Introduction to Employee Engagement

 Employee Engagement

Employee engagement is a human resource concept that reveals the dedication and enthusiasm of workers which feel inside themselves toward their jobs (Kular, Gatenby, Rees, Soane, & Truss, 2008). It is defined as the “harnessing of members of an organization to work roles in engagement, people employ and express them physically, cognitively and emotionally during role performances” (Kahn, 1992).Not only a conventional employee, but also a good businessman can also become an employee and engagement of both above parties towards the jobs can be considered as very important in an organization (Mohannad & Ahmed, 2019).Business leaders have discovered more and more that there are some key factors available in the business world which leads them to be successful. They are level of customer service, effective communications and achieving a high level of employee engagement (Harvard Business Review, 2013). Most often employee engagement can be explained as emotional and intellectual commitment to the organization or the amount of effort shown by employees in their job (Kular, Gatenby, Rees, Soane, & Truss, 2008). Although it is accepted that employee engagement is a multi-pillared construction as previously suggested by researches, it is simply mentioned as ‘passion for work’ and psychological state of employees (Kular, Gatenby, Rees, Soane, & Truss, 2008). Employee engagement has become a very crucial factor or very much essential thing in human resource management in order to make some key processes such as recruiting, training and development and retention (Vetrivel, Krishnamoorthy, & Babin Dhas, 2020). That is the reason why decisions that are taken by human resource manager or HRM team is very much important in an organization and those decisions will show the existence and success of the organization in future.

Many definitions can be made to employee engagement because it is very much important in modern commercialized world. Simply it is the extent of employee’s commitment, work effort and desire to stay in an organization (Storey, Ulrich, Welbourne, & Wright, 2008). As many companies believed in past, Employee satisfaction is not similar to employee engagement. It only illustrates how happy the employees are and does not show the emotional commitment, level of motivation and involvement. Employee satisfaction can be mentioned as “the willingness to exert high level of efforts towards organizational goals” (Vetrivel, Krishnamoorthy, & Babin Dhas, 2020).There is a perfect combination with employee satisfaction and employee engagement which is directly proportionate to each other (Barden, 2018). Therefore employee satisfaction can be mentioned as one key factor of our major topic. There are some core pillars in employee engagement according to some recent researches (Armstrong & Taylor, 2014).

(1)Intellectual engagement

(2)Affective engagement

(3)Social engagement

 It is discussed about employee engagement in a different way which combines commitment, motivation and organizational citizenship (Armstrong & Taylor, 2014).Figure 1.0 shows the combination of those three factors and according to that it illustrates “employee engagement is the outcome or final result that can be obtained by all those factors”.

Figure 1.0

IES Model (Employee engagement)

 

                                                Source: (Armstrong M. and Taylor S: 2014)

 Employee Engagement Drivers

Companies need to win the minds of the employees as well as hearts of them to be succeeded in this competitive business world. It is called rational commitment and emotional commitment (Storey, Ulrich, Welbourne, & Wright, 2008). There are plenty of employee engagement drivers that are shown by different studies which will lead companies to success. Latest studies show that there are several main parameters which are the most impactful employee engagement drivers. “Recognition given for the high performers, having clear understanding of how job contributes to strategy, senior leadership, Communicating and understanding business goals in the company, aligning individual goals with cooperate goals, assessments and performance reviews aligned with corporate goals, linking staff pay to cooperate goal achievement, organizing training and development sessions around company goals” are those employee engagement drivers which pay their contribution in descending order for the success of a company (Harvard Business Review, 2013). Researches show some other parameters too as employee engagement drivers. They are “involvement in decision-making, ability to voice their ideas, listening to views, valuing employees’ contributions, availability of opportunities to develop their jobs, extent to which the organization is concerned for employees’ health and well-being” (Robinson , Perryman , & Hayday, 2004) It was a special task to be investigated, what HR professionals understand by word “engagement”. Later on some key parameters are explained on that by IES (Robinson , Perryman , & Hayday, 2004).

 (1) Belief in the organization

(2) Desire to work to make things better

(3) Understanding of business context and the ‘bigger picture’

(4) Respectful of, and helpful to, colleagues

(5) Willingness to ‘go the extra mile’

(6) Keeping up-to-date with developments in the field

It can be seen that there are several other parameters also which engage as employee engagement drivers in private sector. Research shows that there are four important things to be considered when discussing about employee engagement in company which are basically “meaningful work, effective communication, corporate leadership and employee fit” (Durai & King, 2018).

Employee engagement is a very much critical and crucial idea in a work environment and sometimes many dedications have to be done by top management to make that task a success. Employees should be motivated and the most important thing is “making a belief in employees mind about the organization”. If it can be planted in an employee’s mind, all the other derivatives can be obtained easily. There is a famous quote in the business world that “love your job, not your company”. Employee engagement which is made in a proper way will make this quote false and will lead any organization towards the success.

References:

(2013). Harvard Business Review. Harvard Business Review Analytic Services.

Armstrong, M., & Taylor, S. (2014). In Armstrong's Handbook of Human Resource Practice (13 ed., pp. 192-202). London.

Barden, C. L. (2018). The Coorelation between Employee Engagement and Job Satisfaction in the Social Security Administration. Governors State University.

Durai, T., & King, R. (2018). Drivers to Boost Employees in the private sector. Employee Engagement (pp. 200-204). Chennai: Mayas Publication.

Kahn, W. A. (1992). To be fully there: Psychological presence at work. Human Relations, 4(45), 321-349.

Kular, S., Gatenby, M., Rees, C., Soane, E., & Truss, K. (2008). Employee Engagement:A Literature Review. Kingston Business School.

Mohannad, A. A., & Ahmed, K. S. (2019). Employee Engagement Level:The Transform from Employee to Partner. In Modern Applied Science (pp. 115-128). Canadian Center of Science and Education.

Robinson , D., Perryman , S., & Hayday, S. (2004). The Drivers of Employee Engagement. Brighton,UK: Institute of Employeement Studies.

Storey, J., Ulrich, D., Welbourne, T. M., & Wright, P. M. (2008). Employee Engagement. In The Routledge Companion to Strategic Human Resource Management (pp. 299-315).

Vetrivel, S., Krishnamoorthy, V., & Babin Dhas, D. (2020). Drivers of Employee Engagement to job satisfaction in modern industries. International Journal of Psychosocial Rehabilitation, 1637-1647.