Aspects of Employee Engagement

The aspects of employee engagement are as follows:

The experience and psychological feelings of an employee
The ability of an employer to create engagement of employees
Communication at all levels among all
Personal and professional progress
Performance and accountability
Rewards and recognition based on performance
Leadership ability for one's job ([engage]- The Employee Success and Engagement Blog by Achievers, 2015)

Types of Employee Engagement

As per Gallup, there are various types of employees in engagement perspective:

Engaged- these are the builders for the success of the organization. They are always keen to know the expected result so that they can fulfill those expectations. They are always concerned about the growth of their organization and their place in it. They always perform at high levels. They try and use their skills and abilities daily for their work as they work with passion to making the company move forward
Not Engaged- these type of employees are focused more towards the tasks rather than the goals of the organization. They want the high authority to tell them what to do so that they can perform that task and finish it. Their focus is just the accomplishment of a task and not the achievement of the outcome. These employees feel that their contributions are overlooked, and their abilities are not utilized. The reason for this is their unproductive relationship with the managers and co-workers.
Actively Disengaged- these type of employees are against everything. They always feel unhappy at a workplace and are busy with their unhappiness. They are always negative towards new opportunities. Each day, these employees feel uncomfortable if the co-workers accomplish something. The workers working in a company always rely on each other for generating products and services so that these disengaged workers can cause a lot of damage to the functioning of the organization. (Goulddesigninc.wordpress.com, 2016)

Factors Leading to Employee Engagement

There are various critical factors which lead to employee engagement. Some of them are career development including opportunities for personal development and effective management of talent, leadership involving clarity of company values and respectful treatment of employees, company’s standards of ethical pay and benefits, health and safety, job satisfaction, communication, family friendliness, co-operation, empowerment, and image. Other factors include equal opportunities and fair treatment to all the employees, performance appraisal for high levels of employee engagement and, pay benefits to boost the employee engagement. (Work.chron.com, 2016)

Literature review

Very often employee engagement is described as an intellectual and emotional commitment to the company or the effort of the employees in doing their jobs. As suggested by Kahn, it is a multi-faceted aspect of the organization. But Truss et al. (2006) describe employee engagement as the passion of employees for work, a mental state which bounds the engagement dimensions by Kahn (1990) and also captures the common theme from all the definitions.(Ang, n.d.)
Hyman and Mason (1995) argued that the schemes of involvement of employees create less or no input in high-level decision making. And also does not involve any important sharing of authority or power. Similarly, Blyton and Turnbull (2004:272) argued that the involvement of employees is soft on power. Whereas, the study done by Purcell et al.'s (2003) found that the levels of employee engagement are affected by the decisions regarding the involvement decisions. The study conducted was a descriptive study. (Hyman and Mason, 1995)
Gallup Organisation (2004) found the links to be critical between the loyalty of the customer, profitability and growth of the business, and engagement of employees. The comparison of the scores of these variables was made in various stores which come under top 25 percent of customer loyalty and employee engagement with the bottom 25percent. The bottom 25 percent stores are underperformed in the productivity measures like customer complaints, sales, and turnover. The study was conducted from a survey. Thus, it was a quantitative study. This research summarized that engaged employees result in satisfied customers and thus, improve the profits of the company. The HR professionals must work for engaging the disengaged employees by launching special initiatives. The conference board New York, this is a qualitative study which summarizes the already known facts of engagement of the employees towards their work. It also focuses on the concern of feelings of employees towards their job as if the employees are psychologically and emotionally attached to their jobs; then they are more willing to contribute to the success of their company.The Towers Perrin (2003), this study identifies the rationality and emotions as the core components of employee engagement. It was found that the emotions of an individual are linked to their satisfaction and the inspiration they achieve from their job by being a part of the company. It was seen that the scores for emotional engagement are lower than the scores of rational engagement. This study was a quantitative study as the survey of respondents was done. Only less than 2/3rd of the sample size agreed that they are satisfied with their company's workplace and even lesser agreed to the fact that they get inspiration from their companies to do better work. (Towers Perrin 2003). It shows the importance of the actions of management to determine the level of engagement of employees in a company.
Kahn carried out a study of engagement(1990). Initially, his work was based on the work of Goffman (1961) who explained the concept of the attachment and detachment of employees with their role varies. Although Kahn claims that Goffman’s study concentrated on short-term one-on-one encounters, a distinctive concept was required to fit the organizational life; that is “continuous, emotionally fraught, and rationally complex” (Diamond and Allcorn 1985).
It was seen that group theorists, psychologists, and sociologists recognize that individuals are naturally hesitant of being members of already operating systems. A qualitative study was conducted by Kahn on the mental conditions of personal engagement and disengagement through interviews taken from the staff and counselors about their engagement and disengagement at work. It was found that three mental conditions are related to the engagement or disengagement at work which are availability, safety, and meaningfulness. It was also found that the employees were engaged more in the work which gave them safety and meaningfulness mentally and when they were more psychologically available.
Sanford (2003) reported that the study conducted by Gallup poll on the engagement of employees includes 29% of the U.S. workforce whereas 55% are not engaged, and 16% are disengaged. Seigts et al. (2006) summarize the employee engagement literature stating the factors of engagement deals with communication clarity, expectation conveyance, advancement of career, connection with others, contribution, recognition, and authority of one's job, leaders credibility, the relationship of employees and the confidence within the company. These factors of employee engagement make the employees and employers get focused, attracted and retain the talent. The study conducted was quantitative study as the research was based on the factors of employee engagement.
Purcell et Al’s (2003) study found that there are various factors connected with high level of engagement of employees in the organizations. One thing that was found similar was that the engagement of employees is connected with the involvement of the employees in the activities related to their jobs. For, e.g., effective communication is a factor that affects the engagement levels of the employees as the engagement was affected when the employees received the information about their place in the company, the growth of the company and their contribution towards this growth. Hence, it is important to keep the flow of communication among all the levels. It is a research based on the quantitative study of the existing researches.
Briefly, the above-conducted researches and literature state that the cause of disengagement of employees is poor management. However, the employees do not have the positive relationship with their employers and co-workers. So, they have to face denial in the opportunities of communication and having power for decision-making processes. Employees need managers who understand, care and are committed towards their company so that they can work in a positive environment.

