What Is Employee Engagement Management Essay

What Is Employee Engagement Management Essay In todays global world, in spite of the availability of modern and advance technology the human resource of an organization can not be ignored. It is in fact the talent of the employees that determines the success of an organization. The retention of talent helps organizations to gain competitive edge over rivals. Thus, every organization in 21st century is conscious about the engagement of its employees as it enhances employee performance and plays an important role in the achievement of desirable outcomes as productivity, profitability and turnover. Thus the purpose of writing this paper is to explore the drivers of employee engagement. The study also looks at Gallups employee engagement questionnaire that helps measure the level of employees engagement. What is employee engagement? The term employee engagement needs to be clearly understood by every organization. Some organizations perceive it as job satisfaction others say its the emotional attachment towards the organization. William H. Kahn (1990) defined employee engagement as the harnessing of organization members selves to their work roles; in engagement people employ and express themselves physically, cognitively and emotionally during role performance. Therefore to build an engaged workforce employees must be both emotionally and cognitively involved in job activities. There are a number of external and internal factors that help measure the level of employee engagement. External factors include organization environment; its culture and values, manager-subordinate relationship, relationships with co-workers, monetary benefits and appraisals. Whereas internal factors include the personal values of employee, personality type and commitment to work. Gallups research on employee engagement shows that there is a strong relationship between well being of an employee and the level of their engagement. An engaged employee is efficient an effective for the organizational outcomes. Review of Literature It is the manger who must create an environment for the employees to be both cognitively and emotionally engaged. And self efficacy may positively affect and enhance employee engagement- management effectiveness relationship. (Luthans Peterson, 2002). Research shows a strong relationship between employee engagement and desired outcomes of an organization such as productivity, employee retention, safety and customer service. (Beverly and Philip, 2006). There is considerable difference between job engagement and organization engagement. There several predictors of job engagement and organization engagement and both are related to individual consequences. (Alan, 2006). For a successful business employees should be engaged through effective communication. Therefore an organization should give priority to its human resource so that its employees can stand by in competition. (Nitin Vazirani, 2007). Amanda Ferguson in Employee Engagement; either it exists or if it does exist then how does it relate to performance. According to Amanda there is no proper and consistent definition of employee engagement and it measured the finding of Gallup organization i.e. what ever engagement might be, unfortunately the longer employee stay with an organization less engaged they become. William H. Macey and Benjamin Schneider in the Meaning of Employee Engagement wrote that an organization should establish conditions for the physical, emotional and behavioral employee engagement as it the key to competitive edge. Dr. Ram and Dr. Prabhakar (2011), in The role of Employee Engagement in work related outcomes studied that if an organization manages the engagement of its workforce it will resultantly enhance the motivation of its employees, increase their productivity, and decrease employee turnover rate. He also found that organizations that have an environment of learning and develop its employees have more engaged workforce. The level of employee engagement is determinant of productivi ty, employee motivation and retention. Markos and Sridevi (2010) wrote Employee Engagement; the key to Improving Performance in which they studied employee engagement positively affects the desired outcomes of an organization. Organizations with an engaged workforce can achieve its performance outcomes such as productivity, profitability, growth and customer satisfaction. Employee engagement has direct effect on productivity and growth. If employees are engaged they will try level best to fulfill their job responsibilities which will consequently lead to not only increase in organization productivity but will also enhance the self performance of employee. In the world of globalization only those organizations which have highly engaged workers can survive and grow. (Al-Aamri 2010). If an organization communicates effectively that change is necessary then employees can be engaged in their work, which will help the organization in implementation of its change strategy. (Sonenshien and Dholakia). Mentoring has a strong direct effect on every dimension of employee engagement. For the purpose of mentoring a web-based system should be adopted by an organization as it is the low cost method to monitor and improve the attitudes of employees. (Triple Creek, Employee Engagement research). How employees feel about their job as a direct impact on their work experience and it also effects the organization outcomes such as customer satisfaction, sales and profit. (Bulgarella 2005) Conclusion and Recommendations The term employee engagement is not yet defined properly and its definition is not consistent. Most of the research conducted on employee engagement considers its antecedents and consequences. The main focus of researchers has been the drivers of engagement and disengagement. But an organization can engage its employees only if the employees have the desired attitude. Therefore an organization should train its employees to change their attitudes if they want to properly manage workforce engagement. Further we reviewed the Gallups employee engagement questionnaire which is very much influential in business research as it can be used effectively for the empirical measurement of employee engagement.