Employee engagement.

 

Employee engagement.

 

In an organization one of its most valuable resources are its work force. Having an work engaged set of employees is critical for its succession in profitability and growth. The concept of employee engagement has been around since the 1990s and according to one of its pioneers; William Khan its defined as “the harnessing of organization members’ selves to their work roles; in engagement, people employ and express themselves physically, cognitively, and emotionally during role performances”, (Khan,1990). A successful definition of employee engagement would identify it as the positive state of mind of an employees’, identified by their high likelihood of putting in discretionary efforts to drive the organization towards its goals (Albrecht,2010).



{video source Greggu HR basics : employee engagement,2018}


 

The key drivers of employee engagement identified include communication, opportunities for employees to feed their views upwards and thinking that their managers are committed to the organization (Kular et al,2008). Employee satisfaction and employee engagement are two different things. An employee who is very much disengaged to his or her job can be very much satisfied with the job. A high level of Passion and a high level of commitment are two of the key characteristics of an engaged employee - these qualities cannot be measured the same way that one would measure job satisfaction (Macey and Schneider, 2008).

 

Levels of employee engagement.

 

Different literature show different spectrums of employee engagement from fully engaged to fully disengaged. Research conducted by Gallup organization (2006), categorizes employee engagement in to 03 levels as described below.

 

1.      1. Engaged : Engaged employees put in voluntary efforts in to their work and do not depend on extrinsic motivation (Armstrong, 2009). Such employees are similar to Mc Gregor’s “y” type of employees who are self motivated , loves their job, dedicated to work.

 

2.     2. Not engaged ; This type of employees usually does the minimum work needed to fulfil the job requirements and do not show enthusiasm or concern for the organization or the customers. Not-engaged employees can be seen as a good opportunity for improvement in an organization in the sense that with the right “people strategy”, they can be transformed in to “engaged” employees, resulting in great improvements in overall organizational performance (Reilly, 2014).

 

 

3.     3. Actively disengaged ; these kinds of employees are harmful to the irganization in the sense that not only don’t they work but will involve in demotivating others as well. The disengaged employees will endeavor to undermine and demotivate the engaged employees - possible double-impact to the organizational performance (Reilly, 2014).\


Measuring employee engagement.

 

The most commonly used tool for measuring employee engagement is an employee engagement survey. These surveys help gauge the intensity of employee engagement as well as evaluate the relationships between engagement and key business results. Such surveys are mostly carried out online and should contain questions that would help capture the essential data relating to the responder’s biographical characteristics (gender, age, ethnicity to name a few) and other job-related characteristics (such as department, length of service group, nature of employment). Its best that these surveys protect the employees’ identity by applying anonymity. This information is critical when it comes to the analysis of the responses and coming up with strategies to increase employee engagement levels (Robinson et al., 2004).

 

Employee engagement plays a major role in an organization’s success and goal achievements. Fully engaged employees are the major drive and is a very valuable asset to the institution. Therefore it is critical that HR departments pay more attention on employee engagement at present than they used to before and irganizations should invest more on employee engagement than they used to in the past.

 

List of refferences:

Albrecht, S. L. (2010). Handbook of Employee Engagement: Perspectives, Issues, Research and Practice. 1st ed. Massachusetts: Edward Elgar Publishing Limited, pp.05-08.

Armstrong, M. (2009). Armstrong's handbook of human resource management practice. 11th ed. London: Kogan Page, pp.337-339.

Kahn, W. A. (1990) Psychological Conditions of Personal Engagement and Disengagement at Work. Academy of Management Journal, 33(4), pp. 692–724

Kular.S, Gatenby.M, Rees.C, Shane.E & Truce.K (2008). Employee engagement:a literature review. Kingston business school. Kingston University.UK.

Macey W.H. and Schneider B. (2008) The Meaning of Employee Engagement. Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 1(1), pp. 3-30.

Reilly, R. (2014) Five Ways to Improve Employee Engagement Now. [Online] Available at: https://www.gallup.com/workplace/231581/five-ways-improve-employee-engagement.aspx (accessed on 1-5-2022).

Robinson, D., Perryman, S. and Hayday, S. (2004). The Drivers of Employee Engagement. 1st ed. Brighton: Institute for Employment Studies, pp.13-20.

 

Comments

  1. Chamara GunarathneMay 3, 2022 at 5:35 AM

    Hello Udana, as you have mentioned, employee engagement is viewed as a motivating factor in an organization's achievement of its goals. The good environment provided to the worker enables him to provide the best that the organization requires for the achievement of its goals and objectives (Paluku, 2016). Furthermore, Ixia Consultancy reported in a recent White Paper that employees are most engaged when they have a positive relationship with their manager. As a result, managers should value employee feedback by encouraging open communication

    ReplyDelete
  2. Maheshani Priyankara Weerarathne (Maheshi)May 6, 2022 at 2:11 AM

    Hello Udana , I would like to add here too , Employee engagement is becoming increasingly important around the world.
    And it's not only a problem for an organization's HR department.
    It's a business issue that needs to be taken seriously.
    In this article, we'll go over what employee engagement is, why it's important to a company's bottom line, how to implement technology-enabled employee engagement, and real-world examples of employee engagement (Lalwani, 2001).

    ReplyDelete
  3. Lakshan WickramasingheMay 7, 2022 at 6:33 AM

    Hello Udana,This is an excellent article about employee engagement. When we are discussing about employee engagement,several models can be used for an organizational enviornment and one of those models is "Zinger model" .It explains about employee engagement as well as employee retention.Zinger’s model considers all important aspects influencing the participation, engagement and sacrifice of the employees who have high productivity in the organization (Delbahari, Soltani, & Khorasgani, 2019)

    ReplyDelete

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