Inferences, Recommendations and Conclusion

Inferences
The research shows that the relationships of employees among themselves and the behavior they deal with in the organization is a significant factor which affects the engagement of an employee in an organization. A majority of them think that their ability and skills are not optimally utilized, and they have to face denial in the opportunity of getting engaged in the voluntary activities. The organizations are most concerned in acknowledging the positive behavior and fostering it rather than focusing on the negative emotions and providing solutions for them. The organizations must focus on solving the problem of a great number of employees being not engaged or disengaged. The fluctuating job designs make the employees lose interest in their job as they don't have the stability, which results in high employee turnover.

Recommendations

This paper suggests that employee engagement is a vital concept which is considerably worthy for future research. Various practices such as training programs for new or untrained employees, flexible work arrangements, and incentive rewards are very important aspects to encourage employee engagement in the company. Future research must focus on other factors as well which are significant for engagement in various groups, organizations, roles, and jobs. (Wickramasinghe and Perera, 2012) The organizations should also consider the perception of employees based on the support they get from the company to improve the engagement of employees. The employer or managers must develop a feeling of community and positive behavior in the company. The management must concentrate more towards the job design and build more opportunities for people to get involved. By paying attention to the happiness of employees at the place of work, the company can initiate better functioning of workers and optimum utilization of resources in future. According to the research on individual differences, the employees must be treated as valued individuals rather than just employees by going beyond vertical communication.

Conclusion

Employee engagement is a significant factor in increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of an organization. This research paper was conducted to determine the importance of employee engagement in the organizations and to know the factors which affect the employee engagement. By conducting this paper, we can conclude that employee engagement plays a vital role in an organization as it gives the organization employees willing to work and perform for building a better organization. Most of the organizations are realizing that an engaged employee is better than a satisfied employee for an organization for providing improved productivity and loyalty as an engaged employee is psychologically bound with the organization and is more committed towards its job. The various concepts studied through various studies makes it difficult to determine the concept of employee engagement as every research is conducted under different situations using different measures. Despite this, there was one similarity among all that the majority were in the category of ‘not engaged'. This finding was very disappointing but not very surprising as not many people enjoy to work when they are getting a little meaning from what they do. As per the research, there is a link between the business outcomes and the engagement of employees in their jobs. Moreover, the personality and perception of individuals influence their responses which shape and direct their engagement in the organization.

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Reference

[engage]- The Employee Success and Engagement Blog by Achievers. (2015). The 8 elements of employee engagement. [online] Available at: http://blog.achievers.com/2015/09/8-elements-employee-engagement/ [Accessed 17 Aug. 2016].
Ang, E. (n.d.). Employee Engagement. SSRN Electronic Journal.
Goulddesigninc.wordpress.com. (2016). 3 Types Of Employee Engagement And Its Result. [online] Available at: https://goulddesigninc.wordpress.com/2013/06/20/3-types-of-employee-engagement-and-its-result/ [Accessed 17 Aug. 2016].
Hyman, J. and Mason, B. (1995). Managing employee involvement and participation. London: Sage Publications.
Ijser.org. (2016). [online] Available at: http://www.ijser.org/paper/To-study-the-Employee-Engagement-practices-and-its-effect-on-employee-performance-with-special-reference-to-ICICI-and-HDFC-Bank-in-Lucknow/Image_001.jpg [Accessed 17 Aug. 2016].
Purcell, J. and Undy, R. (1986). 3. Research into the Management of Employee Relations at Templeton College, Oxford. Employee Relations, 8(5), pp.15-22.
Success, W. (2016). What is Employee Engagement - Engage for Success. [online] Engage for Success. Available at: http://engageforsuccess.org/what-is-employee-engagement [Accessed 17 Aug. 2016].
Wickramasinghe, V. and Perera, S. (2012). Effects of perceived organisation support, employee engagement and organisation citizenship behaviour on quality performance. Total Quality Management & Business Excellence, 25(11-12), pp.1280-1294
Wikipedia. (2016). Employee engagement. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employee_engagement [Accessed 17 Aug. 2016].
Work.chron.com. (2016). [online] Available at: http://work.chron.com/internal-external-factors-affecting-employee-engagement-31069.html [Accessed 17 Aug. 2016].

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