Employee Engagement—An Overview
Employee engagement refers to a mental framework of employees towards work and the workplace as they stay happy, positive, committed to the organisation, and feel a fulfilling experience while at work.
Gartner’s ‘Leadership Vision for 2023’ discusses different employee surveys and reported that—52% employees said flexible work practices would affect their decision to stay, 53% of employees wanted their organisations to take action on issues they cared about and 82% of employees said it was important that their organizations saw them as a person and not just as an employee.
LinkedIn Learning Workplace Learning Report 2023 reports 83% of organisations want to build a people-centric culture. Out of the top four focus areas in the report, three directly contribute to employee engagement, namely, upskilling employees, creating a culture of learning and steps on improving employee retention.
Josh Bersin in his recently released book ‘Irresistible: THE SEVEN SECRETS OF THE WORLD’S MOST ENDURING, EMPLOYEE-FOCUSED ORGANIZATIONS’ includes mantras of inculcating employee engagement by researching on world’s most employee-focused organizations.
Mantras include redesigning an organization’s structure around a network of teams to deliver tremendous outcomes, and as such resulting in employee engagement in the process. He adds that employee engagement would rise as jobs become more dynamic, and as the concerned industries more heavily cross-trained its people and encouraged internal talent movement, with a belief that learning through experience was extremely powerful. Again, right leadership would have an enormous impact on employee engagement.
In 2021 Bersin also found that among all the things that worked for employees, a focus on trust, productivity, inclusion, and belonging were biggest contributors to engagement. Perks and benefits had less impact. Irresistible companies were building employee-centric systems, frontline and active worker platforms, and many ways of listening, communication, and feedback to make sure employees were heard and supported.
Ingredients of Employee Engagement
Kahn (1990; 1992) has described engagement as the state when employee is psychologically present while occupying and doing their work role. Rothbard (2001) stated that though engagement is a psychological presence, it comprises two important components: attention and absorption.
Engagement has also been defined as a positive, fulfilling, work-related state of mind that is characterized by vigor, dedication, and absorption. Shanmugam & Krishnaveni (2012) described “employee engagement as the degree of one’s allegiance of self-in-role towards one’s company to help the firm achieve its goals.” Employee engagement may lead to better employee satisfaction, creativity, happiness, loyalty, and retention.
I am providing certain evidence to prove my point. At the organisational level, employee engagement may lead to improved profitability, productivity, and customer satisfaction (Harter, Schmidt, & Hayes, 2002), while at the individual level it may pave way for satisfied, happier, fulfilled and fulfilled employees leading to reduced employee turnover (Harter, Schmidt, & Keyes, 2003).
Employees who are engaged in their roles feel energetic at the workplace and are more innovative and ready to go the extra mile. Moreover, engaged employees are critical for organisations to succeed (Bakker, 2011). Employee engagement is about creating a more employee-centric approach at work to ensure employees perform at their best at work.
Clifton & Harter (2019) in their book ‘Its the Manager’ reported a study of 8115 employees where Gallup asked respondents to think about their most recent workday (if it was a previous workday) and to report number of hours they spent doing various activities.
What best differentiated engaged from actively disengaged employees was the time they spent focusing on their strengths and less time focusing on what they don’t do that well. Engaged employees spent four times as much of their day focusing on their strengths compared with what they do not do well. Actively disengaged employees spent about equal time focusing on their strengths and on what they don’t do well.
Key Elements of Employee Engagement Strategy
Factors contributing to employee engagement: Empirical Evidence
There are number of research studies which may help in planning employee engagement strategies to be used by various organizations. Singh and Sanjeev (2013) identified drivers of employee engagement such as organizational support, meaningful task, recognition, cooperation, motivation, feedback, career growth, development and opportunities etc.
Sarangi and Srivastava (2012)conducted a study on banking sector to examine the impact of organizational culture and communication to enhance employee engagement and the study confirmed the positive link between communication, organizational culture, and employee engagement. Balakrishnan and Masthan (2013) found that internal communication enhances the level of engagement amongst employees. Gupta and Kumar (2013) found a linkage between fairness in performance appraisal and employee engagement in the Indian business context.
Mittal (2021) found that pay for performance was positively related to turnover intention and employee engagement. Employees will be more engaged when they perceive that their performance will lead to higher rewards and recognition and as such recognition and rewards in organizations may strengthen employees’ motivation to be completely engaged.
Past researches confirm that employee engagement is positively linked to various factors of organizational success such as employee efficiency, employee productivity, profitability, employee retention, satisfaction and loyalty (Siddhanta & Roy, 2010). According to Leiter and Bakker (2011), engaged employees are positive, optimistic and feel deep sense of connection with their job and organization. They are loyal to the organization and remain with the organization for long term. They also feel strong psychological bonding with the organization.
Employee Engagement Strategy in today’s context & its relationship with EX
Gallup reported engagement was nearly three times higher when employees agreed with the statement, “My organisation acts upon the results of survey I complete”. A high development culture would require a well-defined purpose on part of organisation, leaders who map out a course for improvement, live those traits/qualities that they want to see in their team members and encourage teams to solve problems at local level than top-down commands, identify and build on strengths of team members.
Along with this recognition of outstanding individuals and teams, clear expectations, ongoing conversations, and accountability, chalking out a high-value career path may create a highly engaged workforce.
Another example may be added which is related to Covid-19. Suddenly the role of physical office space in employee engagement occupied the lowest importance. Organizations along with continuation of other practices started advocating positive psychology and design thinking to create impactful positive employee experience (EX) and high engaged workforce.
To put it simply, if we get the EX right employees are more likely to be engaged. If EX is poor then there is less likelihood of engagement. So if we improve EX, it may lead to contributing towards developing an engaged workforce, benefiting all the stakeholders of the organisation.
Diagnosing Employee Engagement: Role of Stay Interview
Stay interviews if conducted effectively may offer benefits in diagnosing employee problems and leading to organisational development through enhancement of its problem-solving capabilities. Better outcomes may occur when managers hear directly from their employees how they want to be managed for better engagement and retention.
And “I have been keeping too occupied” may not be a good reason for managers to request HR to conduct stay interviews relating to diagnosing reasons for low employee engagement and retention. Such interviews may be conducted individually, on a one-on-one basis to facilitate information sharing that was difficult to share as being too personal to employees. Such initiatives should be combined with asking focused questions keeping in mind retention & engagement goals leading to deep insights on issues of engagement with possibilities of solutions.
Final Words
We witnessed that engaged employees are the most productive, most effective, and most positive employees. Engaged employees contribute to building high-performance organizations.
As such, I will close with the words of Josh Bersin, “As I’ve studied employee engagement over the years, I always noticed something interesting: the companies with the most engaged employees also seem to be growing the fastest. They are clear on their goals, they understand their market, and they get things done.”