What is Employee Engagement?
Employee engagement is not a new concept. However, it has become increasingly important in times of the recession where engaging your staff during difficult times has been pivotal to help businesses survive and stay competitive. Employers want employees who will do their best work, or ‘go the extra mile’. Employees want good work: jobs that are worthwhile and meaningful. More and more organisations are looking for a win-win solution that meets their needs and those of their employees. Employee engagement is therefore a two-way process in which employers and employees interact with each other.
It involves two things:
1. personal satisfaction in the individual’s job or role (“I like my work and I do it well”)
2. the individual’s contribution to the employer’s success (“I help to achieve the goals of the organisation”)
Why are Organisations Interested in Employee Engagement?
Employers want engaged employees because they deliver improved performance. Studies have shown a link between the way people are managed, employee attitudes and business performance. There are a number of ways in which an employer can drive the levels of engagement within the workplace. However, the first step would be to understand your workforce engagement profile to determine how to drive up engagement levels. It has been shown that engagement is clearly associated with high levels of performance, reduced intent to quit and raised levels of personal well-being.
The main drivers of engagement are:
- meaningfulness of work - there is a clear need to help create meaning for employees in their work. This can be achieved by aligning individual jobs with the broader organisational aims, and through sharing an understanding of deeper levels of the purpose of the organisation.
- allowing a voice and being able to feed your views upwards - employees need to be given opportunities to express their views and to know that their opinions will be taken seriously. This is an activity that needs to involve both senior and line managers.
- senior management communication and vision - senior managers have an important role to play in creating a vision for the organisation and sharing this with employees, and in being open, transparent and approachable.
- supportive work environment - engagement levels are affected by the working environment. Where employees can see that they have support from others to help them do their job, there is a sense of teamwork and they can safely express themselves, then engagement will be higher.
- person–job fit - matching people to jobs is a critical driver of engagement. HR professionals can play an important role here helping line managers design jobs effectively, and develop selection processes that match individual skills to jobs.
- line management style - line managers act as the interface between the organisation and the employee and can do much to impact on engagement. Another key HR role is therefore to pay close attention to the selection, development and performance management of line managers to ensure they maximise their potential to be engaging leaders.
Outcomes of Engagement
Employee engagement is associated with a range of positive outcomes at the individual and organisational levels:
- Engaged employees perform better
- Engaged employees are more innovative than others
- Engaged employees are more likely to want to stay with their employer
- Engaged employees enjoy greater levels of personal well-being
- Engaged employees perceive their workload to be more sustainable than others
- Therefore, it can be said that better employee engagement could do more for the success of UK businesses "than almost anything else". We will be following up this article with some practical tools to help you build engagement in your organisation.
