PI Diagnose: Taking action on engagement

Soliciting employee feedback is a critical part of building a best-in-class company culture. When your people feel safe to share candid, timely, and specific feedback, it brings you one step closer to creating meaningful change in your organization.

But feedback alone won’t spark that change—action must follow. Unfortunately, many leaders struggle to translate feedback into tangible next steps.

PI Diagnose gives you the tools not just to measure engagement, but to improve it, one day at a time. In this article, you’ll learn how to make the most of Diagnose—and take action on engagement.

Understanding what drives engagement

To improve engagement, it’s crucial to first understand what engagement is, as well as what drives engagement.

Engagement represents an employee’s level of enthusiasm in their current work environment. Much like mood or attitude, engagement is a personal affair; it isn’t something a leader can “act on” or improve—at least, not directly. 

Instead, engagement can be influenced (either positively or negatively) by making changes to a person’s work environment. Those influences are known as engagement drivers. 

PI’s science team has identified four drivers of engagement, also known as JMPO:

• An employee’s job
• Their manager
• The people they work with
• Their sentiment toward their organization

Engagement may not be “actionable,” but JMPO is. Examples of how to improve JMPO include the following: 

• Providing clearer work processes (job)
• Modeling self-aware leadership (manager)
• Improving team trust (people)
• Creating strong values (organization)

The more you invest in JMPO, the greater the likelihood of fostering a positive work environment—and providing a positive employee experience.

How PI Diagnose measures JMPO

PI Diagnose was developed specifically with these JMPO drivers in mind. The software equips users with a variety of “pulse” surveys, each measuring one or more JMPO drivers.

For example, the PI Engagement Pulse measures each of the four JMPO drivers, and provides an overall snapshot of a team’s engagement levels. As such, it’s a recommended starting point for Diagnose users. (Learn more about the Engagement Pulse.)

Other surveys, like the Meaningful Work survey, measure employee sentiment pertaining to a single JMPO driver—in this case, the Job driver. The Manager Relationship survey measures sentiment related to the Manager driver, and so on.

By sending out these pulses, Diagnose users can get a baseline for JMPO levels within their team or organization. These levels are presented within the software as numerical “scores” from 0 to 100. In total, there are four JMPO scores. Hover over the images below to see more information.

With each new pulse survey completed, Diagnose users get fresh data that’ll update their JMPO scores. 

Each survey also provides a summary of the biggest trends in the data—both good and bad. By reviewing these strengths and caution areas, Diagnose users will learn what to focus on with their team or organization to have the greatest impact on engagement.

Item scores, JMPO scores, and benchmarks

Each survey in PI Diagnose contains its own series of Likert-style questions—also known as “items.”

Once a user closes an active survey, Diagnose polls the results, assigning scores to each item based on the proportion of respondents who responded either “agree” or “strongly agree” for that question. The software then takes the average of all item scores for a particular JMPO category (Job, Manager, People, Organization) and calculates the associated JMPO score.

Under the “Analysis Tab,” users can access their survey results, including JMPO scores and individual item scores. Each item score is accompanied by an external benchmark score, based on a sample of approximately 1,000 U.S. working adults. Users can also view each item’s relative impact on engagement (low, medium, or high), determined by correlations computed using the sample data.

Using PI Diagnose to take action on engagement

Once a survey closes, Diagnose compares the results to the external benchmark. The software then provides users with the biggest “strengths” and “caution areas” gleaned from the analysis, along with “actions”—from quick tips to interactive courses—specifically designed to improve engagement.

Here’s how we define a strength vs. caution area:

• Strengths represent survey items strongly correlated to engagement that exceed the external benchmark.
• Caution areas are items strongly correlated to engagement that fall short of the benchmark (and thus may be impeding the employee experience). 

By highlighting strengths and caution areas, PI Diagnose gives users a holistic window into the employee experience. It allows them to pinpoint what’s going well (so they can reinforce it), and what needs attention most (so they can address it). 

No matter the obstacle, Diagnose provides the insights and contextual tools needed to take action—and level up the employee experience.