Employee Engagement in HRM

Employee engagement is a workplace approach that resulting in the right conditions for all members of an organization to contribute  their best effort each day and committed to achieve organization's goals and values and motivated to contribute for organizational success with an enhanced sense of their own well-being.

When organizations focus on how to improve employee satisfaction, changes won’t necessarily lead to increased performance. Usually the conditions that make employees “satisfied” with their jobs are the same conditions that frustrate high performing employees. Top performers embrace change, search out ways to improve, whereas low performers avoid accountability and resist change.

Employee engagement is based on trust, integrity, two way commitment and communication between an organization and its' employees. It is an approach that increases the chances of business success, contributing to organizational and individual performance, productivity and well-being. Employee engagement can be measured and it varies from poor to great. It can be nurtured and dramatically increase at the same time it can be destroyed and thrown away.

Why employee engagement is so important?

Employee engagement can be considered as the foundation for performance. Engaged employees focus at the entire organization and understand their purpose, where, and how they can fit in. This leads to better decision-making. Organizations with an engaged workforce outperform their competition. Employee engagement is a key differentiator when it comes to organization growth and innovation. Moreover a company that has an effective employee engagement strategy and a highly engaged workforce is more likely to retain top performers as well as attract new talent. Successful organizations are value-driven with employee-centric cultures.

Engaged organizations have strong and authentic values, with clear evidence of trust and fairness based on mutual respect, where two-way promises and commitments between employers and employees are understood and fulfilled.

How employee engagement can be measured?

The best way to find strategies to improve employee engagement is by conducting a survey that has been developed specifically for this purpose. Employee engagement surveys must be statistically validated and bench-marked against other organizations if they are going to provide useful results.

Engagement can be accurately measured with short surveys that contain just a few questions, but such short surveys can only provide an indication of whether employees are engaged. There should also be open ended questions to further diagnose potential engagement problems within the organization. Employees may have a hard time in explaining why they are engaged or dis-engaged because they may not be having sufficient information. Without sufficient information, an organization cannot develop meaningful activities, training programs, strategies, and initiatives to raise levels of engagement.

References

CustomInsight (2018) What is Employee Engagement? What is Employee Engagement? How to improve employee engagement with strategies, activities, and surveys [Online]. available at <https://www.custominsight.com/employee-engagement-survey/what-is-employee-engagement.asp/. >. [Accessed on 25th June 2018]..

EngageForSuccess (2018) What is Employee Engagement?. What is Employee Engagement - Engage for SuccessEngage for Success [Online]. available at <http://engageforsuccess.org/what-is-employee-engagement/. >. [Accessed on 25th June 2018]..

Design of Work in HRM

Design of work aims at outlining and organizing job functions, duties and responsibilities into a single unit of work for the achievement of certain objectives. It also outlines the methods and relationships that are essential for the success of a certain job. In simpler terms it refers to the what, how much, how many and the order of the duties for a job role.

Design of work essentially involves integrating job responsibilities or content and certain qualifications that are required to perform the job role. It outlines the job responsibilities very clearly and also helps in attracting the right candidates to the right job. Further it also makes the job look interesting and specialized.

Steps involved in Design of Work

There are various steps involved in design of work that follow a logical sequence as follows:

1. What tasks are required to be done or what tasks is part of the job?
2. How are the tasks performed?
3. What amount are tasks are required to be done?
4. What is the sequence of performing these tasks?

All these questions are aimed at arriving upon a clear definition of a specific job and thereby make it less risky for the one performing the job. A well defined job encourages feeling of achievement among the employees and a sense of high self esteem.

The whole process of job design is aimed to address various problems within the organizational setup. More specifically the following areas are fine tuned:

• Checking the work overload.
• Checking upon the work under load.
• Ensuring tasks are not repetitive in nature.
• Ensuring that employees don not remain isolated.
• Defining working hours clearly.
• Defining the work processes clearly.

Benefits of Good Design of Work

Following are the benefits of a good job design:

Employee Input: A good job design enables a good job feedback. Employees have the option to vary tasks as per their personal and social needs, habits and circumstances in the workplace.

Employee Training: Training is an integral part of job design. Good job design lays due emphasis on training people so that are well aware of what their job demands and how it is to be done.

Work / Rest Schedules: Job design offers good work and rest schedule by clearly defining the number of hours an individual has to spend in employee's job.

Adjustments: A good job designs allows for adjustments for physically demanding jobs by minimizing the energy spent doing the job and by aligning the manpower requirements to perform job functions.

Design of work is a continuous and evolving process that is aimed at helping employees in making adjustments with the changes in the workplace. The final objective of good job design is reducing dissatisfaction, enhancing motivation and employee engagement at the workplace.

References

Juneja, P. (2018) Job Design - Meaning, Steps and its Benefits . Job Design - Meaning, Steps and its Benefits [Online]. available at <https://www.managementstudyguide.com/job-design.htm/. >. [Accessed on 09th June 2018]..