This white paper introduces a new tool from KeenCorporation that uses psycho-linguistic analysis and tension detection to continuously monitor employee engagement in real-time without surveys. It argues that employee engagement should be measured like other assets to enable proactive management. The tool analyzes digital communications to generate an Engagement Behavioral Index for departments, visualized through tools like MoodMetrix and Attitude Heatmap. This provides leadership real-time insight into engagement trends to optimize human capital management.

1. Rotterdam | April 2012
Employee
engagement monitoring
Simple, efficient and visualized
in Real-time
This white paper was published by KeenCorporation and Hay Group to elaborate on unique
thought leadership in human capital management and support the introduction of a
revolutionary tool to unobtrusively monitor employee engagement in real-time through
psycho-linguistic analysis and tension detection, enabling companies to leverage human
capital for strategic advantage, without the need to fill in time-consuming surveys.
The asset paradox: we neglect to Let’s take a step back: if employees are to be considered the
primary driver of organizational performance, why aren’t
continuously govern our primary asset they valued as a separate asset class on company financial
class: our people statements? If balance sheets reflect the financial health
For several years, human resources executives have argued of “hard” business assets upon which strategic, financial
that the focus within the HR Prism should shift from output and operating decisions are made, it is remarkable that
maximization to strategic value creation. But what does until now no one has demanded that the so called “most
this shift really mean? How do you gain insight in and valuable asset” of companies, its employees, should be
more important, how and how often do you measure capitalized as “soft” assets to present a “true and fair view” of
contributions of human capital initiatives toward improved company solvency.
shareholder value? If talent management is the new motto To date and in particular relevant in Western Europe and
in retaining employees how do you aggregate this highly the USA, where in excess of 70% of all companies operate in
personalized and diffuse data into relevant and actionable the service economy, we seem to accept that in shareholder
information? Answers to these questions are difficult to value creation, the premier value driver, i.e. the employee, is
attain and in current situations mostly subjective and excluded from day-to-day performance metrics
qualitative.
©2012 Hay Group. All rights reserved

2. 2 Employee engangement monitoring: Simple, Efficient and visualized in Real-time
Company leadership is selected, rewarded year. According to research of Hay Group
and increasingly more accountable for its (2009) employee engagement is the
ability to manage capital assets, realize largest driver of bottom-line results. So
growth and create measurable shareholder engaged employees make the difference.
value. “Hard” capital assets are acquired, Organizations in the top quartile on
deployed, maintained and written-off, all in engagement demonstrate revenue growth
view of generating an acceptable return on of 2.5x greater than organizations in the
capital employed. bottom quartile, while companies in the
“Failure to adequately top quartile on both engagement and
Interestingly though, the well-known financial
incorporate effective enablement achieve revenue growth 4.5x
ratio “capital employed” is calculated as: total
metrics into design and greater than those in the bottom quartile.
assets -/- current liabilities, and hence does
implementation of Gallup (2011), a large US research institute
not include the only real “employed” part of
has also shown that organizations with high
strategy, is the largest corporate assets, being its employees.
employee engagement have 3.9x better
gap in talent The lifecycle of “soft” assets, employees, profit growth rates (EPS) than their average-
management” is not monitored against certain standard performing peers.
conventions, in comparison with “hard
However, few methods exist to monitor
IBM INSTUTUTE FOR assets” which are tested against generally
and quantify employee engagement
BUSINESS VALUE, accepted principles in corporate and
in real-time. Current data collection
financial management. We all know that
INTEGRATED TALENT what we can’t measure we can’t manage.
methods still depend on traditional
MANAGEMENT REPORT techniques such as surveys, questionnaires
In short: corporate governance relating and direct interviews which are time
to employees is largely “invisible” to consuming, expensive and obtrusive. A few
stakeholders in external reporting and the observations on this:
entire HR Topic is frequently earmarked as
Timeliness
“soft”. Governance thus remains at the sole
Due to processing and analysis & reporting
discretion of management which discloses
time such surveys tend to provide
a massive “blind spot” for stakeholders
management with dated information. Data
and shareholders. This leaves us with
is not captured in real-time which obstructs
the inconvenient feeling that in external
active intervention.
reporting “we may be measuring” the wrong
things in our assessments of company Obtrusiveness
health and performance. Employees need to break away from their
daily routine to participate in such surveys,
Employee engagement is the which frequently are conducted annually,
prime subject for governance semi-annually or at best quarterly as a
component of the performance appraisal
Employee engagement is defined as a process.
measurable degree of an employee’s
positive or negative emotional attachment Biased outcomes
to their job, colleagues and organization, Surveys are likely to be influenced by local
which profoundly influences their circumstances, mood and mindset of the
willingness to learn and perform at individual, time, etc. which could result in
work. Thus engagement is distinctively challenges to accuracy and usefulness of
different from employee satisfaction and the outcomes.
organizational culture. System integration
Hay Group research has shown that the As surveys are often reported separately
main drivers of engagement are a clear and from existing enterprise resource systems, it
challenging company direction, confidence is complicated to:
in leadership, focus on customers and integrate outcomes and

quality, development opportunities, recommendations for improvement in
respect and recognition and favorable management reporting;
compensation and benefits.
interface with other performance

Disengaged, unmotivated employees indicators for correlation and regression
cost organizations billions of dollars each analysis.
©2012 Hay Group. All rights reserved

