“Employee Engagement is when the business values the employee and the employee values the business” (Armstrong, 2009, p.159)
Figure 1 : Linkages to employee engagement
(Source: Mayes, 2018)
Introduction
An engaged employee provides the platform for the success of the organization from a range of views, accumulated profit, and productivity, accumulated sense of well being, innovation and reductions in employee churn/turnover and illness (Mayes, 2018).
Employees form the integral a part of a company. To remain competitive an organization needs to keep employees totally involved in everything that's happening towards business outcomes. Each employee within the company can have to be compelled as committed, motivated and keen about working for the corporate, and its goals. There must be a significant intersection between what corporate is expecting from the employee, and what the employee is expecting from the corporate. For over a decade currently, each organization is interested to understand what percentage employees are engaged to cause, the term employee engagement is also recently used, however its fundamentals are quite familiar, researched and established and has existed past (Vaidyanathan and Maheshwari, 2016).
After decades of corporate discourse concerning the war for talent, it seems that the battle is over, and talent has won. Employees nowadays has raised negotiation power, the job market is extremely clear, and attracting top-skilled employees could be an extremely competitive activity. Companies are currently investing in analytics tools to work out the reasons of people leave, and therefore, the topics of purpose, engagement, and culture weigh on the minds of business leaders everyplace (Bersin, 2015).
According to Armstrong, (2009), more recently the term ‘engagement’ has return to the fore. It's generally used terribly loosely as a strong notion that embraces pretty much everything the organization is seeking with reference to the contribution and behavior of its employees concerning levels of job performance, willingness to do that much more and identification with the organization. It's a helpful mantra for management in organizations to chant – ‘We wish more engagement’ – without always being clear about what they mean by engagement or how it can be achieved.
Characteristics of an Engaged Employee
Figure 2: Characteristics of an engaged employee
(Source: Robinson, Perryman and Hayday, 2004)
Definition of Employee Engagement
Figure 3: Definition of employee engagement
(Source: GMJ, 2006)
Strategies to Improve Employee Engagement
The author of employee engagement: The key to
the rising performance, Solomon Markos (2019),
highlights following 10
strategies to enhance employee engagement in any organization.
1. Start it on day one: Most organizations do have
clear new talent acquisition strategies. However, they lack employee retention
strategies. Effective recruitment and orientation programs are the primary
building blocks to be set on the primary day of the new employee. Managers
should take care in pulling out the potential talent of the new employee
through effective recruitment. The recently hired employee should be given each
general orientation which is related to the corporate mission, vision, values,
policies, and procedures, and job-specific orientation such as his/her job duties,
and responsibilities, goals and current priorities of the department to which
the employee belongs to change him/her to develop realistic job expectations
and reduce role conflict that may arise within the future. Once the hiring
decision is formed, the manager must guarantee role-talent match when placing
an employee during a certain position and exert all managerial efforts needed
to retain that talent within the organization.
2. Start it from the top: employee engagement needs
leadership commitment through establishing clear mission, vision and values.
Unless the people at the top believe it, own it, pass it right down to managers
and employees, and enhance their leadership, employee engagement can never be
more than just a “corporate fad” or “another unit of time thing.” Employee
engagement doesn't want lip-service rather dedicated heart and action-oriented
service from prime management. It needs “Leading by Being example”
3. Enhance employee engagement through two-way communication:
Managers should promote two-way communication. Employees aren't sets of pots to
which pour out concepts without giving them an opportunity to own a say on
problems that matter to their job and life. Clear and consistent communication
of what's expected of them paves the method for engaged workforce. Involve
people, and continually show relevancy their input. Share power with employees
through participative decision-making so that they might feel sense of
belongings thereby increasing their engagement in realizing it.
4. Offer satisfactory opportunities for development and
advancement: Encourage independent thinking through giving
them additional job autonomy so that employees can have an opportunity to form
their own freedom of selecting their own best method of doing their job so long
as they're producing the expected result. Manage through results instead of
making an attempt to manage all the processes by which that result is achieved.
5. Ensure that employees have everything they have to do
their jobs: Managers are expected to form sure that
employees have all the resources like physical or material, financial and
knowledge resources in order to effectively do their
job.
6. Offer employees appropriate training:
facilitate employees update themselves increasing their information and skills
through giving applicable training. usually, it's understood that
once employees get to understand more about their job, their
confidence will increase there by having the ability to figure without much
direction from their immediate managers which successively builds their
self-efficacy and commitment.
7. Have strong feedback system:
companies should develop a performance management system that holds managers
and employees accountable for the amount of engagement they have shown.
