John Lewis Employee Engagement

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)

Engagement is a sign of satisfaction and loyalty to the firm which can be incurred by increasing job resources

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,

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,

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 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.

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

Our survey resulted a slight correlation between frequent SF and overall employee engagement. However previous academic research on the topic suggests there is a much stronger correlation than we were able to conclude with our survey. We believe this is a direct result of convenience sampling method. According to researchers the article, Driving Employee Engagement, cites five major components of performance management as an enabler to employee engagement: one of these factors being ongoing feedback in setting goals, recognition, development opportunities, appraisals, and establishing trust. It is clear that feedback is important; however, we cannot confidently conclude that the frequency of the feedback is directly correlated to employee engagement. Further research is required to understand the impact of the feedback content, managerial behaviors, role and time in the organization. Organizations looking to improve engagement should focus on the department level on what manager does, and how often, could lead to better worker productivity, greater goal achievement (both departmental and organization), longer employee tenure, and ultimately, greater profits. The answer to this question will enable organizations to have a deep understanding of employee engagement drivers, remain competitive, profitable and reduce turnover.

The beverage organization Coca Cola has established programs to create and support employee engagement throughout their organization. For Coca Cola to promote engagement, they relie on their local leaders to promote and support the work groups. For these leaders, extensive training has been established to improve areas of leadership that can inspire and create a positive work environment. These areas are also seen as areas of engagement that can impact of business results and is the important to employee empowerment. According to Xu and Helena, a impactful and direct correlation between the levels of engagement and leadership style is where the leadership is caring and nurturing to create a work environment that can be conducive in order to increase the levels of engagement (2011). The leadership training also works on leaders practicing behaviors that are directly related to engagement as part of the leader’s daily routines.

Although Employee Engagement does have some basic overlapping with some basic management theories like commitment, ‘organisational citizenship behaviour’, job involvement and job satisfaction, it still holds some substantial difference in this approach.

In theory, financial incentive, rewarding bonus gets employees more participated, engaged and enhanced productivity and profits but according to the CIPD, employee engagement consists of three different aspect called intellectual engagement, affective engagement and social engagement. Intellectual engagement refers that employees feel good about the organisation and weight up to enhance the task. Affective engagement stands for the optimistic opinion of employees toward the organisation and social engagement is concerned with the employees’ interconnection with

Our in-depth research has further solidified what was already speculated: employee engagement is a popular phenomenon in the corporate world with employers taking particular interest in its impact on business. Dale Carnegie Training has revealed that annually $11 billion is lost due to employee turnover rates while conversely companies that have engaged employees outperform others by 202%. Lost money is lost revenue and thus a huge concern for businesses that are losing both profits and employees. This is only one of many ways in which employee engagement has an influential impact on business. According to Aon Hewitt’s 2013 Global Tends Engagement Report, 6 out of 10