Introduction
Employee engagement can be defined in various ways. However, it can be generally referred to as the ability and willingness of employees to help the organization in which they are employed achieve its objectives. This is achieved by the employees providing their services in a discretional way and in sustainable circumstances. Employee engagement entails two main aspects; psychological and HR practice. The psychological aspect involves the kind of job one is doing, the resources at the employee’s disposal and the experience one goes through during the engagement. Furthermore, the ability of the organization to empower its employees and its autonomy determine the psychological influence on employee engagement. The HR practices part entails the following 13 human resource practices. These factors include; selective recruitment, employment security, incentive pay, high wages, information sharing, employee ownership, promotion from within, empowerment and participation, wage compression, self-managed teams, symbolic egalitarianism, self-managed teams, cross utilization and skill and training development. Employees should demonstrate their positive attitude towards their role in the organization as part of helping the organization succeed. Employee engagement has evolved over the years as the rules of human resource change. The views of human resource specialists has changed over the past as they have now embraced employee welfare as a way of ensuring employees have the right attitude.
Human Resource Practises
Human capital resources play a significant role in contributing to employee workplace engagement. As such, organizations should adapt good human resource practices that will increase employee engagement.
Employment Security
Most employees mind their well-being and employment security at large. Many people are risk averse. As such, they would rather accept a job whose pay is rather low but is more secure. Employment security makes employees comfortable and willing to give their best services to the organization.
Selective Recruitment
The human resource department should be keen while recruiting employees. Recruitment process should be taken seriously in order to identify hard-working employees who can contribute positively to the organizations` performance. This can be achieved through a thorough recruitment process that entails various stages. This is because a well-developed recruitment process will enhance selection of good employees.
High Wages
With increased competition in the global market, there is a significant need to pay employees well so as to prevent high turnover. Higher wages also attract highly skilled employees who will in turn be more engaged to their duties. Additionally, high wages reduce instances of industrial action that is always attributed to employees` dissatisfaction with the amount of wages and salaries.
Incentive Pay
Workplace engagement can also be enhanced through incentive. Financial incentives have been used from time to time in motivating employees. Motivated employees become more engaged in their duties since they are generally satisfied with the working conditions. Incentives also increase job loyalty and the desire to work harder.
Employee Ownership
Employees should be made to feel free within the organization. This can be enhanced through employee ownership. Whenever one there is employee ownership, one feels more responsible. This in turn increases employee workplace engagement due to the desire to achieve desired results.
Information Sharing
Communication within the organization should be facilitated throughout. Effective communication and information sharing enhances positive workplace engagement. This is because employees do not feel side-lined in organizational issues. Information sharing also enhances better decision formation as it encourages positive contribution from employees. Nonetheless, vital information that can be used against the firm should not be leaked to junior employees.
Participation and Empowerment
In order to increase employee engagement, the human resource department should come up with a variety of ways through which employees can be empowered. Firstly, employees can be empowered through training and development. Training enables one to be gain more skills. This will not only enable an employee to offer better skills, but also boost an employee`s self-confidence. Secondly, employees can be empowered through being assigned leadership responsibility from time to time. This boosts an employee’s leadership skills and also makes him feel worthy. Thirdly, employees can be empowered through being exposed to challenging situations. This opens them up to think out of the box and think of better ideas.
Self-Managed Teams
The human resource department can also enhance workplace engagement through formation of self-managed teams. Teams are formed by individual employees who are then assigned a particular task. Teams should be left to manage their operations on their own. Independent teams are more innovative in comparison to teams which are governed.
Training and skill development
Training and skill development is a necessary ingredient for employee workplace engagement. This is because training and skill development boosts employees` knowledge and motivation to contribute positively towards organization`s assignments. Additionally, training and skill development enhances an employee`s innovativeness and expertise. This in turn enables him to be paid better salaries and wages.
Promotion from within
Whenever a position falls vacant, the human resource department can decide to either recruit new employees or to conduct internal recruitment. Promotion from within is necessary since it motivates long serving employees. This in turn enhances workplace engagement. Employees tend to work hard so as to be promoted in future. Further, promotion from within enhances continuity since internal recruitment targets employees who have a good knowledge about an organization`s activities. As such, employers should promote skilled employees so as to increase employee workplace engagement.Drivers that can increase employee engagement
In order to increase employee engagement, organizations should consider several factors. These factors should be incentives that will help motivate employees and make them loyal and interested in putting their best efforts to help the organization. These include creating a competitive environment, helping employees grow and develop, encouraging team work and collaborations, empowering employees, provision of support and recognition, and aligning efforts with strategies.
Creating a competitive environment
The other demand is the level of competition in the market at large. Each and every employee is expected to do his or her level best with an aim of encountering increased competition. The level of innovation and creativity is so high that employees are expected to meet the high standards. Therefore, human resource managers mainly emphasize on the level of innovativeness and the ability to provide quality services.
Empowerment
In order to increase employee engagement, the human resource department should come up with a variety of ways through which employees can be empowered. Firstly, employees can be empowered through training and development. Training enables one to be gain more skills. This will not only enable an employee to offer better skills, but also boost an employee`s self-confidence. Secondly, employees can be empowered through being assigned leadership responsibility from time to time. This boosts an employee’s leadership skills and also makes him feel worthy. Thirdly, employees can be empowered through being exposed to challenging situations. This opens them up to think out of the box and think of better ideas.
Provision of Support and Recognition
Each and every human being requires support in order to produce better results. Additionally, most people are motivated through recognition and support. Recognition refers to the act of rewarding ones hard work through increased wages, bonuses or free gifts. On the other hand, employees need mentors who can coach and help them whenever necessary during any assignment. Support in form of advice is a necessary requirement in any organization. Therefore, there is a significant need to encourage consultation in order to minimize mistakes and produce the best results in any assignment.
