Employee Engagement

How do you think an organization runs? With the help of people who contribute in their own way to accomplish tasks and achieve goals of the organization. The individuals who spend their maximum part of the day at the workplace, striving hard to reach to a conclusion benefiting them as well as the organization are called as employees. In a laymans language employees are the lifeline of an organization. A human being would die if there is no blood in his body, similarly an organization cant survive without employees. Employees are the main assets of the organization and it is really important for them to prioritize their tasks at the workplace. They should think about their company more than anything else. To extract the best out of each team member, it is important that they enjoy their work and feel attached to the organization. An employee must be committed towards his organization for him to deliver his best and remain motivated. The employees must be engaged in productive and challenging tasks so that they do not lose their focus and avoid conflicts and unnecessary disputes. An employee must be engaged in his work for maximum output.

What is Employee Engagement?

Employee engagement refers to a condition where the employees are fully engrossed in their work and are emotionally attached to their organization . One cant achieve anything unless and until one is serious about it. An employee must be dedicated towards his work and should take it as a challenge. Work should never get monotonous as it would then be a burden for the individual. Problems arise when individuals have nothing creative to do and sit idle the whole day. They start interfering in each others work and tend to become negative for the organization. They start finding reasons to fight with their fellow workers and crib about almost everything. The employees must be assigned challenging assignments as per their interests and expectations so that they devote their maximum time to work rather than loitering and gossiping around. The team leaders or the managers must ensure to review their team members performance on a weekly basis to find out whether they are enjoying their work or not? An employee must not treat his organization as a mere source of earning money only. An organization is a place where employees go to upgrade their skills and learn something new every day. One must respect and love his job to expect the same. Never talk ill of your organization in front of anyone.

Effective ways to enhance Employee Engagement

The team leader should understand his members well. Do not assign anything which the employee would not find interesting.

Effective communication enhances employee engagement. Make sure there is transparency in communication at all levels and everyone is aware of what is happening around him. The management must constantly motivate his employees. Cash prizes, trophies, gift vouchers, certificates are an effective way to motivate the employees and keep them engaged in their work. Give them a target and ask them to achieve that within a particular time frame to earn handsome incentives or lucrative prizes. This way, the employees would not waste their time and spend their maximum time working and aiming for the rewards. The team leader or the manager must be in constant dialogue with his team members. He should know what his team members are up to. Performance monitoring is important. The team members should be answerable to their immediate bosses. Be friendly with your team. Dont ask them to stay back late unnecessarily. They are likely to commit more mistakes and eventually lose interest in work. Let them go back home on time and enjoy their personal lives as well. Rejuvenation is essential for an individual to remain happy and stress free. More than a strict boss, be a mentor to them and stand by them always. Encourage your team members to think out of the box. Ask them do their work in a little different way than they normally do. The employees must put on their thinking caps at workplace and accomplish the task in the most innovative way.

Such activities help the employees to develop a sense of trust and loyalty towards the management and stick to the organization for a longer period of time. They consider the organizations goals as their goals and thus try to achieve them at any cost. The employees learn to take ownership of their work and do every possible thing which satisfies them as well as the organization.

