Employee Engagement

Introduction.

This article will focus on Employee Engagement, its components, alignment with HR practices, and evaluation supported by the latest researches.

Definitions.

There are several definitions for Employee Engagement where none of them is definitive; however, common points are shared. The CIPD employee engagement factsheet 2015 definition is: “an internal state of being, both physical, mental, and emotional”, but many also view it as encompassing behavior and in particular work effort. Typical phrases used are: discretionary effort, going the extra mile, feeling valued, and passion for work. The Utrecht University group of occupational psychologists came up with the following definition, which measures work engagement in three elements:

• Vigor (energy, resilience, and effort)
• Dedication (enthusiasm, inspiration, and pride) and
• Absorption (concentration and being engrossed in one’s work).

Another definition by Engage for success website is: a workplace approach resulting in the right conditions for all members of an organization to give of their best each day, committed to their organization’s goals and values, motivated to contribute to organizational success, with an enhanced sense of their own well-being.

The common theme between all definitions is the employee’s obligation towards the organization in the first place; providing thinking, acting, and feeling state of being. Moreover, the self-directed effort of going the extra mile where the employee is full of energy to do the tasks, having that special pride of belonging to a particular organization and completely focusing and concentrating to do the job up to utmost standards.

Employee Engagement principles analysis.

There are three dimensions formulating the employee engagement related to the individual function as the gear for efforts. Those principles might be exhibited by the individual as standalone or combination of all in different levels ensuring commitment and eagerness to perform in the best way possible.

• Emotional Engagement is the positive attitude of the employee towards the organization’s values, mission, vision, and goals. I have a desire to provide, yet to receive more. When I notice a colleague of mine enjoy work challenges and have this feeling of involvement towards the organization’s success, I would defiantly say he/she is emotionally engaged.
• Cognitive Engagement: it’s the mental states of being engaged with the organization, putting forward innovative ideas and solutions. Learning as they go and taking the best lessons from accomplished tasks to keep improving. When my subordinate joined us and found lots of paperwork involved, she came up with an online solution to get rid of training registration and confirmation in no time. She delivered this new process without being asked. She had that kind of innovative thinking about the work itself and how to make it better.
• Physical Engagement: is the act and effort paid by the employee to complete a task, by going the extra mile to work more hours in order to finish the job completely. They usually attend early and leave their offices late without compromising their work-life balance. You can feel their aura of power when they are around, which gives all colleagues a push to complete the task. Employee citizenship would summarize it all.

Comparing Employee Engagement with related concepts.

Some might say, a satisfied or committed employee is an engaged one. So, why bother ourselves with employee engagement idea, since we know how to measure staff satisfaction and act upon it? Others might say staff involvement looks like engagement yet, it’s easier to implement. Is their proposition true, well I don’t think so, and here is why:

• Organizational Commitment. As per Stephen Gill’s blog “employee engagement is not necessarily an employee commitment”, I quote “there is a difference between an engaged worker, meaning one who invests him/herself in superior job performance, and organizational commitment; a worker’s psychological attachment to his/her organization. An employee might show commitment towards organization because they have no other option, or having sufficient rewards comparing other similar institutes. Being committed towards the organization is considered a kind of bond for a particular reason where commitment might disappear when the cause does. If another organization offers me a better package, I will no longer be committed to the current employer and will move out.
• Job Involvement. It’s a kind of autonomic approach by individuals to achieve more results. As per the Kingston University employee engagement literature review issued in October 2008, it has been argued that one of the main drivers of employee engagement is for employees to have the opportunity to feed their view upwards. Giving voice to staff to provide feedback or get involved in decisions or organizational directions doesn’t mean engagement. If executive management decided not to involve staff with particular topics anymore and just circulate an internal memo with a related decision, would they get disengaged?
• Staff Satisfaction. It’s mainly referred to as staff rewards, learning opportunities, job responsibilities, and how staff perceives the organization brand among competitors. Organizations can’t have satisfied staff all the time as both needs and challenges keep evolving. What matters to the staff today might not be within their priorities next year and so on. As per Laura Sheffield’s article, employees might be satisfied with his/her pay package and working hours, yet not engaged.
• Flow: people in flow usually lose track of time and sink deeply in the task, creating a hyper focus state of mind to complete challenging work. A colleague of mine went in the flow mode to change the reporting feed from manual to automatic by creating special codes and equations in the system, which decrees the report time around from 11 days down to three hours only. This gave the bank much more time to review data before submitting it to the central bank.

As a conclusion, all of the components formulate the employee engagement but doesn’t as standalone.

The alignment between Employee Engagement and the Organizational components.

As discussed earlier, employee engagement is not a standalone practice within the organization, conversely, it supports all strategies when linked together and works with harmony. People start to engage at the selection stage when they fit organization culture and show the ability to perform tasks by having the needed competencies. An induction plan and onboarding program will contain them as employees, provide the basic information to do the job, in knowing their peers, line managers, and the whole structure, while understanding the policy and procedures and aligning one’s expectations with organization goals. Internal communication will play another part in employee engagement in informing staff with the latest news internally and sometimes provide a competitor’s analysis or information, which will assist in increasing the engagement rate.

Moreover, understanding what people value and have in common with the organizational strategy, will support the employee value proposition and create valuable branding, which will ease attracting talents and retain them. Learning and development practices will promote employee engagement by providing needed knowledge tools to perform a task with more quality and efficiency yet, a career plan will add another dimension to nurture the employees.

Employee performance management system will be a tool used to enhance and support it, through setting mutual expectations as KPIs and development plans, continuous coaching and mentoring, exhibiting leadership role-models derived from organizational values, and treating staff with fairness, all linked to an adequate reward system.

Effective delegation and empowering employees will provide them with more space to bring their innovative ideas to enhance the work conditions and achieve business plan targets easily, which results in more engaged employees. Nevertheless, when an organization offers their employees a chance to voice their opinions to executive management and act upon them, employees definitely will be engaged and deliver better results which will promote the brand and increase bottom-line profit.