"Traditional employee engagement surveys just aren't working how we need them to," Gloria St. Martin-Lowry, president of the HPWP Group, writes for the Harvard Business Review. But adding these three nontraditional key performance indicators (KPIs) to your surveys can help you better understand your team and improve engagement.

3 KPIs to add to your engagement surveys

1. Team success

Measuring team success can provide a glimpse into the culture of each team and how team members relate to one another, St. Martin-Lowry writes.

She recommends asking every team to define what success looks like to them, and notes that while you can prompt discussion with some open-ended questions, you should let teams figure out success for themselves.

You can also ask team members to describe the organizational work culture as if they were talking to their family and friends, St. Martin-Lowry writes. What they say could be indicative of how they feel about the company as a whole and their team.

2. Innovation and new ideas

You should also be measuring the new ideas that pop up throughout your organization, St. Martin-Lowry writes. These new ideas can stimulate and encourage your employees, "which is exactly what engagement is all about."

She also recommends asking your employees to reflect on what they've done recently by asking questions like, "What did you learn from the last project or experience?" Doing so reinforces learning and allows employees to celebrate what went well and consider how they can get better.

St. Martin-Lowry writes that she recently added a "what I learned last week" segment to her team's weekly gatherings. This segment "reinforces the importance of continued learning and allows us to share with and learn from each other," she writes.

3. Trends

Tracking trends could mean paying attention to trends in metrics, business, customers — whatever makes sense for your team, St. Martin-Lowry writes.

For example, if you work in marketing and frequently look through customer data reports, you can ask your coworkers, "What do these reports tell us? What don't they tell us? How and why are these results different from what we've seen recently, and what should we do next?" St. Martin-Lowry writes. Asking these questions makes everyone start thinking about potential gaps in their knowledge of customer trends.

Paying attention to trends allows everyone to be on the same page and empowers your team members to look closely at facts and figures, St. Martin-Lowry writes. It also gives everyone on the team ownership and authority to use their abilities to dig deeper, which can improve engagement.

"Old habits truly do die hard. Nevertheless, many habits need to be shelved, including the belief that engagement surveys are the answer to revving up employee engagement," St. Martin-Lowry writes. "They've had their time to shine, and they just aren't working. It's best to reinvent them so more nontraditional KPIs and methods of motivating employees can have their chance to shine." (St. Martin-Lowry, Harvard Business Review, 1/10)