Managerial Implications of Employee Engagement
Employee engagement is a world’s leading force responsible for increasing employees’ productive levels in addition to driving increased outcomes. Equally, top-performing organizations rely heavily on employees to realize performance goals and growth. Other than organization-related benefits, employee engagement also plays a fundamental role in enhancing customer loyalty thereby leading the creation of enormous profits. Successful businessperson, Sir Richard Branson of Virgin Atlantic, admit that making Virgin into a worldwide brand involved making employees a top-priority instead of prioritizing shareholders. Many a person has argued that employee engagement is a fundamental factor in influencing organizational performance, attitudes, values, and customer relationships. However, it is emphatically crucial to identify what is exactly meant by employee management, how and when it is applied, and where? Do employees and managers in organizations understand Employee engagement? Does it inspire work or hamper productivity? Providing answers to such questions and inquiries would serve a great deal in the examination and exploration of the concept employee engagement.
Employee Engagement
An examination of literature on employee engagement reveals a lack of universal definition regarding employee engagement. While Bloisi, Cook, & Hunsaker, (2003) refers to it as the harnessing of roles performed by employees, Macey (2008) defines EE as the employee’s positive attitude with respect to the organization and values, a factor that must be nurtured and developed in order to realize increased performance. Miller (2012: 4) argue that if individuals are to be motivated and engaged in whatever goals the organization pursues, it is critical to engage the lives of these people. Does a universal definition really matter? Simply put, employee engagement has to do with a paradigm shift of dependent/independent relationships between employees and employers towards a mutual relationship between the employer and the employee (Miller, 2012). Understanding, interconnectivity, and accountability should exist from both sides. Other than the physical effort to work, intellectual and emotional commitments are important concepts when it comes to defining employee engagement.
Nonetheless, it is not easy to get employees to commit their loyalty and allegiance into an organization. This explains the existence of share options, incentive schemes, training, and development, health plans, and reward packages in many an organization (Miller, 2012). Despite the existence of all these niceties and programs, employees have the independence of choice because they know when it is right to give their best to the organization. Does employee engagement require an understanding of basic human psychology (Macey, 2008)? This factor is quite complex for the organization in addition to bringing managerial implications for the HR.
Employee Engagement seems to be centered on dealing on emotions and the development of employees’ perceptions. An examination of several key issues such as lifestyle, commitment, support, well-being, and prevailing trends can deliver immeasurable insights in understanding the psychology involved with employee engagement. Lifestyle revolves around the overall level of job satisfaction whereas the level of well-being deals with emotional and psychological aspects. Similarly, commitment, prevailing trends, and support entail dealing with issues within the workplace. A thorough understanding of the factors identified above can provide a great deal towards understanding the entire concept of employee engagement.
What does Employee Engagement Involve?
Instilling a sense of pride and positive attitude towards the organization forms the first step in getting employees to be involved in an organization. Second, making employees to develop the sensitivity that the organization is a critical element influencing their performance is another important factor for engaging employees. Products/services produced drive the image of the organization and therefore, making employees to develop a positive belief towards these products/services is a critical factor in making them to be engaged with the organization. Equally important is the need of making employees to develop an expanded organizational picture thereby making them to have a willingness that goes beyond what is expected of them. Finally yet important, influencing employee behavior and personal attitudes helps in making them to behave altruistically and work as a team in all organizational aspects.
Employee engagement is subject to influence from a multiplicity of challenges, most of which involve experiences and personal issues. McBain (2007: 16) postulate older employees have a tendency of showing a decline in engagement levels as their level of services to the organization declines. Additionally, attitudes of management staff influence the levels of employee engagement owing to the level of supporting roles and levels of loyalty to the organization. A higher level of support of the management increases the level of interest from workers. Employees with career development plans to show high levels of engagement as compared to those employees without a defined career development plan. The high engagement level can be attributed to the desire to achieve their career goals while working for the organization (McBain, 2007)
What factors drive employee engagement?
Are there specific factors that can lead to low employee engagement? What drives low engagement from employees? An examination of research findings and literature on employee engagement presents a diversity of drivers for employee engagement with the common ones revolving around relationships, commitment, trust and integrity, organization pride, and growth of career opportunities. Commitment of employees towards organizational issues leads to increased interests on organizational issues that in-turn leads to improved performance levels. Since employee engagement revolves around the satisfaction of employee values, a sense of value towards the organizations is a leading contributor in driving the level of employee engagement. As such, several components are necessary in causing the increased employee engagement. This includes but not limited to the availability of career improvement opportunities from employees, the extent of involving employees in decision making initiatives, and as well, the extent of influencing the wellbeing and health issues of workers. Paying attention to the voices, views, and employee grievances also encourages employees to be associated with employee issues (Redman, 2011: 12). Lastly, encouraging employees to be involved in organizational issues calls for the development and improvement leadership levels, talent management, and cultivation of organizational culture.
The self or the individual person forms the central element in enabling any organization to survive and hence, developing ways of motivating this form of human capital is a critical aspect. A fulfillment of roles within any organization enables the organization to thrive in several areas such as profitability levels and organizational performance. Methods of motivating the individual employee include the development of viable reward systems, creation of feedback and reinforcement programs, and providing support and value systems to employees (Redman, 2011). Undeniably, many organizations and management officials encounter a myriad of challenges involving their workforce. However, an examination of Employee Value Propositions (EVP) in addition to exploring the strategies and drivers of employee engagement can help immensely in the management of challenges involving their workforces.
