Employee Engagement in HRM

What is employee engagement?

According to Truss (2009), employee engagement is about creating opportunities for employees to  interconnect with their colleagues and creating an environment for them to get motivated connect to the work to perform their job with care.

According to institute of Employment Studies (2008), Employee engagement is positive attitude of employees towards the values of organization. If an employee is engaged he is aware of business context and work with others with in the job to maximize the performance. The organization must adopt a good employee and employer relationship to develop and nature engagement.

According to Storey (2008), Employee engagement is asset of positive attitudes and behaviors of the employees to which leads to high job performance aligned to organization’s mission.

However there are many definitions for the employee engagement and there’s no single definition for the same that everyone agrees upon.

Levels of engagement: Source  :Gallup (2006)

1 Engaged employees     - Well connected to the work and to the company

2. Disengage employees - Not passionate about their work and

3. Actively disengaged    - Not passionate and act out their unhappiness and          undermine others achievements.

In simple terms employee engagement is an approach in work place by giving the right conditions to the employees to motivate & commit to organization’s values, goals, and enhance their own well-being. In other words employee engagement is a emotional engagement that and commitment that employees has towards the organization and the goals.

Benefits of engagement to the organisation….

• ·        Improves Customer loyalty
• ·        Improves Employee retention
• ·        Improves Employee productivity
• ·        Improves Advocacy of the Organisation
• ·        Improves Manager self-efficacy
• ·        Aiding successful organizational change
• ·        Improves organizational performance

Benefits of engagement to the employee…..

•  Improves fulfillment of their expectations
•  Improves health and well being

According to Towers Perrin research, organisations with engaged workers have 6% higher net profit and according to Kenexa research organisations with engaged employees have five times higher shareholder returns over five years. Hence it is evident that engaged employees contribute for better performance of the organisations.

However there are arguments in using the term of engagement in academically as  some times engagement is described as  psychological state, sometimes engagement is referred as behavioral state and sometimes it is referred on the basis of  an attitude or a trait.

References:

1 Gatenby, M., Rees, C., Soane, E. and Truss, C (2009) Employee engagement in context. London: Chartered. Institute of Personnel and Development

2 Robinson, D., Perryman S., & Hayday, S. (2004). The drivers of employee engagement. IES Report 408

3 John Storey, Patrick M Wright, David Ulrich eds. (2008). The Routledge Companion to Strategic Human Resource Management

4. https://www.forbes.com/sites/kevinkruse/2012/06/22/employee-engagement-what-and-why/#b23f0327f372