Wednesday, November 13, 2019

Strategies to Improve Employee Engagement

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.


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


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].

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].

Characteristics of an Engaged Employee


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)

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).

References


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].

MacLeod, D. & Clarke, N. (2009) Engaging for success: enhancing performance through employee engagement. Great Britain. Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) [ONLINE). Available at <https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20090723180303/http://www.berr.gov.uk/files/file52215.pdf>. [Accessed on 9th 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].



Tuesday, November 12, 2019

Enhancing Performance through Employee Engagement

Enhancing Performance through Employee Engagement 

Figure 1 : Linkages to employee engagement 
(Source: Mayes, 2018)

“Employee Engagement is when the business values the employee and the employee values the business” (Armstrong, 2009, p.159)


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.


References


Armstrong, M. (2009) Armstrong's Handbook of Human Resource Management Practice11th 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].

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].

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.



Strategies to Improve Employee Engagement

Strategies to Improve Employee Engagement The author of employee engagement: The key to the rising performance, Solomon Markos (2019),...