The Concept Of Employee Engagement Essay

Employee Engagement - This is the communication between an employee and staff on all levels. There are 3 dimensions of employee engagement - Intellectual, Affective and Social. If these dimensions are positive, encouraging and work related, staff will feel valued and make greater contributions towards the organisation.

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.

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.

Employee engagement is a concept whereby an employee feels an emotional attachment to their employers and the goals and values the employer holds. There doesn’t appear to be a definitive description of employee engagement, but most agree that the emotional attachment is a key element to being an engaged employee. “The term employee engagement has gained considerable popularity in the past 20 years yet it remains inconsistently defined and conceptualized”, Shuck B & Wollard K (2010) - Human Resource Development Review. This emotional attachment could be described as a passion for the organisation and their part in it and a feeling that they can make a difference.

Maintaining and improving employee engagement are increasingly complex for company’s operations these days due to the instable environment and varied economic conditions (Aon Hewitt, 2012). However, if a company has a good performance in employee engagement, it would surely enjoy competitive advantage and better business outcomes than other companies.

The challenge presented by the literature is the lack of a universal definition of employee engagement. Most managers acknowledge the fact that employee

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

Employee engagement is a boundless build that touches all parts of human resource administration aspects we know heretofore. On the off chance that all aspects of HR are not tended to in fitting way, representatives neglect to completely draw in themselves in their employment in the reaction to such sort of botch. The developed worker engagement is based on the establishment of prior ideas like occupation fulfillment, representative duty and Organizational citizenship conduct. Despite the fact that it is identified with and includes these ideas, representative engagement is more extensive in degree. Employee engagement is more grounded indicator of positive hierarchical execution unmistakably demonstrating the two-route relationship amongst business and worker contrasted with the three prior develops: work fulfillment, worker duty and authoritative citizenship conduct. Connected with representatives are sincerely appended to their association and exceedingly required in their occupation with an extraordinary excitement for the accomplishment of their boss, going additional mile past the business legally binding assentation (Markos).