NEW YORK—Edelman has launched the Employee Engagement Connections Index, a tool designed to help companies understand the strength, quality and drivers of employees’ connection to their company, employees’ connection to their colleagues and employees’ connection to the outside world.

“Our new Connections Index fills a critical gap in employee research products that are currently available,” says Matt Norquist, executive vice president and global practice leader of insights for Edelman Berland, the firm’s research group. “It focuses on understanding employee behaviors and evaluating engagement in an ongoing, real-time fashion rather than just collecting attitudes at a moment in time through survey research.

“Data is collected through a number of methods, including surveys, behavioral analysis and ongoing real-time feedback through insights communities. This affords our clients the ability to make real-time shifts in strategies and tactics to reflect the reality of a constantly changing workplace environment.”

The Connections Index is derived from the aggregated analysis of three distinct data sets:
• A short and targeted employee survey to measure current attitudes, opinions and behaviors
• An independent analysis of employee behavior to see how actual behavior matches self-reported behavior, including an analysis of employee activity on company-related social media sites, and in on and off-line exchanges of information with each other and their colleagues
• A comparison to Edelman’s just-in-time employee engagement benchmark.

The results of the Connections Index are reported back on a virtual dashboard that allows executives to examine the strength of their employee connections compared to best practices and company objectives, and to evaluate performance across geography, line of business and type of employee.