Promoting team work and setting collaborations
Team work, in most cases, leads to efficiency and better results. As such, employees should be encouraged to embrace team work and collaborate with each other in the course of their assignment. This is because different individuals possess different skills. Through team work, better and timely results can be achieved. This is because team members do consult each other from time to time in. Team work also encourages specialization and division of labour. Specialized personnel are capable of doing an assignment perfectly and within a short duration of time. On the other hand, collaborating within and without an organization is necessary since it fosters good employee relationship.
Help employees grow and develop
Employee engagement can also be enhanced by assisting them to grow and develop. People are highly motivated by programs that enable them to grow and develop career wise. Therefore, it is essential for all organizations to put employees through programs such as engaging in seminars and higher educational programs. Employers should enable employees to gain more knowledge and skills by pursuing short term courses. As such, employees should be entitled to study leave in order to be able to pursue further studies. This will not only in turn enhance employee engagement, but will also lead to increased profits due to better expertise among employees.
Aligning Efforts with Strategies
In order to enhance employee engagement, it is essential to align efforts with the strategies developed by managers. This will increase the chances of realizing better results and in turn improve employees` morale and attitude at large.
Advantages of Workplace Engagement
There are various advantages of workplace engagement. These include reduced turnover, high levels of individual productivity, organizational citizenship behaviour, and employee commitment.
Reduce turnover and absenteeism
The human resources in an organization are responsible for the continuity of the company’s policy. With employee engagement, it is certain that these employees enjoy working for this company and are willing to work for the company into the foreseeable future. Employees who are engaged to an organization will work in accordance with the organization’s long term objectives. The organization that has employee engagement is likely to experience higher productivity. Employees who are engaged at work are motivated and passionate about their work.
High levels of individual productivity and performance
Another advantage is that the organization will have a good team of employees who can work as a team in order to achieve their objectives. A human work force that comprises of engaged employees is usually effective in their duties and works in harmony. These individuals understand their roles as individuals and as a team.
High levels of organizational citizenship behaviour
There will be no cases of misunderstandings, conflict of interest or selfish behaviour. That is because the team is focused on the success of the organization only. Therefore, they sacrifice their personal interests in order to ensure that the organization succeeds. It is easy to manage employees who are engaged to the organization. The human resource managers emphasize on employee engagement because these people understand the organizational objectives and are self-driven hence; they do require minimum supervision to achieve the organizational goals.
Employee commitment
The theory of employee motivation suggests that when employees are motivated, they develop a positive attitude towards their work and the organization in general. Therefore, they commit themselves to the course of the company and increase the productivity of the organization. Managers aim to boost employee productivity by looking for individuals who agree with the organization’s long term objectives.
Disadvantages of Workplace Engagement
Workplace engagement has some disadvantages which include work life imbalance, exploiting people; work family conflict, burn out emotional exploitation, and wrong focus which may in turn affect organizational performance at large.
Wrong focus may affect organizational performance
Organizational performance depends of a variety of factors. These include employee`s motivation, expertise and even workplace engagement. Nonetheless, in case employees engage in workplace duties with wrong intentions, organizational performance may not be achieved.
Work life imbalance
Workplace engagement can be disadvantageous since it can lead to poor social life. Employees who are seriously engaged in their duties lack adequate time to entertain friends and relatives. They also lack adequate time to engage in political issues. This inhibits full development due to overworking.
Work family conflict
Employees who are more engaged in workplace duties tend to neglect family duties. This may cause disharmony within their families. In extreme cases, over engaging in workplace duties lead to divorce. Further, children who are neglected by their parents lack discipline. This is because they have too much freedom without proper guidance. Exploiting people
Workplace engagement can lead to exploitation of workers. This is because employees who work for long hours with an aim of getting higher pays and promotions risk being exploited. Employees should not strain to work for long hours. This is because they can end up being affected socially and even health wise. Burn out emotional exhaustion
Workplace engagement can also lead to emotional exhaustion. This is due to lack of time to reflect of other issues in life at large.
Recommendations
The achievement of employee engagement is a difficult thing to achieve. Similarly, talent management can only be achieved when the human resource department puts in place a series of measures that would help convince employees to stay. First, the human resource team must ensure that the organization provides all the necessary incentives to keep employees happy and satisfied within the organization. Such incentives include increasing the financial pay for employees. Financial incentives are the most effective in achieving employee engagement and talent management. Finally, the organization should recruit people who have the ability to commit themselves to the organization. This will help avoid people who are only interested in money.
Limitations
One of the limitations is that financial incentives do not always work. This is because rival organisations can offer higher amounts just to lure good employees. Furthermore, employees have different preferences and interests. The organization can provide what they feel are the best incentives for their employees yet the employees are not impressed because they need more. Finally, it is difficult for an organization to identify people who are talented and those who can commit their future to the organization by simply interviewing them.
Summary
Organizations need to emphasize on employee engagement if at all they aspire to retain their work force. Employers usually look to retain their best talents through talent management programs. Even though it is theoretically possible, achieving employees engagement and talent management requires the organization to invest heavily in incentives such as good working conditions, good salaries, flexibility, good communication systems, effective management and group harmony. The human resource department in any organization must always consider the given recommendations to achieve these two objectives. However, this must be done through close consideration of human resource theories and focusing on past literature such as that done by Gallup on employee engagement and others.
Bibliography
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Markos, S. (2010). Employee Engagement: The Key to Improving Performance. International Journal of Business and Management, 5(12), 1-9.
Seijts, G. H., & Crim, D. (2006). What engages employees the most or, The Ten C's of employee engagement. Ivey Business Journal, 9(March/April), 1-7.
