Factors that influence employee engagement

In the HRM consider employees as key factor in an organization. Employees are the key personnel who work to achieve organizational goals. Employee Engagement and Organizational Commitment are key to organizational success. Influence toward employee engagement will highly impacted when achieving goals. By controlling influencing fact towards employee engagement in a positive way can do good changes to employees the most valuable asset in an any organization (Anindita & Seda, 2018).   

To have a strong employee engagement two key elements need to be exist. One is the rational aspect and next is emotional aspect (Armstrong, 2008). Rational aspect discusses regarding understanding of employee job role, how job role fits to the organization and employee how get into work to achieve the business objective. The emotional aspect explains the way employee see about the organization. Employees job role and accomplishment from the work done and how the employee and superiors get into the work to achieve common goal (Armstrong, 2008). 

Above mentioned aspects can further divide into specific key factors such as (Armstrong, 2008): -

The work itself – The job role, the assigned work, responsibility and chances of taking own creativity also can improve employee engagement. Employee engagement or disengagement can happen from the job itself (Armstrong, 2008).

 

The work environment – The working environment also influence regarding the employee engagement. Working environment with all the facilities, equipped with necessary equipment, technology enabled environment, friendly working force and respect each other definitely uplift the employee engagement (Armstrong, 2008). 

Leadership – Leaders in a team, department or in an organization can highly influence towards employee engagement. The decisions that take by a leader can affect lot to the employee engagement. Leadership strategies can develop employee engagement as well wrong decisions can ruin the employee engagement (Armstrong, 2008).  

Opportunities for personnel growth – Employment will develop the employee skills, learning ability, will also grow the employee as individual, get opportunities from the career pathway and explore the new learning outcomes. Current generation think lot on personnel growth and they willing to work such organizations. Organizations with high personal growth attract the employees and employees also do the work with commitment so employee engagement will be rising (Armstrong, 2008).     

Opportunities to contribute – If employee ideas are considering by management and give a chance to the employees for decision making will also affect uplift of employee engagement. It gives recognition to the employee and key factor of influence towards employee engagement (Armstrong, 2008).

If the working environment of an organization became flexible to employees it will reflect from employee’s performance. Some organizations have flexible working hours, the organization is not considered employees in time or out time, if work is done, they have freedom. Some organizations give chance to employees, work in any time of the day, but only thing is working duration should cover (Heryati, 2020). Software companies practice flexible working hours. While I am working in leading IT company in Sri lanaka, employees had the freedom to work in flexible hours and it encourage all of employees to focus the work properly. Even myself it makes easy to manage my private work and official work. Flexible working hours made me a relaxed environment with managing balance life.

Normally employees like to develop skills, learn new things and grow the knowledge day by day. If employer encourage and help employees to develop employees learning, trainings and embrace with technology, the employees will be encouraged to work such organization and engagement of work will increase. In that case employees know that employer worry about employee’s growth as well. It makes sense that employer is not a person go only with profits (Heryati, 2020).

According to Orborne and Hammoud (2017), the U.S. Department of identified employee engagement as a challenge, with a negative percentage of 35% or higher for organizations. Therefore, organizational leaders are rapidly finding ways to engage employees for long-term employment. Engaged employees are noted to having lower turnover rates and higher retention. Thirty percent of U.S. employees are engaged at work, and a staggeringly low 13% worldwide were engage. In addition, within the past 12 years, these percentages have changed minimally, meaning that worldwide, a high number of employees fail to develop and contribute at work.

Above information shows how the influence impacted to the employee engagement. All above the factors that discussed make direct or indirect impact towards employee engagement. Some times engagement come from work itself, the work environment, leadership, opportunities for personnel growth and Opportunities to contributes as discussed above. All above discussions prove that how important to make good environment to employee to uplift employee engagement. Above facts prove that influences towards employee engagement can seen through different kinds of outputs. Above all prove that importance of influencing factors towards employee engagement. Upper paragraphs have stated opportunities like learning environment how affect to the employee and giving decision making power to employees how improve the employee engagement.

References

Anindita, R. & Seda, A. E., 2018. “How employee engagement mediates the influence of individual factors toward organizational commitment”. Problems and Perspectives in Management, 16(1), p. 276.

Armstrong, M., 2008. Employee engagement strategy. In: STRATEGIC HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT A GUIDE TO ACTION. London: Kogan Page, p. 145.

Armstrong, M., 2008. Employee engagement strategy. In: STRATEGIC HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT A GUIDE TO ACTION. London: Kogan Page Limited, p. 143.

Heryati, 2020. 10 Factors Contributing to Employee Engagement. [Online]
Available at: https://inside.6q.io/10-factors-contributing-employee-engagement/
[Accessed 26 05 2020].

Orborne, S. & Hammoud, M., 2017. Effective Employee Engagement in the Workplace. International Journal of Applied Management and Technology, Volume 16(Issue 1), p. 54.

Osborne, S. & Hammoud, M., 2017. Effective Employee Engagement in the Workplace. International Journal of Applied Management and Technology, Volume 16(Issue 1), p. 53.