Introduction to Employee Engagement

Managers are keen about employee engagement, as it is very important factor for managers. If employee is fully engaged with the duties, it will reflect from entire team. Employee disengagement with the work will reduce the entire productivity of the team (ARMSTRONG & TAYLOR, 2014). Engage with the work does mean lot. Current organization structure, employees are not limited to particular area of work. Knowing about business context, closely work with colleagues to improve performance will impact employee performance for the job within the organizational benefit (Armstrong, 2008). Macleod (2019) had mentioned “This is about how employer create the conditions in which employees offer more of employees capability and potential”. 

Employee engagement doesn’t come automatically. Organization with some key characteristics such as: trust, integrity, two-way commitment, communication between organization and within organization members, develop the employee engagement (MacLeod, 2019). Employee engagement will impact on employee and organization. Management of the organization should be able to handle employee engagement, which is essential from the organizations point of view. Encouraging employees with different kind of ways, such as performance review and creating new expectations can increase employee participation and corporation (Osborne & Mohamad , 2017).

                      Table - 1 Behaviors of engaged and disengaged employees

Engaged behaviors	Disengaged behaviors
Optimistic	Pessimistic
Team-oriented	Self-centered
Goes above and beyond	High absenteeism
Solution-oriented	Negative attitude
Selfless	Egocentric
Shows a passion for learning	Focuses on monetary worth
Passes along credit but accepts blame	Accepts credit but passes along blame

   

                                                                                       

                                                       

(SHRM, 2020)

Above table clearly shows behaviors of an engaged employee and disengaged employee. Always engaged employee shows positive attitudes while disengage employee shows negative attitudes. Strengthening by employee engagement, employer can increase profits or decrees expenses. Beverage giant Molson Coors have experienced it by practice. According to the SHRM SHRM (2020) had mention ‘Molson Coors company highly, engaged employees were five times less likely than nonengaged employees to have a safety incident and seven times less likely to have a lost-time safety incident. By strengthening employee engagement, the company saved $1,721,760 in safety costs in one year.’ 

Strengthening employee engagement will improve productivity, reduce costs and efficiency. This help to manage resources to take optimum use (especially human resource). Process improvements through employee engagement will reduce costs in long run, but unfortunately not in short run (in short run it is not much visible like long run). Most of the time organizations with high employee engagement have high profits. Employee engagement will harder for organizations in future, due to high complexities. Not only profits but customer satisfaction also good in an organization with high employee engagement. High profits and good customer satisfaction will maintain due to quality production. Secret for customer satisfaction, profits and productivity also come through employee engagement (Osborne & Mohamad , 2017).   

According to the “Table 1 – Behaviors of engaged and disengaged employees” High absenteeism will affect employee and the team. The employee with high absenteeism may not aware latest information of the organization as well as employee will give less contribution for the team. This type of employee attitude can reduce team moral. 

For example, the study data shows that organizations with the most engaged employees achieve:

Example from MacLeod MacLeod (2019) shows higher number of engaged employees are working organizations are achieved:

65% greater share-price increase

26% less employee turnover

100% more unsolicited employment applications

20% less absenteeism

15% greater employee productivity

Up to 30% greater customer satisfaction levels

According to above information, it’s clear that engagement is very important to employee throughout the career and also Employee engagement not only important to employee, but for collogues, superiors, employer, clients, suppliers and all members of the organization. Armstrong (2010) mentioned ‘According to the researchers have found that employee engagement results in behaviors such as maximizing discretionary effort, taking initiative, wanting to develop, and aligning actions with organizational needs deliver a range of organizational benefits, for example higher productivity/performance.’

Above statement in the paragraph emphasizes importance of the employee engagement. Figures that shows above will reflect, organizations with engaged employees will give lots of benefits. Employer should focus to increase employee engagement without been late. Considering to uplift employee engagement is very important to any organization. There are so many ways of doing it. From the recruitment to reign of an employee, the employ engagement matters lot, which we can realize from above mentioned figures, statements and other information.

References

ARMSTRONG, M. & TAYLOR, S., 2014. Employee Engagement. In: ARMSTRONG's HANDBOOK OF HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT PRACTISE. London: Kogan Page, p. 228.

Armstrong, M., 2008. Employee engagement strategy. In: STRATEGIC HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT. London: Kogan Page, p. 142.

Armstrong, M., 2010. Employee Engagement. In: ARMSTRONG'S ESSENTIAL HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT PRACTISE - AGUIDE TO PEOPLE MANAGEMENT. LONDON: Kogan Page, p. 165.

Macleod, D., 2019. What is Employee Engagement - Engage for Success. [Online]
Available at: https://engageforsuccess.org/what-is-employee-engagement
[Accessed 15 5 2020].

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

SHRM, 2020. Developing and Sustaining Employee Engagement. [Online]
Available at: https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/tools-and-samples/toolkits/pages/sustainingemployeeengagement.aspx
[Accessed 15 05 2020].