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Engagement
3 Min Read

To Propel Your Business, Learn What’s Driving Employee Performance

Courtney Bigony
Courtney Bigony

Engagement is a term that has been traditionally linked to morale or job satisfaction. And because of this, most engagement surveys today aren’t measuring the behaviors that actually drive employee performance. 15Five aims to bridge this gap with our new Full Potential Index, a research-backed survey feature helping leaders measure the qualities that promote high engagement.

15Five’s Full Potential Index takes a different approach to engagement

15Five’s free Full Potential Index bypasses traditional engagement surveys by digging deep into what motivates employees to do their best work. Instead of giving you a surface-level view of how happy your people are in their roles, the Full Potential Index aims to understand how well your employees are thriving—because when your employees are thriving, so is your business.

Created alongside Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman, a leading researcher on human intelligence, creativity, and self actualization, the Full Potential Index delivers detailed results using themes from the latest research across four fields of psychological science. The Full Potential Index is the first of its kind and currently the most complete measure of whether people and organizations are reaching their full potential.  

Qualities that impact employee performance

Measuring employee thriving may sound like a broad concept, but it’s surprisingly simple. Research shows that when business leaders prioritize the keys to human potential, including psychological safety, strengths, and intrinsic motivation; performance and uncommon loyalty naturally result. 

Although the Full Potential Index helps you measure employee engagement using over 30 thriving themes, here are three examples that help leaders propel long-term engagement and high employee performance.

1. Psychological Safety
Psychological safety is the belief that a person is safe for interpersonal risk taking. It’s a critical element that allows teams to do their best work and is shown to improve learning, employee performance, engagement, and satisfaction. A company culture with high psychological safety empowers its people to speak up, ask for feedback, openly admit mistakes, and express ideas and concerns. 

2. Strengths
Knowing the strengths of your people and leveraging those natural abilities can help employees feel more fulfilled and motivated to do their best work. And while aligning an employee’s role to their strengths can fuel engagement and productivity, only a third of individuals understand what their strengths are. 

3. Intrinsic Motivation
External motivators can only go so far to drive people before they run out of steam. True motivation comes from work that is inherently interesting and enjoyable. This deeper, more personal type of incentive is called intrinsic motivation. When people are intrinsically motivated to do their work, they’re more likely to perform better.

Courtney Bigony

Courtney Bigony is the Director of People Science at 15Five, industry-leading people management software, where she developed Positive Product Design which aligns the product to the latest science of thriving. Courtney has a Masters of Applied Positive Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania, is the founder of The Deep Feedback Movement, and a Fellow at the Center for Evidence-Based Management. She was named a 2019 Workforce Game Changer by Workforce Magazine and has contributed pieces featured in Forbes and Huffington Post. Follow her on twitter @CourtneyBigony.

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