Measuring engagement and wellbeing along the employee lifecycle

For the past 30 years, Exos has trained athletes, military personel and hundreds of companies on wellbeing—currently boasting a roster of 350 company clients, including 20% of the Fortune 100.

While it understands the wellness industry, its leaders also get that taking care of employees is central to fulfilling its client needs. That’s why Exos enhanced its employee engagement strategy through a robust practice of consulting, team-building  and rethining traditional engagement metrics.

During Ragan’s Employee Experience Conference this past summer, Exos Chief People Officer Greg Hill shared how the company prioritizes wellness internally by measuring employee engagement—and using science to improve it.

‘From arriving to thriving’

Exos’ measurement strategy takes a holistic approach to tracking employee engagement. Exos partnered with organizational psychologist Adam Grant and Wharton to study the impact of rest and recovery on employee engagement and performance for a six-month pilot program.

Wharton conducted the survey before and during the program, ultimately helping Exos refine its strategies based on the data.

This resulted in:

• Tracking the employee life-cycle. Engagement is tracked along different stages in the employee journey at 30, 60 and 90 days. 60 days is a critical milestone. “Engagement for us is how we look at the life cycle of arriving to thriving,” said Hill.
• Marrying participation metrics to turnover rates. While turnover is a KPI of engagement and buy-in, it doesn’t give you the whole picture. This is why Exos measures engagement by participation in voluntary employee interest groups, ERGs and internal communication platforms like WorkVivo.
• The employee readiness score. Exos introduced a readiness score to measure whether employees feel rested, recovered and ready to thrive each day. Results from the Readiness Score showed that Exos created “autonomy and trust overnight” and improved engagement metrics across a global workforce of 4000 employees. Hill said that this helps Exos, and employees, answer the question, “Are you waking up every day, rested, recovered, valued, and ready to thrive?”

Results grounded in science

This program took a scientific approach to understanding employee engagement, which resulted in a slew of innovative approaches to boosting engagement and wellbeing:

• Recharge Breaks. Understanding the impact of brain fatigue on focus and engagement during meetings, Exos introduced recharge breaks.
• Grounding workflows in autonomy and trust. The research also showed that employees want autonomy and trust in how they work and what they do. Exos made this happen by promoting transparency—making calendars public and encouraging fewer, more intentional meetings.
• A four-day workweek. Exos formalized a four-day workweek at 600 locations, which it positioned as an employee “recovery day” to focus on rest or work individually without engaging with coworkers. “Work plus rest equals success,” said Hill.

What Exos learned

The launch of the program taught Exos that it needed a continuous feedback loop through pulse surveys and internal comms, which ultimately helped them continue to iterate and improve their engagement programs.

The constant employee feedback loop allowed Exos to rethink its engagement strategy as a bottom-up approach, rather than top-down directives, ultimately resulting in a readiness culture code that fostered a sense of trust and ownership among employees.

Check out Hill’s full presentation here: