informal methods such as bonuses, promotions, awards, certificates, badges, shout-outs, feedback, or thank-you notes. You can use these methods to acknowledge and celebrate the achievements, contributions, and efforts of your developers, and to encourage them to keep up the good work. Employee recognition and rewards can help you measure the engagement level of your developers as individuals, and the influence of engagement on their morale and motivation.

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Ara Espinar Doncel
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A good bonus and rewards program is an excelent way to measure the compromise of employees but not only that, if you set attractive rewards such as promotions, salary raises and such it will increase the compromise and morale of the people working for the company in a healthy environment that seeks better results instead of punishing bad performances. One thing to keep in mind is to be aware of the competition that may be generated from such rewards if they're not available company wide, then some employees might feel excluded if not been awarded regarding their extra efforts for the team.

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6 Employee engagement score

A sixth and final way to measure employee engagement is to calculate an employee engagement score that summarizes and compares the results of the previous methods. An employee engagement score can be a numerical or categorical value that represents the overall engagement level of your development team, or of each developer. You can use a formula, a scale, or a model to compute this score, and to assign it a meaning or a label. An employee engagement score can help you benchmark and track the engagement level of your development team over time, and to identify the best practices and areas for improvement.

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7 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?

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Mahdi Sadeghian Tehrani

Game Developer | C++ Unreal Engine
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In my opinion Weekly meetings to get regular feedbacks from employees has the best impact on both the company and the developers.

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Kevin Yu

Principal SRE | IBM | Using Reliability Engineering To Improve Sustainability, Client Success, Operating Margin and host of the podcast Making of the SRE Omelette
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I feel people are over surveyed - especially when they already feel overwhelmed with work. Best way to engage people IMO are to create an organic process where people are able to freely give feedback on what is doing well and what we can do differently to solve their pain points. Reinforce this behaviour by recognizing all feedback. Don’t just address the easy ones but tackle on the tough ones - this doesn’t mean we need to have answers right away but at least share the thought process and considerations. By acknowledging the challenges, it shows empathy and then partner with the team to find a solution.

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Carlos Lombarte Calvo
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I believe it is very beneficial to foster an environment where people trust their managers and peers enough so they can give honest and constructive feedback. In my opinion surveys are not good enough when used alone and people usually rush them so they can keep doing their work.

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What are the best ways to measure employee engagement in application development?

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1 Feedback surveys

2 Code quality metrics

3 Team collaboration tools

4 Employee retention and turnover rates

5 Employee recognition and rewards

6 Employee engagement score

7 Here’s what else to consider

Application Development

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