Employee Performance Management At The Uk Retail Sector

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.

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.

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

Employee Engagement is a measurable degree of an employee's positive or negative emotional attachment to their job, colleagues and organisation which profoundly influences their willingness to learn and perform at work. Thus engagement is distinctively different from employee satisfaction, motivation and organisational culture.

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.

There might come situations like interpersonal conflict, work-family conflict, job – security, sexual harassment which may reduce which reduce work engagement under which a firm must adopt much programs and policies like job redesign, Family-friendly human resource policies, stress management programs, work-life balance programs which helps in building work engagement.

In other nations meeting the altruistic and simple human needs of being part of something greater than yourself are the driving forces to an engaging environment (Vorhauser-Smith, 2013). According to Major Angelo’s actions of communicating with employees and developing a relationship with them demonstrate how leaders begin to create an engaging environment. According to Harter & Adkins (2015), employees whose manager communicate with them through meetings are practically three times more likely to be engaged as employees whose managers do not hold regular meetings with them. Another method to engage employees is by ensuring they understand their goals and helping them understand the big picture of how their role impacts the whole organization structure.

It’s important to understand that every experience and interaction at work has the potential to influence an employee’s engagement level. Each person is unique, and to influence their commitment requires an understanding of what motivates them. The most important thing any leader can do to improve engagement is focus on the employee’s individual spirit as well as the team’s and to ensure that they are in complete

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

The purpose of this descriptive qualitative research is to explore how employees define understands, and link engagement to productivity within the workplace. Without a well-defined rigor understanding of engagement, employees remain unfocused, disengaged, and unproductive during working hours. Moreland (2013) found that too many individuals pursue opportunities that are not aligned with their experience, behavioral competencies, and education background. This impact of disengaged productivity undermine the success of other co-workers, and decrease employee morale across organizations. By exploring these factors this research will capture data that represent the contributing influences to improve the levels of engagement to increase productivity.

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.

The definition of the term ‘performance management’ varies in different literatures. As Hutchinson(2013) summed up, combined with Den Harton’s theory(2004), it is a continuous process which links individual and team objectives with organizational goals by measure and improve employee’s skill and performance. According to Armstrong (2012), human resource management aims at making sure the organization has the most talented, skilled and engaged people in order to attain its goals. In this context, performance management is one staple practice helping managers identifying and retaining most competent employees as well as correcting poor performance.

The organization should aim to increase employee engagement. Employee engagement results in manifestation of citizenship behaviors such as conscientiousness, altruism, courtesy, sportsmanship, and civic virtue. These behaviors would contribute to the attainment of organizations objectives and its mission.