Employee engagement is a business management
concept. Critical links between employee engagement, customer loyalty, business
Growth and profitability were identified by the Gallup Corporation in 2004.
Businesses are attempting to improve quality and customer service without
increasing costs. Therefore, Businesses embrace this concept to achieve more
with less. Businesses would lead their fellow competitors when employing
engaged work force (Carnahan,
2013).
According to Truss et al (2013: 1): ‘The notion
that individuals can be “personally” engaged in their work, investing positive
emotional and cognitive energy into their role performance, was first proposed
by William Kahn (1990) in his seminal article in the Academy of Management Journal’.
Schaufeli (2013: 15) commented: ‘It is not entirely clear when the term
“engagement” was first used in relation to work, but generally the Gallup
Organization is credited with coining the term, sometime during the 1990s’.Schaufeli and Bakker (2004) defined engagement
as a state of mind relating to positive, fulfilling work that is characterized
by three key elements; vigor, dedication and absorption.
Vigor is the willingness of the employees to do
the “hard” work, having the determination and the willingness to put in the
time & effort that is needed to get the difficult work done.
Dedication is the presence of significance,
enthusiasm, inspiration, pride, and challenge in the employees.
Absorption
how concentrated and “happily” occupied the
employees are with their work, to the level where detaching from work becomes a
challenge. This is the state commonly referred to as being on a “flow”, where
the mind is laser focused on the job at hand & the body executes
flawlessly.
Employee
satisfaction, regardless of having some similarities with employee engagement,
should not be considered the same as employee engagement. Engagement is much
more than mere satisfaction. For example a person who is satisfied with their
job could be a totally disengaged employee. Steve Jobs said “the only way to do
great work is to love what you do” (Stanford University, 2005).
Employee engagement does not mean Employee
happiness. And
it does not mean employee satisfaction. Employee
engagement is the emotional commitment the employee has, to the organization
and its goals. This means engaged employees give discretionary effort or they
are willing to go the extra mile
(Kruse, 2012).
Figure 1: Key Factors
that drive Employee Engagement and the Key Outcomes for the Individual
(Employee) & the Organization
(7 Ways to Improve Employee
Development Programs, 2015).
Figure 1 depicts the key factors that
trigger employee engagement (the input) and the key outcomes that the
individual (employee) and the organization (employer) can expect (the output).
It is evident that Job Satisfaction is only one of the factors that stimulate
employee engagement. The thirteen factors listed on Figure 1 makes it clear
that creating employee engagement is not an overnight process and the
organization must infuse the concept in to its culture as well as to other
policies and procedures. The outcomes of employee engagement will be discussed
in detail on a forthcoming post.
The Bank I work for engaging in many
financial and non-financial activities to motivate the banking employees. Financial
rewards such as paying a good bonus to appreciate the hard work throughout the
year. Not only financial rewards Non Financial activities are a free tool that
the bank is using to motivate the banking employees. Such as, when a job is
done, the senior manager uses to appreciate the great job in the middle of the
staff meeting. And the bank is conducting compulsory staff training programs
for each and every employee. Also bank is promoting their employees who are
engaged with their carrier.
Reference
Carnahan, D., 2013. A Study Of Employee Engagement,
Job Satisfaction And Employee Retention Of Michigan Crnas. [online]
Deepblue.lib.umich.edu. Available at:
<https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/handle/2027.42/143415?show=full>.
Kahn, W A (1990) Psychological conditions of personal
engagement and disengagement at work,Academy of Management Journal, 33
(4),pp 692–724
Schaufeli, W B (2013) What is engagement? in (eds) C Truss, R
Deldridge, K Alfes, A Shantz and E Soane, Employee Engagement in Theory and
Practice, London, Routledge, pp 15–35
Schaufeli, W. B. and Bakker, A. B. (2004) Job demands, job
resources, and their relationship with burnout and engagement: a multi-sample
study. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 25(1), pp. 293-315.
Stanford University (2005) 'You've got to find what you love,'
Jobs says. [Online]. Available at: https://news.stanford.edu/2005/06/14/jobs-061505/ .
Harvard Business Review. n.d. 7 Ways To Improve
Employee Development Programs. [online] Available at: <https://hbr.org/2015/07/7-ways-to-improve-employee-development-programs> .
https://www.researchgate.net/. 2017. Employee
Engagement Factor For Organizational Excellence. [online] Available at:
<https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Characteristics-of-an-engaged-employee_fig1_316692002>.
Kruse, K., 2012. Employee Engagement 2.0. The
Kruse Group.
