Disengaged Employee Involvement

Employee engagement is today’s leadership priority. However, the catchphrase goes a long way back in the beginning of the 21st century. It has gained interest to this date, which can be credited to Gallup’s first version of the Q12 in the 1990s commonly termed as the Gallup Workplace Audit (Gallup Consulting, 2006). Subsequently, Gallup has continuously refined and expanded their Q12 for current business challenges. Furthermore, several literatures, surveys and evidence-based studies abound that exhibited positive results with employee engagement such as increased performance, safety, retention and profits among others.

In this economic time, a reduction in employee morale is becoming more apparent. “This downward trend in job satisfaction raises concerns about the overall engagement of U.S. employees and ultimately employee productivity, retention, creativity, risk-taking, mentoring, and in overall employee motivation and interest in work” (Heathfield, n.d., ¶5). Companies as a whole are examining methods to increase employee satisfaction.

Those working behind a desk day in and day pose a high risk of being counterproductive for an organization. Technology is not an organizations friend when it comes to accessing social media or conducting online shopping for personal items. People can spend hours pretending they are working, when in reality they are surfing the internet, sending personal emails, or watching multi-media all while hiding behind their computer screen. Some individuals will accept a job, to collect a paycheck at the end of the week even though they do not enjoy the job. Those who are not happy with their career or disgruntle with their employer will become more disengaged with their job. Sure, every organization has at least one disengaged employee, however

Employees are at work, but are they actually engaged in their jobs? In October 2013, The Gallup Organization conducted a survey with 230,000 full-time and part-time workers in 142 countries which consisted of 12 questions. According to Gallup’s latest findings, 87% of workers are “not engaged” or “actively disengaged” and are emotionally disconnected from their workplaces (O'Boyle & Harter, 2013, p. 11). Most studies have broken the various types of workers into two groups, engaged and disengaged, but Gallup’s study has broken it down even further. They have determined that there are three types of employees: engaged, not engaged and actively disengaged (O'Boyle & Harter, 2013).

In studies, there is a correlation between a highly engaged workforce and the overall success of the company. Engaged work groups are 33% more profitable and 50% more productive (right.com 17). Common problems employers have is they carry the false assumption that employees are aware of the corporate goals of the company. This problem is easily overlooked in both management and employees as they are focused on the immediate tasks and are not aware how their actions contribute to the organization as a whole. This causes employees to not goals aligned with their organizations goals. Not having this understanding, employees become disengaged because they believe their work contributes to anything significant. When an organization’s goals are not understood, it becomes increasingly difficult to improve their performance (business salary). Keeping well performing employees is vital to the success of any company. It is also important to identify TWK’s employees do not work as a team. Instead, employees work for their individual goals. In TWK’s case, the goal for the majority of people at TWK is to retain their jobs, keeping themselves employed. An example of this separation

Job satisfaction has a direct correlation to employee engagement and perceived organizational support. Businesses, firms, and agencies would do well to hire on the basis of an applicant’s core self-evaluation. As such, recruits or applicants with positive core self-evaluation are more likely to be engaged and begin the cycle of job satisfaction. That is, engaged employees more readily complete the tasks and goals of the organization and are therefore supported by the organization. As the cycle moves, output / production increase and one’s satisfaction grows.

An organization’s capacity to manage employee engagement is closely related to its ability to achieve high performance levels and superior business results. Some of the advantages of Engaged employees are • • • • Engaged employees will stay with the company, be an advocate of the company and its products and services, and contribute to bottom line business success. They will normally perform better and are more motivated. There is a significant link between employee engagement and profitability. They form an emotional connection with the company. This impacts their attitude towards the company’s clients, and thereby improves customer satisfaction and service levels • • • • • • It builds passion, commitment and alignment with the organization’s strategies and goals Increases employees’ trust in the organization Creates a sense of loyalty in a competitive environment Provides a high-energy working environment Boosts business growth Makes the employees effective brand ambassadors for the company

All organisations should explore the engagement within its operations as having a handful of disengaged employees will suddenly multiply and increase tenfold. In order to

The past decade has seen an explosion of research activity and heightened interest in employee engagement among consultants, organizations, and management scholars. Perhaps this is not so surprising given the many claims that employee engagement is a key factor for an

Employee engagement is a fairly new concept (Macey & Schneider, 2008), yet it has received extensive attention in the past decade, leading Schaufeli & Salanova (2007) to contend that engagement is indispensable for modern organisations given the multitude of challenges they face in such a dynamic business environment. Moreover, it leads Macey et al. (2009) to contend that organisations that harness engagement can even gain a competitive advantage. For example, research by Macey et al. (2009) showed “that among a sample of 65 firms in different industries, the top 25% on an engagement index had a greater return on assets (ROA), profitability, and more than double the shareholder value compared to the bottom 25%” (Gruman & Saks, 2011). Furthermore, Gruman & Saks (2011) note that numerous studies highlight the role employee engagement plays in driving “individual attitudes, behaviour and performance as well as organisational performance, productivity, retention, financial performance, and even shareholder return”. Therefore, as captured by Kaye & Jordan-Evans (2003), “the challenge today is not just retaining talented people, but fully engaging them, capturing their minds and hearts at each stage of their work lives”.

Job satisfaction is a pleasurable or positive emotional state resulting from the appraisal of one’s job or job experiences. It has been treated both as a general attitude and satisfaction with five specific dimensions of the job: pay, the work itself, promotion opportunities, supervision, and coworkers. Challenging work, valued rewards, opportunities for advancement, competent supervision, and supportive coworkers are dimensions of the job that can lead to satisfaction (Nelson & Quick, 2013, pg.

Job satisfaction is defined as "the extent to which people like (satisfaction) or dislike (dissatisfaction) their jobs". This factors bring positive impact on organizational performance and employees’ commitments.

Managers today are finding it harder to ignore the job satisfaction issue, especially at a time when the demand of meaningful work is increasing. There are two main reasons why managers are concerned with job satisfaction. One of the reasons is that managers have a moral responsibility to do what they can to provide employees with a satisfying work environment (Ramayah, Jantan, & Tadisnia, 2001). Another reason is that managers believe that the behavior of satisfied workers will make positive contributions to the organization (Ramayah, Jantan, & Tadisnia, 2001).

When employees are satisfied the organization benefits in many ways in that satisfied employees are more committed to the organization. They are likely to have less absenteeism, fewer grievances or engage in negative behavior. Thus by ensuring that employees are satisfied, management stands to gain a more efficient and smooth running organization. Given the benefits of high job satisfaction, companies are constantly coming up with new ways to increase and improve job satisfaction on the job. In an effort to increase job satisfaction more and more companies are experimenting with

This research report will analyse the significance of job satisfaction on employees and how it can affect worker productivity and to accomplish the goals of the association. Firstly, this research report will present the background of a research topic based on the news article posted on ABC News on the 5th April 2017(Bamford 2017). Secondly, the report will also develop the aims and expectations for researching on the above-mentioned topic. Moreover, this report also will critically analyse academic articles and will accumulate the statistics/data through survey instrument which will be reported in the next assessment. Finally, this report will discuss the research method which would be used to collect data in investigating this problem.