MN7181 - People and Organisations: Principles and Practice in Global Contexts - 4

Employee engagement has become a key business priority for senior leaders. They recognize the possibility that highly engaged employees can intensify innovation, productivity, and bottom-line performance while minimizing costs related to recruitment and retention in highly competitive talent markets (Sibanda, 2014).

What is Employee Engagement?

“Employment engage is the extent to which employees feel passionate about their jobs, are committed to the organization, and put discretionary effort into their work”

Why is Employee Engagement important?

Employee engagement is more important today than it was before. When an employee has the feeling of belongingness to the company, their inputs are valued they tend to be attached to the company than just simple employees. Organizations with better employee engagement perform better than competitors who do not. This also helps in retaining good employees in the organization.

How is employee engagement measured?

Improving levels of employee engagement does not have to be expensive;it just takes some time nd energy, but benefits will outweigh these costs (Bates 2004;Robinson,2007)

Just conducting an engagement would not enhance the decision making of the organization, it too has to be recorded and monitored in order to keep a track of the activities done and if going astray to be on track as planned.

This could be done with either the help of short surveys or much detailed questionnaires to cover a range of areas to have a better understanding, as Balain and Sparrow (2009) suggest that engagement surveys represent a mechanism for employee feedback which are used periodically as a gauge to show how well the organization is doing.

Short surveys will only give an insight of a problem on the surface. With insufficient information a problem will not be rectified to the fullest. With the help of a more detailed questionnaire or of an extensive survey, will give a better and thorough understanding of the problem , which will enable the organization to conduct meaningful training, activities, strategies that are of value to the organization or to the employees.

Factors of Employee Engagement

As stated by David Sharpley (1997), Employee Engagement has a direct effect on productivity, so it is important for managers to understand the factors that help build engagement and the barriers that stifle it.

Few factors contributing to employee engagement in the organization

1.    Fair Pay Structure – To always explain to employees what the company pay structure is so they have a better knowledge and understand why one is paid more than the other. This way an employee anticipating a promotion would always strive to work efficiently and effectively to demonstrate how well they deserve it.

2.      Learning Culture – Creating a learning culture encourages employees on learning and continuously developing their knowledge for the betterment of the organization. Employees who understands that the company is focusing on improving their staff will eventually work more focused and goal oriented.

3.      Transparency & Honesty – Gossips are a major factor in any organization, and are more common in our country, employees who feel that they cannot walk in for a serious discussion with their management would feel less belonging to the organization.

4.  Autonomy - Employees who are given more freedom/authority to make decisions has a higher probability of working to the betterment of the organization and more belongingness to the organization.

5.       Inspiration – Inspired employees tend to find better solutions to problems than other.

6.   Communication – Miscommunication can affect the organization in a detrimental manner. Hence conducting meeting on a planned interval will help the employees and employers to plan better communication modes for the benefit of the organization.

7.      Employee Recognition – Employees who feel that they are recognized will be motivated to do better in achieving the organization goals, this makes the engagements more constructive.

Reference:

https://inside.6q.io/10-factors-contributing-employee-engagement/

https://www.custominsight.com/employee-engagement-survey/what-is-employee-engagement.asp

Balain S. and Sparrow P., 2009. Engaged to Perform: A new perspective on employee engagement : Executive Summary, Lancaster University Management School
(PDF) Factors influencing Employee Engagement: A study on a Telecommunication Network provider in Maldives. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/316536875_Factors_influencing_Employee_Engagement_A_study_on_a_Telecommunication_Network_provider_in_Maldives [accessed Oct 10 2018].