Agreed with your views. Macey and Schneider (2008), suggested to regard employee engagement as a wide-ranging term which contains different types of engagement (traits engagement, psychological state engagement, behavioral engagement), and each one needs different conceptualizations, such as proactive personality (traits engagement), involvement (psychological state engagement) and organizational citizenship behavior (behavioral engagement).
ReplyDeleteThank you for the comment Uditha. Beside Motivation refers to an internally generated drive to achieve a goal or follow a particular course of action.Also highly motivated employees focus their efforts on achieving specific goals Skripak (2016).
DeleteAgree with your views. Employee engagement is a workplace approach resulting in the right conditions for all members of an organization to give of their best each day, committed to their organizations goals and motivated to contribute to organizational success with a higher sense of their own well-being. Employee engagement directly impact to performance of the organization & it has a positive relationship between employee engagement & performance (Solomon Markos & M. Sandhya Sridevi , 2010).
ReplyDeleteThank you for your insight Madu. (Naylor et al,1980) says the sensitivity and the external validity of an organisational internal setting and how it affects the level of motivation in an employee. Further on his study he proves that the amount of time of effective engagement for a particular job is a good indicator of an motivated employee.
DeleteAgreed with you ,The high levels of employee engagement may lead to improved employee commitment & involvement in direction of respective jobs and creating a motivated workforce also, they will work together to achieve the common goals of the organization (DK Mehta & NK Mehta,2013).
ReplyDeleteThank you Jinesh. Further more Pinder ( 2008), stated that the motivation can be explained as the method which reflects employees' persistence ,direction and intensity and therefore motivated employees deliver the maximum commitment to work.
DeleteAgreed and indeed. Employee engagement as the employee's effective involvement in work and the state of complete physiology, cognition and emotion that goes with the work engagement including three dimensions: work engagement, organizational recognition and sense of work value (Sun, 2018).
ReplyDeleteThank you for your comment. It is the responsibility of the leadership to use an intrinsically motivated employee for the benefit of the organisation. Setting up realistic and achievable goals make it easier for the employees to pursue success within the organisation (Cummins and Staw, 1993).
DeleteAgree with you gayan. Adding further, Every organization expects the best performance from their employees. It remains their behavior to select the best candidates suiting the roles and train them to carry out their jobs.Block & Pickl (2014) state that despite developing various HR policies, measures, and numerous studies carried out, it has not been possible to establish exact reasons behind human be-behavior. The term ‘employee engagement’ has gained a lot of importance in the recent past, as it has been proved that there is connection between engagement and business results(Ganguli, Gupta & Ponnam, 2015; Kular et al., 2008; Markos &Sandhya, 2010; Prabhakar & Ram, 2011).
ReplyDeleteThank you for the comment Dilusha. According to (Isaac, Zerbe and Pitt, 2001) The role of the leadership is the most influential factor when motivating an employee. The decisions, attitudes and strategies of the leadership can entirely change the level and amount of motivation within an organization.
DeleteAgreed Gayan. Company productivity is based on employees and their performances. To the Effective and productive organization, employee engagement is more important to all of organizations. To pursuing organization process properly and effectively get engaged people are more significant to management(Truss et al 2013).
ReplyDeleteAgree with your views. Further, Albdour and Altarawneh (2014) describe, that the promotion of participative work behaviors is essential, by creating a friendly nature in the work environment, which will enable employees to be enthusiastic, willing, passionate and committed in the work and in achieving the organizational goals.
ReplyDeleteAgreed with your view, further employee engagement is what employees willing to give and involve for the organization’s success as engaged employee produce more and link with organization’s success (Bukker, 2011).in addition to this engaged employees expressed affectively, cognitively and physically for organizations success hence employee engagement is most crucial part in any organizations (Byrne, 2015).
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteI agree with your views. The concept of employee engagement represents the extent of employee involvement, passion to perform the relevant task, enthusiasm and energy of the workforce (Eldor and Vigoda-Gadot, 2016). Further, Macey et al. (2009: 4) define employee engagement as “employees feeling so engaged and energized that they give extra time and resources without management asking”.
Agree with your views. Organizations important to offer a mentally safe workplace towards expand employee engagement. Employees who are engaged in their work and committed to their organizations give companies crucial competitive advantages including higher productivity and lower employee turnover (Kompaso & Sridevi, 2010; Vance, 2006).
ReplyDeleteOrganizations with proper employee engagement strategies can increase the employee effectiveness and productivity level while reducing the staff turnover rate (Robertson-Smith & Markwick, 2009).
ReplyDelete