10 Reasons to Love the PEARL Model

PEARL^TM is the starting point for all our employee engagement activities

We call our employee engagement framework PEARL^TM  – more on its name later. It’s not just about the wisdom it brings. Developed with a real consideration of organisation’s needs, we believe PEARL^TM  is the most comprehensive, actionable, and lean model of engagement there is. In fact, we’re confident it’s the best way of measuring employee engagement.

It’s vital to have a model you believe in to base your employee engagement themes, questions and reporting on, and so can feel confident taking action to drive engagement. Here are 10 reasons why we love it. We think you will too.

1. You won’t find a more robust measure of employee engagement

It was designed by our expert employee survey consultants. They studied over 20 million data points to craft the wisdom of PEARL^TM.

2. It’s academically solid, yet based in the real world

Whilst PEARL^TM is grounded in occupational psychology, it’s not a dry theoretical framework. It is written in plain English, and reflects issues that managers and leaders can immediately get to work on.

3. It’s intuitive

It takes about 30 seconds to ‘get it.’ It will make sense to your peers, leaders and employees, so you won’t have to waste time explaining obscure academic notions. PEARL is made up of 5 global themes – they give PEARL its name:

Purpose

Enablement

Autonomy

Reward

Leadership

• 5 key indicators that demonstrate a person’s degree of engagement: Pride; Advocacy; Endeavour; Longevity and Care
• The indicators are driven by the 5 global factors or themes
• Each global factor is supported by two key factors, which provide the questions. E.g. Purpose is underpinned by Alignment and Integrity, which give the questions, such as for Integrity; ‘The purpose of (my organisation) makes me feel good about my work.’

4. It’s right for millennials and gen Z… and every other generation

Millennials and increasingly gen Z make up over 1/3 of the working population – 75% by 2030[2]. They are full of ideas, hyper connected, impatient to learn. They care that their organisation stands for something good in the world and is a place where they can see themselves developing. PEARL^TM was able to include these generations needs, unlike older models, to ensure it’s relevant for everyone.

5. It incorporates wellbeing

Wellbeing – it’s a hot topic right now, as we realise the significance in the workplace. Engagement and employee wellbeing are inextricably linked as they share many of the same causes. In the research to develop PEARL^TM, we made sure that the questions would help identify the risk of stress and burnout (and other employee wellbeing outcomes) whilst also measuring engagement.

6. It’s lean…

We stripped out any unnecessary questions, the ones that asked the same thing, but differently, and the ones that just don’t impact engagement in a meaningful way. It’s short enough to be easily deployable via mobile, and avoids survey fatigue. Your people are time poor – let’s make answering a survey efficient!

7. …but not too lean

There’s a sensible balance of detail & economy in PEARL^TM. The core question set comprises 35 which gives you rich data across distinct topics. It allows sophisticated analyses including correlation and regression, provides granularity and differentiation in action recommendations between different sets of results.

8.It’s comparable

Using PEARL^TM means using a question set that has some of the most robust employee survey benchmarks in the industry. Have a burning need to add in another question that’s essential in your organisation? No problem. Our database is chock full of benchmarked questions on almost every subject imaginable, and our consultants will help you get the right ones.

9. It’s relevant if you are private, public or not for profit sector

People are people wherever they work. The evidence shows that the core drivers of engagement are stable across sectors. Sure, the relative importance of these might vary from one organisation to another (and within organisations and over time), but we know that most people are driven to perform at their best when certain recognisable features exist within their workplace (such as feeling valued and having the right opportunities to learn and grow). PEARL^TM measures these things whilst avoiding the waffle.

10. It’s actionable

There is no question in the survey model that you can’t do something about. So whatever your results, you will be able to make change happen, to improve engagement in your workplace.

If that has whet your appetite about PEARL^TM, then you can find out more via our whitepaper, or by contacting People Insight. We’d be delighted to talk you through it!

Download the whitepaper here