Employee Engagement

This has been a pretty hot topic in the region for some time now, a lot of companies have started to measure their employees engagement with the organization. It is also one of the most important tools for organizations to tackle the Employee Retention issue.

I have experienced both sides of this, being engaged with an organization can make you deliver superior performance, but being disengaged can really make you under-perform or even be careless on the job which is very dangerous, if you find yourself in this situation, do anything to change that mood or change your job altogether, because it is a dangerous formula and may lead to disastrous results.

What is employee engagement?

the CIPD has defined employee engagement as “being positively present during the performance of work by willingly contributing intellectual effort, experiencing positive emotions and meaningful connections to other”.

Schaufeli, W.B. and Bakker, A.B. wrote an article in the Journal of Organizational Behavior titled: “Job demands, job resources, and their relationship with burnout and engagement: a multi-sample study“. Where they see engagement have three elements:

• vigor (energy, resilience and effort)
• dedication (for example, enthusiasm, inspiration and pride)
• absorption (concentration and being engrossed in one’s work)

another element can be taken from Robinson, D., Perryman, S. and Hayday, S. paper: “The drivers of employee engagement” which is being aware of business context.

Also Gifford, J., Finney, L., Hennessy, J. and Varney, S. wrote a paper “The human voice of employee engagement: understanding what lies beneath the surveys” that mentioned that understanding the line of sight between one’s own job role and the purpose and objectives of the organisation is an element of employee engagement.
So, Basically, An “engaged employee” is one who is fully involved in, and enthusiastic about their work, and thus will act in a way that furthers their organization’s interests.

But to simplify it, employee engagement is being one with the organization that the employee is working for, where any and all actions done by the employee is done in full alignment with the organization’s mission, vision, and values, and in the organization’s best interest in mind.

What are the benefits of employee engagement?

First of all let’s get one thing straight, having a staff engaged does not mean positive business results, this needs to be coupled with good leadership.

According to Scarlett Surveys International‘s Associate Engagement Research™:

Improving the AER Engagement index is proven to dramatically increase the positive discretionary efforts of your employees and the percent of work time focusing on work objectives and business goals.

Scarlett Surveys International – Associate Engagement Research™

It is very clear that the lower the employees were engaged, the more dangerous it got for the company, and that is why it is an organization must work very heavily on getting every single employee engaged. It also shows the absolute benefits of the fully engaged employees

In future articles I will tackle exactly how to engage the disengaged employees and also how to keep the fully engaged employees fully engaged.