Employee Engagement and Employee Relationship

Employee engagement refers to a situation where the employees are engaged in their work and hardly get any time to gossip or spread rumours . It has been observed that an employee engaged in work tends to avoid fighting with others and thus enjoys a warm relationship with his colleagues. Most of the time he is busy with his work and stays away from nasty politics or interfering in each others tasks. Both the two terms have a direct relationship with each other. In the real sense, employee engagement is directly proportional to employee relationship. More the employees are engrossed in their work; the better the relation among them. Let us understand the relation between the two with an example: Michael was heading the marketing and the branding team of a leading firm. He had four team members reporting to him. Michael being a responsible team leader ensured all his team members were assigned challenging tasks for them to enjoy their work. The team members were always on the toes to do something creative everytime. Michael took his lunch with his team members in the companys cafeteria and made sure to spend some together every weekend. His team members never fought with each other, instead enjoyed their work, discussed things among themselves and came out with innovative ideas satisfying all. Most of the time they were seen glued to their workstations and hardly had any time for lose talks, gossips, blame games or criticism. An employee sitting idle the whole day at workplace creates problems . It is rightly said that an empty mind is a devils workshop. People with no productive work to do actually look for excuses to argue and even provoke others to fight. They are involved in all kinds of destructive work and pose a threat to the decorum and peace of the organization. An employee who finds his work interesting would never bother whether his colleague is chatting over the phone or dating someone. He would be more concerned with his work and strive hard to complete it within the desired time frame. He would utilize his time in completing his assignments to submit it further rather than peeping into his colleagues computer or finding faults in others. An employee who is satisfied with his job profile would always think in the favour of the company and would stay away from doing anything which would bring a bad name to his team as well as his organization. He would prefer working rather than wasting his precious time in unproductive tasks. Engaged and satisfied employees always try their level best to work hard and justify their salary. An employee who is serious about his work would definitely complete it at a much faster rate as compared to non serious workers. Chances of mistakes in their work would also

be less and but natural they would earn appreciation from their superiors or team leaders. Their work would be liked by all and hence they would definitely enjoy a healthy relationship with their superiors and fellow workers. Employees would be able to complete their assignments on time and thus impressing the management. The team leader should ensure that the key responsibility areas of the team members match with their interests and specialization . It is essential that the employees dont treat their work as a burden and look forward to going to office daily. In such cases employees enter the office with a positive frame of mind and are more adjusting and compromising with each other. They readily help each other and enjoy a healthy relationship with their fellow team members. An employee must concentrate on his work rather than fighting with others and spoiling his relationship with his fellow workers.

Strategies for employee engagement

Engaging the tweeting and Facebook driven workforce is the new challenge Employee engagement strategy plays a vital role in motivating the performance levels of the workforce. A motivated employee will seek out ways to accomplish a task. He will look at contributing his best at every new opportunity that comes in his way. Such employees realise the connection between their contribution and the companys needs. Todays dynamic environment signifies that the nature of workforce is changing rapidly. A large number of staff today is young, energetic and tech savvy who are well-connected to their peers, friends and those who matter. Social media platforms with their user-friendly and interactive features that help transcend geographies and cultural boundaries have ensured that this generation stays constantly connected. Communicating with and engaging the tweeting and Facebook driven workforce is the new challenge. Both employer and employee have an active role to play in cultivating engagement. Mutual understanding of context, expectations and innovations is an essential first step even more necessary when there is a generational gap. Engagement has to be equal on both ends ie, the supervisor and employee. It is the key to retention of talent. The ever changing dynamics of the talent market have ensured that employers now compete for the best employees as well.

Recent surveys have reported that to attract, recruit, train and retain the best talent is possibly the single biggest predictor of corporate success. The The key nature of ingredients work Is of it employee mentally engagement stimulating are:

day-to-day?

Support - Does the employee feel supported by his line manager and colleagues? Recognition - Does the employee feel that his efforts are recognised and valued? Loyalty - Does the employee wants to stay with the company and develop their career? Advocacy - Is the employee willing to recommend their company to family and friends? Values - Does the employee feel that managers and colleagues walk the talk in terms of the companys values? Today most organisations are focussing on employee engagement initiatives. Some keep their employees engaged through learning and initiatives, some by practising innovative HR initiatives and some others by passion. Some of the initiatives commonly undertaken by HR departments towards employee engagement are: On-boarding: When an employee joins the organisation he needs to be exposed to the organisations policies and culture. There may be some fresh out of campuses that need to know the basics of communication skills and job related skills. During the induction programme itself, they can be given an exposure about these aspects, skills sets and the expectations. The on-boarding event experience itself leaves a mark on the minds of the new recruits about the companys desire to enhance their skills. Learning and development events: The business practices and processes are changing. In this environment, there is an acute necessity for enhancing the skill levels of employees already discharging various functions. How quickly they adapt to the situation and new environment determines how fast the organisation can move forward to bring changes. If these skill gaps are not filled, the organisation will have to face a time lag which can hurt its business objectives. Some of the commonly used channels are seminars, workshops, short-term training programmes and MDPs. The training programmes should be so designed that the employees learning curve goes up and they should be able to take on new responsibilities or projects with higher competence levele can be done through picnics,

