Why Employee Engagement is Must?

What is Employee Engagement?  Employee engagement is a workplace approach designed to ensure that employees are committed to their organisation’s goals and values, motivated to contribute to organisational success, and are able at the same time to enhance their own sense of well-being.  This emotional commitment means engaged employees actually care about their work and their company. They don’t work just for a paycheck, or just for the next promotion, but work on behalf of the organization’s goals.

What Employee Engagement is not?  Employee engagement does not mean employee happiness.  Someone might be happy at work, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they are working hard, productively on behalf of the organization - making employees happy is different from making them engaged.  Employee engagement doesn’t mean employee satisfaction.  A satisfied employee might show up for her daily 9-to-5 without complaint. But that same “satisfied” employee might not go the extra effort on her own, and she’ll probably take the headhunter’s call luring her away with a 10% bump in pay. Satisfied isn’t enough.

Why Employee Engagement?  Employee engagement is an indicator of high productivity and employee retention as reflected in extant literature.  Employee engagement used to fall under the umbrella of HR departments.  An employee’s discretionary effort results in the Engagement-Profit chain. Because they care more, they are more productive, give better service, and even stay in their jobs longer.  All of that leads to happier customers, who buy more and refer more often, which drives sales and profits higher, finally resulting in an increase in stock price.

Effect of Employee Engagement  Employee engagement affects nine performance outcomes. Compared with bottom-quartile units, top-quartile units have:  37% lower absenteeism  25% lower turnover (in high-turnover organizations)  65% lower turnover (in low-turnover organizations)  28% less shrinkage  48% fewer safety incidents  41% fewer patient safety incidents  41% fewer quality incidents (defects)  10% higher customer metrics  22% higher profitability

Effect of Employee Engagement (contd.)

Key Drivers of Employee Engagement  It’s said that employees don’t leave companies, they leave people. And it’s true – many of the reasons employees claim they aren’t engaged in their company have to do with people.  Three drivers of employee engagement include:  Employees’ relationships with their direct managers: 80% of employees who were dissatisfied with their direct manager were disengaged.  Employees’ belief in senior leadership: 70% of employees who lack confidence in the abilities of senior leadership are not fully engaged.  Employees’ pride in working for the company: 54% of employees who were proud of their company’s contributions to society are engaged.

Importance of Employee Engagement in difficult times  Employee engagement is an idea that helps develop strong positive attitudes among people towards their work and their organisation.  This plays a major role in ensuring that they give their best even when times are tough, surely we need to improve it now more than ever.  The mix of factors that make up employee engagement have been around for a long time.  These include organisational commitment, job satisfaction, and organisational citizenship – the willingness to go outside one's specific role to be helpful.  The distinctive feature of employee engagement as an idea is that it pulls all of these positive job and work attitudes together under one umbrella.

Ways to Improve Employee Engagement  Communicate clear goals and expectations to your employees  Share information and numbers  Encourage open communication  Not communicating or communicating late can damage engagement  Actively promote organizational effectiveness, reputation, values and ethics  Culture  Let staff tell their own stories  Trust  Build engagement  Encourage innovation

References  own-employee-engagement-gp.html own-employee-engagement-gp.html  the-business-case-for-employee-engagement/ the-business-case-for-employee-engagement/  engagement-what-and-why/ engagement-what-and-why/  engagement/ engagement/  network/2012/may/03/importance-employee-engagement-difficult-times network/2012/may/03/importance-employee-engagement-difficult-times  employee-engagement-using-corporate-giving-programs employee-engagement-using-corporate-giving-programs

Thank You