Background What Is Employee Engagement

Employers want employees who will do their best work, or ‘go the extra mile’. Employees want good work: jobs that are worthwhile and turn them on. More and more organizations are looking for a win-win solution that meets their needs and those of their employees. What they increasingly say they are looking for is an engaged workforce. 

So what is employee engagement? It can be seen as a combination of commitment to the organization and its values plus a willingness to help out colleagues (organizational citizenship). It goes beyond job satisfaction and is not simply motivation. Engagement is something the employee has to offer: it cannot be ‘required’ as part of the employment contract.

Why are organizations interested in employee engagement?

Employers want engaged employees because they deliver improved business performance. CIPD research has repeatedly demonstrated the links between the way people are managed, employee attitudes and business performance:

When employers deliver on their commitments (when by their actions they fulfill employees’ expectations), this reinforces employees’ sense of fairness and trust in the organization and generates a positive psychological contract between employer and employee.

The high performance or ‘black box’ model produced by Bath University builds on the psychological contract but emphasizes the role of line managers in creating conditions under which employees will offer ‘discretionary behavior’. The model recognizes that employees have choices and can decide what level of engagement to offer the employer.

Organizations increasingly recognize the importance of their ‘brand’. Engaged employees will help promote the brand and protect the employer from the risks associated with poor service levels or product quality. Similarly, a strong employer brand will help in attracting and retaining employees.

Outcomes of engagement

The positive linkages which research has found between employee engagement, advocacy, performance and intention to quit mean that it is in employers’ interests to drive up levels of engagement amongst their workforce. But levels of engagement have significant benefits for employees as well, since engagement is positively associated with job satisfaction and experiences of employment.

How do employers build an engaged workforce?

The first step is to measure employee attitudes. Most large employers in both private and public sectors now conduct regular employee attitude surveys. The results typically show what employees feel about their work on a range of dimensions including, for example, pay and benefits, communications, learning and development, line management and work-life balance. Attitude survey data can be used to identify areas in need of improvement and combined with other data to support performance management. 

The drive for an engaged workforce needs to build on good people management and development policies, and the active support of line managers. People management strategies and policies need to be aligned with those of the wider business. Employees need to understand how their work contributes to organizational outcomes. A minority of employees may not want to be engaged; organizations may need to give particular attention to recruitment and communications. There is no short-cut to building and maintaining employee engagement, but the time, effort and resource required will be amply repaid by the performance benefits. 

There is no definitive all-purpose list of engagement ‘drivers’. However, CIPD research into employee attitudes found that the main drivers of employee engagement were:

having opportunities to feed your views upwards

feeling well-informed about what is happening in the organization

Believing that your manager is committed to your organization.

Perceived managerial fairness in dealing with problems also impacts significantly on individual performance, although it is not significantly related to engagement. 

Similarly the Institute of Employment Studies (IES) has concluded that the main driver of engagement is a sense of feeling valued and involved. The main components of this are said to be:

involvement in decision-making

freedom to voice ideas, to which managers listen

feeling enabled to perform well

having opportunities to develop the job

Feeling the organization is concerned for employees’ health and well-being.

Engagement levels are influenced by employees’ personal characteristics: a minority of employees are likely to resist becoming engaged in their work. But people are also influenced by the jobs they do and the experiences they have at work. The way in which both senior management and line managers behave towards, and communicate with, employees, plus the way in which work is organized and jobs defined, contribute significantly towards making work meaningful and engaging.

Employee Engagement from A-Z by Terrence Seamon

Appreciate – Take the time to appreciate each person you have on your team.

Break Through – Don’t let habits or “the way we have always done it” hold you back.

Coach – Bring out the best in others by playing to their strengths.

Develop – Provide opportunities for others to stretch and grow.

Energize – Get excited and others will catch it.

Fun – If you aren’t having fun, figure it out.

Genius – Each person is gifted in some way.

Help – Be of some help every day.

Improve – Everything. Without ceasing.

Joy – This is something all too frequently missing from the workplace.

Keep your commitments.

Learn – Constantly. Look outside your field. Listen.

Meaning – It’s up to you to create it. Invite others to join in.

New Ideas – Seek them constantly.

Open Up – Open the books. Open your door. Open your mind.

Participate – Invite others to join in.

Quit – Complaining. Pointing the finger. Blaming.

Recognize each person as an individual with wishes, hopes, and dreams.

Strengths – Capitalize on them.

Unleash – Take the leash off of employees. Trust. Turn them loose!

Vacation – Take one every year and insist that others do so too.

Wisdom – Every person on your team has some piece of the wisdom that your team needs.

eXercise – Stay in shape.

You are the CEO of your success.

Zoopfiddle – Make up words. It’s fun. It can energize your team meetings.

Problems:

Problem statement:

Rationale:

Employee engagement is helping the organization grow as it motivated the employees and give them incentive to work for the organization. When employees feel there need in the company they tend to work harder and this where employee engagement comes in and recognize their hard work and provide them with rewards.

The world’s top-performing organizations understand that employee engagement is a force that drives performance outcomes. In the best organizations, engagement is more than a human resources initiative — it is a strategic foundation for the way they do business.

Aspects to the problems:

When an employee is working in an organization he is not entitled to get engaged in the companies activities and deliver more then what is required. However, the problem that the companies are mostly facing is the turn over due to various reasons like; job satisfaction, salary raise, outsourcing, environment and etc. When the employees are not happy with the organization they tend to leave the company or there is decline in there performance.

The four key things that employee engagement is trust, motivation, loyalty and commitment, these are the four things that every organization needs from an employee at this date. Without the employees support and dedication, no organization prospers. And there are live examples of companies not surviving the recession as the only incentive that company gave them was salaries, and when they failed to provide it the employees choose to switch jobs in order to secure there future.

Some of the Research Questions Answers:

Objectives & Accomplishment:

The objective of this research is to proof that at present time employee engagement is one of the key reasons for any company to enhance their performance. In today’s time, the organization is in need of the employees’ rather then employees in need of the organization. Keeping their workers happy should be every organizations first priority and by ensuring this they could even have a good market value as people would like to work in a company where employees say matter.

People tend to work at a place where their talent is recognized and the organization is taking their suggestions under consideration. Therefore, the objective is to show that what difference employee engagement could make in an organization.

Justification:

This topic was chosen because…

Stakeholders:

Limitations:

The change cannot happen overnight and it could take several training session of line managers and explaining them how to introduce this on them. The results would be applicable only when the organization is taking full consideration of employees and not hesitating in adopting the culture.

Scope:

The scope of this study is to realize the importance of employees in an organization and make them belief there importance in it. The study would only be possible when the organization and employee agree to give honest feedback on the current situation of the organization. The study would purely be based on feedbacks and wouldn’t exceed expectations without the organization support.

Assumption:

The assumptions before the study begin is that the organization is willing to give away the current information of their employee performance and reasons of it. We are assuming further that they won’t be reluctant to share or hide relevant information that will help us create a clear picture of the organization and their employee’s feelings towards it.