3. 3
Employee engagement should And now what we’ve all
be monitored continuously been waiting for… employee
like other assets engagement can be
Equivalent to a control unit at an assembly monitored continuously!!
line which monitors cycle time, machine KeenCorp© has developed a unique
temperature and capacity utilization, in software solution which enables real-
an ideal world management should have time, unobtrusive insight in employee
constant, live and detailed information about engagement of an organization. Employee
employee engagement. Imagine a “heart rate engagement is measured using a single
monitor” for employees…. ratio: the Engagement Behavioral Index
Similar to such a machine control unit, (“EBI”). Hay Group was able to validate
this information should be displayed the EBI-index with one of world’s largest
automatically without the need of human databases on engagement and can deliver
interaction to capture process or filter this the norms to give the index meaning:
data. Data needs to be accessible 24x7x365 how good or bad is it what we measure
and updated in real-time so that management compared to the country, business sector,
can easily interpret this and use this status or when we compare ourselves to the best
information on the relevant asset. Effectively business performers.
management will be enabled to pinpoint
problem areas within the organization, render The EBI visualizes the index and changes
cause & effects and identify underlying in employee engagement within a specific
problems of shifts and trends in employee organization and/or department “with a
engagement. push of one button”. To measure the EBI
KeenCorp’s algorithm can automatically
With such information it becomes possible process any digitally written text as input,
to intervene quickly in departments where primarily e-mail, but other written text
problems arise and assess the immediate “KeenCorp’s flagship
which can be considered are corporate
effect of an intervention. Well performing product, Attitude Heat-
messengers (e.g. Skype, Communicator,
departments are detected and their success Yammer) and daily-reports. map, enables corporate
methods can be replicated throughout leadership to measure
the organization. Similarly this information From written text KeenCorp’s algorithm employee engagement
can be partially distributed to employees, combines psycho-linguistic language in real-time and per
making it possible to compare departmental information with tension detection to
engagement with historic performance or department. Privacy is
construct a single index. Privacy and
other internal departments. confidentiality are fully guaranteed
fully safeguarded”
This could initiate a paradigm shift on human as for every text, sender-receiver pairs
capital measurement and management: are anonymized up until the level of a
instead of reactive measures based on pre-defined group (e.g. accounting or
discrete performance reviews, company management) and as a result of this a
leadership including HR Professionals can single measurement can never be back-
now proactively design & deploy intervention traced to an individual. In addition, for
programs to optimize yields on human capital each processed text, names, place names
via this “early warning system”. Moreover, and company names are automatically
sustainable benefits of effective HR Policy anonymized before processing. Finally,
on financial performance can be measured, the only information stored is a single
a direct correlation between employee combined index for each defined
engagement and other performance department. Technical integration of
indicators can be construed and “return KeenCorp’s solution is comparable with
on capital employed” is finally properly the integration of a SPAM filter, which
calculated. processes incoming email and measures the
possibility whether the message is SPAM or
regular e-mail.

4. 4 Employee engangement monitoring: Simple, Efficient and visualized in Real-time
The stored indices can be visualized to an end-user (e.g. company leadership, employees
or other stakeholders) by the two flagship products of KeenCorp©: MoodMetrix© and
Attitude Heatmap©.
Selected impressions of
visualizations from the
KeenCorp application:
MoodMetrix© displays a charted graph with the EBI presented on a timeline. With this
tool changes in employee engagement within the organization can be tracked on a day-
to-day basis. Comparisons can be made based on weighted averages on year-, quarterly-,
month- or week-basis. Graphs can be generated for each predefined group within the
organization. Groups can be defined as any cluster of individuals, for example the group
“accounting” or “management”, but also groups can be defined as “female employees” or
“employees above 40 years of age” or any other division deemed informative. A variety of
Hay Group norms can be selected to benchmark against.
Attitude Heatmap© is a visualization tool which presents a detailed drill-down from the
MoodMetrix graph and provides a segment status update of the organization, based on
the same data. Aforementioned pre-defined groups are visualized in a heatmap, where
each sub-division occupies a rectangle shape in the visualization, sized by the volume of
the texts processed by KeenCorp’s algorithm and color coded by the change in employee
engagement over time. It becomes intuitively clear where problem areas are looming, so
management can intervene and immediately measure the effect of this intervention. A
variety of Hay Group norms can be selected to benchmark against.
Combined with the traditional array of HR Metrics and tools now it becomes possible
for company leadership to actively monitor employee engagement and its relationship
with other business domains in real-time and continue to deliver detailed & personalized
human capital management programs, based on existing HR Repositories and systems on
employee performance.
About Hay Group
Hay Group is a global management consulting firm that works with leaders to transform strategy into
reality. We develop talent, organize people to be more effective and motivate them to perform at their
best. Our focus is on making change happen and helping people and organizations realize their potential.
We have over 2,600 employees working in 85 offices in 49 countries. Our insight is supported by robust
data from over 100 countries. Our clients are from the private, public and not-for-profit sectors, across
every major industry. For more information please contact your local office through
www.haygroup.com.
About KeenCorporation
KeenCorporation is a Dutch software vendor set-up to measure the spirit of enterprise expressed in
employee engagement, based on psycho-linguistic analysis and tension detection. Our solutions offer
management insight and tools to measure, visualize and improve employee engagement in real-time
with an unprecedented level of accuracy.
KeenCorporation was founded in 2011 by seasoned entrepreneurs with backgrounds in artificial
intelligence, psychology, strategy and venture capital.
www.keencorporation.com
©2012 Hay Group. All rights reserved