GuavaHR and the University of Tartu to develop an employee engagement and job satisfaction monitoring system

The Estonian start-up company GuavaHR in cooperation with the Institute of Psychology of the University of Tartu have started an R&D project to develop an employee engagement monitoring system. In the course of the project, they will create an employee engagement model and organise a wide-ranging engagement survey, which will be completed by the middle of next year.

Employee engagement is characterised by internal willingness to work, absorption in work and a sense of the meaningfulness of work. Engagement is one of the most important predictors of the well-being as well as the performance of employees.

Companies develop rapidly and the reasons for low engagement are often trivial matters that need immediate attention. According to the CEO of GuavaHR Taavi Toots, a more precise, flexible, and easy-to-use monitoring system is needed to identify employee engagement. “Its economic potential for enterprises is very high – research shows that the results of enterprises with more engaged employees are as much as 25–30% better,” Toots explained. In addition, a monitoring system connected with the GuavaHR platform would enable companies to more quickly find ways to increase engagement.

“This development project offers us an excellent opportunity to organise the existing rich, yet fragmented, understanding about factors influencing engagement,” said Andero Uusberg, Senior Research Fellow of Affective Psychology at the University of Tartu and leader of the workgroup developing the new monitoring system.

According to the international analytics and advisory company Gallup, the engagement of Estonian employees is 20%. While the situation in our enterprises is somewhat better than in Latvia and Finland, it lags behind compared to the United States (33%). Based on organisational behaviour research, higher employee engagement brings about better productivity, reduced employee turnover, as well as fewer accidents at work and fewer quality issues.

In Estonia, organisations generally measure employees’ job satisfaction once per year or two years. The monitoring system to be developed in the collaboration of GuavaHR and the University of Tartu will, by means of frequent mini-surveys, provide a more precise and updated overview of both engagement and job satisfaction. Users of the system can compare the results across sectors and based on the number of employees in the company.

GuavaHR is an Estonian startup developing a smart, data-driven and easy-to-use internal communication platform for companies. The company’s mission is to deliver information to each employee, irrespective of their position and location, thereby improving their engagement. GuavaHR operates in Estonia, Lithuania, Finland and Great Britain, and its clients include DPD, Ragn-Sells, Estravel, Thermory, and many others.

The project is co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund.

Further information:
Taavi Toots, CEO of GuavaHR, +372 525 0869, taavi.toots@guavahr.com
Andero Uusberg, Senior Research Fellow of Affective Psychology, University of Tartu, +372 5560 4480, andero.uusberg@ut.ee