Conducting regular survey of employee engagement level helps figure out factors
that build employees engaged. Once finalizing the survey, it's
advisable to see all the factors that driving engagement within the
organization, then narrow down the list of factors to specialize in 2 or 3 areas. It's
necessary that organizations begin with a concentration on the factors which
will create the foremost difference to the employees and place energy around
improving these areas because it is also difficult to handle all factors at
once. Managers should be behind such survey results and develop action-oriented
plans that are specific, measurable, and responsible and time- bound.
8. Incentives have a part to play:
Managers should work out both financial and non-financial advantages for
employees who show more engagement in their jobs. Several management
theories have indicated that once employees get more pay,
recognition, and praise, they tend to exert more effort into their job.
There should be a transparent link between performance and incentives given to
the employees.
9. Build a distinctive corporate culture:
companies should promote a powerful work culture during which the goals and
values of managers are aligned across all work
sections. Companies that build a culture of mutual respect by keeping
success stories alive won't only keep their existing employees engaged however
additionally they baptize the new incoming employees with this
contagious spirit of work culture.
10. Focus on top-performing employees: A
study conducted by Watson Wyatt Worldwide in 2004/05 in 60-minute practices
of 50 large USA companies shows that high-performing organizations are focusing
on engaging their top-performing employees. According to
the finding of a similar analysis, what high-performing companies
are doing is what high-performing employees are asking for and this
reduces the turnover of high-performing employees and as a result leads to top
business performance.
Theoretical Model of Employee Engagement
Figure 3: A theoretical model to measure employee engagement
(Source: Imandin, Bisschoff and Botha, 2014)
An Example of Employee Engagement
John Lewis is an
example of an organization that includes a mission that determines the
organization's method of operating and its management style (Cook, 2008). John
Lewis Partnership is a company owned by its employees. The company has a
multi-layered approach to employee engagement and voice. The Partnership
promotes engagement during a number of the way, by sharing knowledge, creating
a huge amount of information accessible to partners (employees) and taking time
to confirm people perceive it; sharing power, operating a variety of councils
and committees with which partners can become involved; and sharing profit
through the variety of means that including an annual bonus, and non-contributory
final earnings pensions scheme. Partners are oversight of strategic business problems through the
Partnership Council - this body is able to hold the chairman of the business to account
and to question senior management during a similar method as shareholders would
in a PLC. Partners are informed about strategic business
decisions through a wide range of communications, and may influence their
working environments through the open structure, significantly freshly revamped
branch-level for a; the suggestion scheme, and through management consultations
on key areas and problems such as performance management (MacLeod and Clarke,
2009).
Conclusions
To date, there's no usually accepted
definition for employee engagement. However, there's growing consensus among
the authors that the construct is distinguishable from connected ideas in
management such as employee commitment, organizational citizenship behaviour
and job satisfaction in such a way that employee engagement clearly reflects
the two-way exchange of effort between employees and employers, and it has
stretched which means beyond the aforementioned constructs. research on
engagement continues to be on its infancy, attempting to come up with more
clear-cut and acceptable definition (Imandin, Bisschoff and Botha, 2014).
References
Armstrong, M. (2009) Armstrong's Handbook of Human Resource Management Practice. 11th ed. London: Kogan Page Limited.
Bersin, J. (2015) Becoming irresistible: A new model for employee engagement. U.K.: Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited. [ONLINE]. Available at <https://www2.deloitte.com/insights/us/en/deloitte-review/issue-16/employee-engagement-strategies.html>.[Accessed on 7th May 2019].
Cook, S. (2008) The Essesntial Guide to Employee Engagement - Better business performance through staff satisfaction. 1st ed. London and Philadelphia: Kogan Page Limited.
Gallup Management Journal (2006) Engaged employees inspire company innovation. Gallup Management Journal , http://gmj.gallup.com.
Imandin, L., Botha, C. & Bisschoff, C.A. (2014) A model to measure employee engagement. Problems and Perspectives in Management, 12(4), p.9 [ONLINE]. Available at <https://www.researchgate.net/publication/282708038_A_model_to_measure_employee_engagement>.[Accessed on 8th May 2019].
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Markos, S. (2010) Employee Engagement: The Key to Improving Performance. International Journal of Business and Management, 5(12), p.5 [ONLINE). Available at <http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.466.1591&rep=rep1&type=pdf>. [Accessed on 8th May 2019].
Mayes, P. (2018) Employee engagement: Getting the best from everyone, not just another survey. 2nd ed. London [ONLINE). Available at <http://bookboon.com>. [Accessed on 6th May 2019].
Robinson, D., Perryman, S. & Hayday, S. (2004) The Drivers of Employee Engagement. Institute for Employment Studies, p.20 [ONLINE]. Available at <https://www.employment-studies.co.uk/system/files/resources/files/408.pdf>.[Accessed on 7th May 2019].
Vaidyanatha, G. & Maheshwari, U.T. (2016) Employee Engagement: A Literature Review. International Journal of Human Resource Management and Research (IJHRMR), 6(2), pp. 2-8.
