Tracking Employee Mojo: How to Boost Retention and Productivity

by Mike O'Neill

Are you an employer that cares about your employees — you want them to be happy, but you also need them to be productive and put their best self into their work each day to create engaging customer experiences?

With the right tactics and tools, that’s achievable.

You can put strategies into place in your business that will encourage employees to work well together towards your goals, motivate them to deliver outstanding results, and will result in lower turnover rates.

In this article, I will help you uncover those tactics and give you what you need to build a one-of-a-kind tool that will help you achieve higher employee engagement, retention, and productivity. Let’s jump in!

First, What is Employee Mojo?

Employee Mojo is a fun turn of phrase to describe how your employees feel at this moment in time. Symptoms of high Mojo levels include positive energy, increased productivity, and self-motivation.

6 Tips for Tracking Employee Mojo

Tip #1: Peer-To-Peer Collaboration

Humans are social creatures. Peer-to-peer collaboration involves people in similar roles or with similar objectives coming together to work on a task or project together. For example, multiple people inside one department may work closely together on a specific project in order to complete it faster.

Why do you need peer-to-peer collaboration in your workplace? Simple — when your employees work well together, their Mojo is higher.

  • They work together to solve problems, so nobody feels left out or struggling to find a solution alone.
  • They can combine ideas and produce more innovative results for your company.
  • They create a continuous cycle of learning and improvement.

As an employer, it’s up to you to create an environment where peer-to-peer collaboration can take place productively.

  • Promote connectivity and community in your company so that your employees know that you value their collaboration.
  • Provide the tools and resources that they need to enable collaboration. This can include internal social networks, online community areas, and tools like Google Docs that allow collaboration in real-time.

You can also take a look at what other companies are doing to improve their employee collaboration and borrow a few ideas.

Sprint Upgraded their Workspace

In this case study, Sprint completely redesigned their workspace to improve collaboration. They had a goal of hiring 50% of their interns, and after the renovation, they felt that they would easily achieve that.


“Our old space did not facilitate collaboration. The environment that we worked in for 20 years hadn’t changed nearly enough to keep pace with our business. This [newly redesigned] space and the experiences we’re creating here really encourage people to do their best work.”
Deeanne King, Chief Human Resource Officer at Sprint.

HyperloopTT Used Workplace by Facebook


Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HyperloopTT) is a growth-focused company that is known for being an innovator in the transportation sector. In this case study, they breakdown how they were able to use social communication tools to improve collaboration.


"HyperloopTT moves quickly. [In our business, our hiring, and the transportation system we're creating].  It's imperative that our team is able to communicate and collaborate as efficiently as possible to keep pace with our needs. "When it comes to connecting our global, distributed workforce, there is no other tool that allows us to collaborate and streamline processes as Workplace [by Facebook] does."
— Andrea La Mendola, Chief Operating Officer at Hyperloop Transportation Technologies

BookMyShow Used Culture Canvas

BookMyShow is a leading entertainment destination in India. They had the goal of building a collaborative culture that would support creative ideation. This case study showcased how they got creative and implemented a program that gave employees a fun way to interact with each other.


“‘Culture Canvas’ has not only brought a breath of fresh air into the way employees engage with the organization but also brought people a whole lot closer than earlier. It has infused a great deal of optimism and positivity into the work culture, which we believe is a fantastic achievement, especially since we tend to spend several wakeful hours at work.”
— Shamita Ghosh, Head of Human Resources

Tip #2: Reinforcement

Positive reinforcement can encourage employees to work harder, achieve productivity goals, and continue to meet desirable standards.

Managers can use positive reinforcement consistently to achieve the results they are looking for from their employees. For example, they may choose to:

  • Provide positive verbal feedback after an employee finished a difficult task.
  • Include a financial incentive, such as a pay increase or bonus, when employees meet specific achievements.
  • Use a reward system to encourage employees to complete extra projects on time.
  • Recognize employees that are working longer hours or investing a lot of effort into their work — providing additional time off is a great way to encourage them to relax and can prevent burnout.

Take a look at examples of positive reinforcement in action and learn from what your peers are doing to improve employee Mojo.

  • Xactly recognizes their employees for their outstanding performance quarterly at their all-hands company meeting.
  • Read the book, The Carrot Principle, by Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton. They discuss the ten-year study they did on employee performance. They showed the impact of positive reinforcement.
Positive reinforcement can even help correct poor ergonomic behaviors in the workplace — saving your employees from themselves and reducing your healthcare costs.

Tip #3: Alignment to Company Needs

As a leader, you are responsible for creating the vision for what your company is going to be in the future. Alignment happens when you are able to communicate that vision with your employees in a way that they understand and can support.

When your teams are aligned with the company’s needs and the CEO’s direction:

  • You reduce wasted time and misdirected efforts.
  • You improve an employee’s overall Mojo and satisfaction with their job.
  • Employee’s overall performance improves because they are working towards goals that matter to the company.

