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]..