By: Tabatha Bender, Redemption Plus

What is measured is changed. It’s an axiom we learned in elementary school science class and one we prove to ourselves on a regular basis. Whether you are pushing to hit your 10,000 steps per day, logging your meals with a macro counter or tracking your expenses against your monthly budget; you know that when you measure yourself against a goal you improve your results. The same is true in business, when you measure the health of your business, you will improve its outcomes.

At Redemption Plus, we measure and set goals for typical business metrics, revenue, expenses and EBITDA, but we also set metrics for our Culture. While each team has specific input metrics, on a company-wide level we focus on the five key areas echoed in Google’s Project Aristotle. This well quoted work demonstrates the importance of five key areas for the success of teams: psychological safety, dependability, clarity of structure, meaning and impact.

In addition to our two annual measures, (a company-wide engagement survey and our annual employee nominated awards) we use ongoing measurements in six key areas to generate timely and actionable feedback. This allows us to provide relevant and specific guidance and resources for continuous improvement.

How We Measure Culture:

1 | Team ratings from our weekly team meetings. These are rated on a scale of 1–10, aggregated and then averaged. These scores provide a quick overview of team engagement by reflecting their participation, organization and focus on issues affecting them at the team level.

2 | Pulse Surveys. These anonymous mini surveys (3–5 questions) are sent monthly to individual team members. These questions were written to request feedback on work relationships, fairness, care, transparency, self-efficacy, trust, integrity and workplace satisfaction.

3 | Participation rates for individual leadership meetings with their direct reports. Tracking the regular occurrence of these meetings helps us ensure that leaders are prioritizing their team members and staying proactive to ensure they have what they need to be successful and to thrive at Redemption Plus.

4 | Sentiment scores from individual updates. This simple 1–5 rating is provided by team members is in response to the question “How are you feeling right now?” The responses, once aggregated, help us understand the needs of our team members on an ongoing basis.

5 | Feedback given measures the engagement of all employees through praising others. This reflection of impact and dependability has been shown to reflect the engagement employees have with their peers and the strength of our teams.

6 | Individual and team goal completion rates are tracked on a monthly basis. This metric reflects the level of engagement employees have with their individual roles. It provides clarity of structure and demonstrates how individual contributions lead to organizational success.

Many of our data points intentionally pull from passive data. It’s a system that doesn’t add work to our employees and leaders. What opportunity do you have to utilize the passive data your organization is already generating? What trends do you see in your observations? How can you make intentional changes to what you measure to drive the results you desire?