outward bound learning programmes, adventure activities, employee get-togethers, quiz competitions, annual days and sports events. For some of the events, family members may be invited. When family members see that the organisation treats employees well and is keen to share good times, there is an automatic sense of bonding. It is important for an organisation to know what drives its employees as they are the ones that own the companys success. While a company may invest all its energy and resources in making it the best place to work, employee values and passion must be connected and aligned towards company goals to achieve organisational success. The key to achieving excellence lies in ensuring that every employee has a passion to excel. Researchers have found that around 12 factors out of 35 different motivators influence employee work passion. These twelve factors including meaningful work, collaborations, autonomy, growth, task variety, performance expectations, feedback, workload balance, distributive fairness, procedural fairness, connectedness with leaders, and connectedness with colleagues drive work passion. These cognitions and feelings lead to a sense of either positive or negative well being that in turn leads to purpose to act. This intent to act is measured in five areas viz work commitment, organisation commitment, willingness to put extra effort, employee retention, willingness to recommend the organisation and its leaders to others.

Engagement levels

The organisations which believe in increasing employee engagement levels concentrate on the following levels: Culture: It consists of a foundation of leadership, vision, values, effective communication, a strategic plan and HR policies that are focussed on the employee. Commitment - It is the foundation of engagement. Employees with high level of organisational commitment are willing to exert considerable effort for the organisation and make discretionary contributions. Cooperation - It encompasses positive relationship among employees within a group. It is the inherent willingness of individuals working in a team to pull in the same direction and achieve organisational goals. Taking responsibility - Taking initiative and responsibility to become a part of the solutions is an important ingredient of engagement. For an employee to display loyalty towards his organisation, the first thing he needs to do is to take responsibility. Taking

responsibility refer to feeling empowered. Employees who feel empowered have a sense of belonging and excitement about their jobs, they feel engaged at an emotional level and are willing to give their best all the time.

Advantages of engaged employees

Employee engagement levels have a direct impact on an employees performance and consequently on the companys bottom-line. Engaged employees use their talent and strengths effectively at work every day to deliver high levels of performance consistently. At the same time, employees who are not engaged, not only erode the bottom-line with their lack of productivity, they also foster negativity at every opportunity, thus impacting team performance. There is clear evidence that high level of employee engagement keenly correlates to individual, group and corporate performance in areas such as retention, turnover, productivity, customer service and loyalty. Some of the distinct advantages of engaged employees are:-They will perform better and are more motivated

-There is a significant link between employee engagement and profitability -Engaged employees will stay with the company, be an advocate of the company and its products and services, and contribute to bottom line business success. -Creates -Provides -Engaged a sense a employees of high serve as a loyalty in energy brand a competitive working ambassador of the environment. environment. organisation.

Measuring employee engagement

Since the last few years, employee engagement and its measurement is in vogue. In fact there is a definite correlation between employee engagement and desired business results whether it is customer service, retaining talent, individual performance, business productivity or even company level financial performance.

Employee referrals

Employee engagement is displayed in many ways like change in attrition rate, growth in productivity and business and employee referrals. There are different methods used for measuring employee engagement like interviewing individuals or groups in person, by telephone or through webinar conferencing, to get data relevant to employee engagement. Some companies use focus groups to get perception, suggestions or feelings about employee engagement as the information gathered is qualitative and discussions are focussed. Some utilise surveys containing a series of specially designed questions intended to collect appropriate data from a particular group. Methods are in their place, however, some are of the view that engagement surveys do not measure engagement, their results only show outcomes of engagement and action plans only target satisfaction and happiness. However, measuring employee engagement is essential and is recommended to be performed at regular intervals to track the engagement contribution to a companys success.