Employee Engagement : Human Resource Management

Employee engagement can and should be approached on multiple levels. For this article, I'd like to interview Brandon Smith, of The Workplace Therapist. He provides great insight on toxic work environments and identifying the disconnect between leaders and their employees. Using his perspective, I want to tie in "why employee engagement dips" to "how health benefits can bridge the engagement gap"

The CIPD (2014) factsheet states that Employee Engagement is a concept that ‘is generally seen as an internal state of being – physical, mental and emotional – that brings together earlier concepts of work effort, organisational commitment, job satisfaction and ‘flow’ (or optimal experience)’. An engaged workforce willingly demonstrates discretionary effort within their roles; their goals and values reflect that of their employers/organisation; they express a passion for work, feel valued and that their work has meaning.

One of the primary factors in employee engagement is a person’s relationship with his or her direct manager. Some managers are excellent at managing teams and making each person feel valued, while others don’t have the same abilities. Train your managers in the skills that can improve employee engagement, and it can boost your organization’s overall results. Most employees fear their supervisors, so they choose to leave because they don’t want to work in a stressful environment. However, they don’t always express their

The following research paper describes in detail the relevance of employee engagement to a healthcare provider. Engagement of employees is often an overlooked area of focus as hospitals look for ways to improve processes and reduce operating expenses. Healthcare is somewhat unique in that cost to the customer is not the main economic force driving patients to the various hospitals or healthcare providers. The focus of the following is to examine the importance of employee engagement hospital wide. There are factors that lead a prospective patient to choose one healthcare provider over another, assuming choices exist. When discussing engagement, emotions can play a

1.2 Analyse the three principle dimensions of employee engagement (the emotional, the cognitive and the physical)

Employee Engagement: It’s a known perception that an engaged workforce provides many intangible benefits that is linked directly to retention. HR policies should focus on employee engagement initiatives that stimulate motivation levels of employees to perform better and bond with organisation. This process should be initiated right from induction and continue throughout their tenure by opening channels of continuous communication and encouraging interpersonal relations. HR is responsible to incorporate methods to measure engagement and at regular intervals track engagement contribution to company’s success.

Vorhauser-Smith, S. (2013, August 14). How the best places to work are nailing employee engagement. Retrieved 11 June 2013 from

Employee engagement, which reflects the emotional commitment an employee has to an organization is not just an organizational nicety but a business necessity due to direct ties to a number of performance outcomes, such as profitability,

Employee engagement has been a trend of management since 2004.(CMI 2015) ‘Some people may believe that engagement is just about employees ‘going the extra mile’, but it is much more.’(CMI 2014) Within globalization, how to apply employee engagement is significant for an organization to achieve their performance. A key aspect of employee engagement concerns how employees manage their position, performance and development in relationship to the company’s strategies. Therefore, according to Moenguc (2013), employee engagement has been personalized as a“persistent, positive affective-motivational state of fulfillment.” To demonstrate how this process affects the overall performance of an organization, John Lewis has been selected as the case study

Robinson D, Perryman S & Hayday S. (2004). The drivers of employee engagement. Institute for

Successful organizations demand satisfied employees. Figure 1 below shows a theoretical one-way linkage chain called the "Engagement-Profit Chain." This chain directly shows how active employee engagement leads to good service which ensures that customers will to continue coming back, providing a solid foundation on which the company can grow. As employee effort is indeed discretionary, it has been observed that higher levels of engagement, or the way management commits itself emotionally to employees, pushes a higher level of discretionary effort (Kruse, 2014). It is not by chance that

As Gallup measured in their research that there is still an overwhelming number of disengaged individuals in the workplace, which has cost the organizations in the United States at an enormous amount of about 300 billion dollars annually (Gallup Consulting, 2006). Certain programs are initiated in different workplace to embed employee engagement. Personally, apart from the traditional motivational factors of financial and non-financial incentives to increase employee morale and active participation within the goals of the organization; it would even be more remarkable to come up with innovative practices that would be unique to the organization and meet the demands of the business.

Global employee engagement data confirm how important spending time to set clear goals and objectives and discussing careers is to employees. Indeed, these frequently appear as two of the top three drivers of sustainable engagement and retention.

Companies that have higher levels of engaged employees have higher earnings per share (EPS) than companies that have lower engagement levels (Kelleher, 2011). Engaged employees are more productive, have higher levels of customer loyalty and help their employers become more profitable. An engaged employee is less likely to leave their current position. This saves their company money because there is no need to spend money to hire and train new personal. These saving can be passed along to the employees for increased wages, bonuses, and benefits. All of these items help in motivating employees, to attempt to engage the disengaged.

Today’s workforce who want to be the technology “Hollywood” geeks, work for a company called Netflix Inc. Netflix is one of the largest publicly traded companies, that allows anyone, to watch movies and television shows when and where they want; based on a monthly subscription. They key to their success is their employees. The concept employee engagement has been described to be a result of continued research on work attitudes and it is stated to can add value extending beyond the boundaries of the traditional organizational settings. Employee engagement is referred as an essential part to success and survival of a company and is more effective if human resources (HR) is made part of the planning and decision making process. Netflix’s culture has made it possible for HR to influence the decision making and planning process as the culture focuses more on freedom and responsibility. The company’s culture focuses on helping realize excellence and most of it is done through employee engagement. It is through revamping of the HR that Netflix could fully achieve success and retention of much of their employees. The idea of integrated employee engagement in Netflix is one of the successful products of Silicon Valley and more companies are adopting the idea that employees should be granted more freedom. This paper will discuss the concept of integrated employee engagement with looking at how it as heightened performance and productivity at Netflix by: flexible work