Improving Employee Engagement Within The United States Essay

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.

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

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.

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.

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,

Those individuals with high job satisfaction tend to have positive feelings towards their job, their colleagues and the company that hired him or her. On the other hand, those who are not satisfied have strong negative notions towards their organization (Robbins and Judge, 2015). Employee involvement has a direct correlation with job satisfaction. Companies that allow their employees to be involved in the decision-making process and give them the freedom to show their talent through their work, has become the forefront of employee engagement. For many years, businesses have been following archaic traditions in the sense of people would go to work, complete their hours under supervision and go home. Today, employees look forward to going to work for a company where the workplace is more friendly and connected (Suma and Lesha,

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

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.

This essay will analyze how employee engagement can be highly affected by leadership communication. It will also argue that communicative leaders are more effective in building more engaged and cooperative workplaces through enacting communicative leadership. Specifically, this essay will begin by briefly reviewing literatures from engagement and leadership communication. We then develop notions that link leadership communication to the employee engagement through four central communication behaviors of leaders.

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

The monkeys at the top look down and see a tree full of smiling faces. The monkeys on the bottom look up and see nothing but assholes. The unknown author of this metaphor provides a descriptive analogy on the view of the executives who are at the top of the organizational chart which is completely opposite of the view that everyone else in the company sees. These different perspectives are just one of the reasons why employee engagement continues to be an important topic of research among consultants and company leaders. Engaged employees are defined as being committed to their organizations’ goals and values, motivated to contribute to organizational success, while enhancing their own sense of well-being. Even though engagement is a personal feeling, it still requires a combination of effort between the employee and the leaders of the organization. The bottom line is that organizations need highly engaged employees working in their companies because at the end of the day every employee’s productivity is affecting the bottom line of the company.

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.

There are several standardized tests, toolkits and instruments available, which can help determine the level of employee engagement in an organisation. Q12, a 12-question survey of the Gallup Organisation, identifies strong feelings of employee engagement in four key areas - customer satisfaction/loyalty, profitability, productivity, and employee turnover. The questionnaire has been administered to a multitude of companies across the world. Results from the survey show a strong correlation between high scores and superior job performance and many organisations have found it to be definitive measure of the engagement level of their employees. Standard Chartered, for example, introduced a Q12 annual survey to measure improvement in the