An engaged employee is a “brand advocate” for an organization (Raby, 2021; Chandani et al, 2016). To cope with the current competitive volatile working environments, organizations need to have employees who are highly engaged with what they do. Highly engaged employees work toward organizational improvement (Osborne and Hammoud, 2017). Research done by HayGroup (2015, as cited in Hoole and Hotz, 2016), shows that employee engagement should have a giving and receiving relationship between the employer and the employee.
As reported by many researchers, employee engagement is an emotional connection to what they do in the organization (Ryba, 2021; Chandani et al, 2016; Hoole and Hotz, 2016). Figure 1 below shows how Ryba (2021) described employee engagement considering the Emotional factor. In accordance with Figure 01, a high Engaged employee influences the organization, team, and work.
 |
| Figure 01 - Employee engagement (Ryba, 2021) |
According to Wrzesniewski et al. (1997, as cited in Hoole and Hotz, 2016), jobholders give threefold of their lives to the organization they work for. In return, to become a positive, hardworking, motivating, and retaining employee, a Jobholder should feel that their voice is heard, valued, cared for, and appreciated in the organization. The capability and freedom of the employees in the organization to engage positively in what they do will lead them to attract innovative work behaviors (Chandani et al., 2016)
As stated by Ryba (2021), there are four employee engagement levels. These engagement levels are as follows: (Figure 02)
a) Highly
engaged employees are the happy employees of the organization. They work
hard, are satisfied with the organization, give their full commitment to the
organization, achieve goals, motivate others, give better output, and trust
that the organization will give the due value.
b) Moderately
engaged employees are considered the ones who think that the organizations
can do more for the employees to be satisfied and engaged.
c) Barely
engaged employees are job seekers. They lack in terms of motivation and
doubt their understanding of the job role.
d) Disengaged
employees are the negative influencers of the organization. The top
management and human resource team should tackle these types of jobholders
carefully to protect the quality of the organizational outcome.
 |
| Figure 02 - Employee engagement profiles (Ryba, 2021) |
It is the organization's top managers’ and leaders’ responsibility to consider all these levels of engaging employees when they develop organizational strategies, to get the best out of everyone. In accordance with Scott et al. (2010), managers in an organization play a major role in employee engagement. A manager’s and leader’s influential characteristic is important to make an employee highly engaged or disengaged from the organization. Scott et al. (2010) highlight that organizations should develop metrics to assess the extent to which managers encourage subordinate engagement. The study further calls attention to the importance of managers clearly defining employee engagement to subordinates and counting it as a goal in strategic planning. Osborne and Hammoud (2017) highlight that a good leader should be a good listener, trustworthy, impartial, and a person who understands the subordinates. Human resource (HR) managers need to play a major role in employee engagement levels from the beginning of employment of the employees. They are responsible for selecting high-engaged employees. HR should work with line managers to keep the subordinates satisfied and motivated. They are accountable for innovating tools and processes to monitor employee engagement. (Chandani et al., 2016; Ryba, 2021)
It is best to conduct Employee opinion surveys in the organizations on a regular basis in order to recognize employee satisfaction and engagement (Ryba, 2021; Scott et al., 2010; Osborne and Hammoud, 2017). Outcomes of these surveys will help managers and HR to better understand their employees and to make sound decisions that would meet their requirements. Through these organizational strategies, employers could expect better contributions from their employees for the growth of the organization as a whole. According to Scott et al. (2010), it is important for the organizational managers and HR team to engage employees in this process.
In conclusion, 92% of business executives now have the understanding that hard-working, motivational, supportive, highly engaged employees have a huge impact on organizational outcomes (Ryba, 2021; Musgrove et al., 2014, as cited in Osborne and Hammoud, 2017). High-engaged employee commitment and innovativeness help organizations get a good return on investment (ROI). Kortmann et al., (2014, as cited in Osborne and Hammoud, 2017) highlight that It is clear that the top management, leaders, and the HR team in the organization should work innovatively to attract, capacitate, protect, and retain their best talents to get a competitive advantage in the current challenging business world.
References
Chandani, A., Mehta, M., Mall, A. and Khokhar, V., 2016. Employee engagement: A review paper on factors affecting employee engagement. Indian Journal of Science and Technology, 9(15), pp.1-7.
Hoole, C. and Hotz, G., 2016. The impact of a total reward system of work engagement. SA Journal of Industrial Psychology, 42(1), pp.1-14.
Osborne, S. and Hammoud, M.S., 2017. Effective employee engagement in the workplace. International Journal of Applied Management and Technology, 16(1), p.4.
Ryba, K (2021 ) What is
Employee Engagement? What, Why, and How to Improve It, [Online] Available at:
https://www.quantumworkplace.com/future-of-work/what-is-employee-engagement-definition [Accessed: 30 March 2022].
Scott, D., McMullen, T., Royal, M. and Stark, M., 2010. The impact of rewards programs on employee engagement. Retrieved March, 18, p.2014.
This is a timely topic in Workplace, It is really important to have employee engagement in workplace to build work culture, staff turnover, increase productivity and so on (Employee Engagement: Why It Matters For Your Company, 2022). And also that make the Employee feel comfortable and happy to work in such an environment. With the confidence that is build through the Employee engagement makes them energize and efficient.
ReplyDeleteEmployee engagement is essential to have efficient and effective organizational culture. Further it will motivate employees to carry out their tasks and most importantly be loyal to the company.
ReplyDeleteDear Anne, you have clearly described how important to manage different level employee engagement in the organization. In my opinion I think management should focus about the reasons of barely engaged and disengaged situation because those reasons can lead even highly engaged employee to be disengaged in future. Therefore frequent communication, identify their motivators, create a professional growth plan, Rewarding for positive behaviours and employee engagement surveys will help to re engage the people who disengaged.
ReplyDeleteEmployee engagement can be critical to a company's success, given its clear links to job satisfaction and employee morale. Communication is a critical part of creating and maintaining employee engagement. Engaged employees are more likely to be productive and higher performing. They also often display a greater commitment to a company's values and goals.
ReplyDeleteDear Anne when when we are going talk about employee engagement some leaders may wonder how to keep staffs happy. While important, happiness is not the same like engagement. It says nothing about how invested staffs are in the company, nor how hard they’re working on behalf of the organization’s mission. Happiness is a very short-term, rapidly changing measurement. For example, an employee may possibly feel temporary happiness from a raise and then sink back into disengagement.
ReplyDelete