Relevancy/Importance of Employee Engagement to Managers
Managers in many organizations face immense challenges when it comes to the concept of managing employees. Other that retaining existing clients, the issue of recruiting new talent who can focus and become fully engaged with issues to do with the organization is also a challenge in itself. It is therefore essential that managers place more emphasis towards employee engagement and the implementation of strategies geared towards employee motivation. As earlier defined, engaged employees refers to those employees who are willing to perform beyond the capacity expected of them, remain committed to the organization, and those employees willing to promote the organization even at the worst conditions (Lundby, 2012: 252).
Managers are responsible for controlling aspects such as organizational pride, employee loyalty, organizational change, and performance of the organization. All these aspects are directly dependent on input from employees thereby showing the need for manager involvement in employee engagement. By creating an attractive and strong employee brand, managers must involve employees in several organizational issues. The relevancy of employee engagement to managers is dependent on the ability of managers to be attentive in the welfare and roles of employees. In so doing, the level of satisfaction and involvement from employees increases their levels of enthusiasm and commitment to work.
Involvement of employees in various forums within an organization comes with profound benefits to the organization and offers varied benefits to the employees. Herzberg’s theory clearly justifies this as it hypothesizes that employee engagement psychologically motivates the organization’s workforce towards efficient work input thus resulting in high yields for the organizations (Robert and Cooper, 2010, 18). The benefits of employee engagement vary depending on various organizational contexts. Employee engagement develops positive attitude amongst the employees in terms of their allocated workloads, which further develops their loyalty to the organization, all of which result in an improvement of organizational performance. Mangers who engage their employees in various organizational concepts converse the organizations desires and brand values to the employees, who will from then work towards meeting the brand values of the organization thus facilitates the achievement of managerial desired brand values. Due to the ability of the mangers to convince the employees, they will work an extra mile towards fulfilling manager’s desires so that they can get approval and conform to the wishes of the managers, which reduces conflicts that are likely to occur in case they do not meet the manager’s demands.
Employee engagement facilitates development of employee innovative behavior by the mangers. Often, engaged employees develop and apply novel and constructive ideas in their respective work responsibilities (Gordon and Kim, 2010, 45). Therefore, mangers get an insight on the ideas applicable in their respective organizational contexts towards improving organizational outputs. Improved organizational outputs translate to a competitive advantage over competing firms (Mackey & Benjamin, 2011, 73) As hypothesized by McGregor’s school of thought, employee engagement promotes employee freedom towards self-realization on the innovative capabilities within them. From a wider point of view, development of innovative behaviors amongst employees allows mangers to focus on nourishment on the employee’s strengths, while improving their weaknesses hence, developing a competent workforce, which provides profound competitive advantage over competing organizations.
Employee engagement benefits managers as it provides an avenue where managers can correspond to the employees concerning the perceived benefits of engaging them in various decision-making matters of the organization. For this reason, employees will perceive this as resource of enhancing their job status. In addition, when managers engage their employees, they eradicate the perception existing among the employees on that they are being neglected. Therefore, the employees will make appropriate decisions involving no emotions, which will work towards benefiting the organization. Focused employee engagement provides an opportunity where the workforce comes together with a mutual goal of working together for a common goal (Robert and Cooper, 2010, 34). This results in high feasibility in terms of organizational achievement as everyone will be working towards a common goal. Arguably, it also creates a culture of competitiveness amongst employees, with everyone is working towards achieving better as compared to the other. This significantly improves organizational inputs hence, resulting in high achievements for the organization.
Ample manager employee relationships are achievable and feasible when there exists a system for employee engagement. This will provide an avenue for resolving conflicts emerging within the organization. As a result, a work force working without any conflicts gives profound input towards meeting organizational goals. When linked to McGregor’s point of view, human nature is developed in such a way that an environment with little or no conflicts amongst human offers an avenue for informed decisions for their own good. Therefore, as the mangers continually seek to solve conflicts occurring within the organizational context, the give feed backs to their juniors, which come in form of rewards, thus strengthening the employees focus on attaining recommendable outputs (Noronha, 2011, 23).
Inadequacy sometimes occurs when employee engagement extends to a level where no distinction exists between managers and employees (Mackey & Benjamin, 2011, 64). To begin with, organization and co-ordination of employee manager and employee engagement in form of meetings takes a lot of time, which is an adequate resource in achieving stipulated outputs. In addition, it further takes a lot of time for mangers to persuade the employees about their roles, which they should in turn put them into effect mutually, without any need for persuasion. Employee engagement forums further involve development of strategies by mangers so that they can convey them to the employees. The process of developing the mentioned strategies is quite involving. Arguably, convincing employees to believe in your strategies can also be difficult. To solve this, managers should involve the employees in formulation of the strategies in order to work in coherence with their expectations.
Overall, decision making in cases involving group of people is not easy. The chances of reaching consensus in instances involving high employee engagement are not feasible. Individual employees often loose interests based on the individual specific preferences. Employees with varied opinions succumb to suppressing opinions from the opposing team members. Engaged employees tend to think that other employees are evaluating them silently. Therefore, this creates negative attitudes among individual employees towards employee engagement concepts. In conclusion, employee engagement has substantial benefits when put into effect, as it should. As mentioned above, employee engagement revolves around generating positive attitudes from the employees. This is a crucial factor in determining the level of productivity and performance levels of worker hence, improved output for the organization. For this reason, several factors are essential for making employees to be engaged in organizational activities and issues. Leadership, social responsibility, strong partnerships, great management, and an inspiring work environment are both critical elements in influencing employee engagement.
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