If you’re going to align your employees with the company’s key objectives, there are a few steps you should take.

  • Assemble a one-page strategic plan summary that outlines your company’s initiatives and the resources — time, people, and money — that will be needed.
  • Prioritize your list. Ask yourself what is the most important thing for your company and your future success right now.
  • Assign the items on your list to the best departments, teams, and individuals with the right resources to complete the tasks.
  • Utilize one-on-one weekly check-ins to make sure that your managers are up-to-speed on the overall progress of the tasks. They can also provide employee feedback in real-time.
  • Continue to ask for feedback from your teams — you will want to be aware of problems before they occur if you want to maintain a high Mojo level.

Tip #4: Create a Culture of Connection

A connected culture is one in which your employees feel valued, accepted, and have a sense that they belong. You can rally your employees around your culture and give everyone a purpose-driven goal.

A company culture based on connections has a positive impact on customer experiences. 

  • Customer retention rates are 18% higher when your employees are highly engaged and well-informed.
  • 20% of employees use company culture as a criteria for choosing where they want to work.

It also creates a safe place for high levels of employee Mojo where your teams are engaged and excited.

According to a study from The Engagement Institute™, disengaged employees cost organizations approximately $450-550 billion each year.

Connected employees:

  • Have a higher level of overall mental and physical health due to reduced stress.
  • Have more clarity of purpose.
  • Put their best effort into their work.
  • Are more aligned with the company’s goals.
  • Communicate better with their peers.
  • Provide more creativity and innovation in their jobs.

Building a connected culture at your company starts at the top. Your prime directive as a leader must be to support your employees, your company, and your community. You will lead by example.

  • Show your gratitude to the people that work for you. Let them know that they are appreciated and that their contributions matter.
  • Listen to your employees and their concerns. Let them know you value their opinions.
  • Create opportunities to connect — you can utilize informal encounters and performance reviews to talk with and learn more about your team members.

Tip #5: Reward & Recognize

Utilize reward and recognition programs to provide employees with regular feedback. Reward systems generally provide financial incentives where recognition programs provide psychological benefits to employees.

In fact, in a Harvard Business Study, 72% of respondents said that recognition given for high performers had a significant impact on employee engagement.

It’s also been determined by Smarp that companies with a highly engaged workforce are 22% more profitable.

Reward and recognition programs have a positive impact on the overall workplace dynamic. They motivate employees to improve their performance and encourage a sense of loyalty to their employer.

When you are crafting your reward and recognition programs, there are a few steps you’ll want to consider:

  • Identify your company or department goals that you want these new programs to support.
  • Identify the employee performance and behaviors that you want to achieve that align with those goals.
  • Outline how you will measure employee performance and behavior, so you can track progress.
  • Identify the appropriate rewards or recognition that will achieve the desired results.
  • As you roll out your new programs, make sure to communicate them to employees in a way that clearly sets the expectations you have for them.

You can also learn from other companies that have successfully implemented reward and recognition programs and use that to inspire your own. For example:

  • Cisco created a global peer-to-peer recognition program based on their core company values.
  • Hilton provides managers with an annual recognition calendar that features 365 no and low-cost ideas that are easy to implement and help them show thanks to their employees.
Crowe uses a “Pay It Forward” program where employees that are recognized can pay it forward to other colleagues that played important roles.

Tip #6: Use A Mojo Meter

A Mojo Meter is something that we learned about during an interview with Expert Panelist, Kevin Barber, from Lean Labs. Kevin described it as a spreadsheet that he created to capture an employee’s Mojo Level.

You have people in your company that aren’t just overachievers — they are workaholics.

Even though they enjoy what they do, employee burnout results in you not getting their best self at work. If you have a way to gauge Mojo, you will be able to keep track of how people are doing and head off any problems before they start.

To create a Mojo Meter for your company, you need to:

  • Build a spreadsheet that asks employees to answer a few questions — where they feel like they are on a scale of 1 to 10 and why.
  • Ask your employees to fill in their answers once a week.
  • As an employer, review the spreadsheet and watch the trends across the company and individually.
If a score is in the 5’s, 6’s, and 7’s, hold a meeting with your employee. Find out what’s going on and how you can help.

Get Expert Guidance on Managing Employees

As an employer that cares for your employees — but still needs to grow your company, you have some challenges to conquer.

Now that you have the right tactical tools and strategies to gauge your employees’ Mojo levels, it’s time to keep that momentum going.

You need to constantly be on the lookout for ways to boost employee engagement, retain your good employees, and increase their productivity. Our Business-Building Q&A Webinar series will help you do just that.

Get professional tips and timely answers to your questions each week. Our expert panelists will help you tackle the tough topics.

Save your seat for our next webinar — we’ll see you there!

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