EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT IN ORGANIZATIONS

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Employee Engagement Meaning

Employees harness themselves towards the work roles of the organization. This may be physical, cognitive and emotional which is elaborated as employee engagement (Kahn 1990 cited in Armstrong 2014, p.194).

Components of Employee Engagement

According to Armstrong (2014), motivation, commitment and organizational citizenship behaviour are three overlapping components of employee engagement.

 Motivation

The factors that influence people to behave in certain ways, the strength and direction of behaviour is motivation (Armstrong, 2014).

Commitment

The strength of an individual’s identification with, and involvement in, an organization (Armstrong, 2014). 

Organizational Citizenship Behaviour

When the employees behave beyond the expected level in duty to contribute towards the achievement of the organizational effectiveness, this situation is organizational citizenship behaviour (Organ 1988 cited in Armstrong 2014, p.196).

                                           Model of employee engagement

                                                    Source: Armstrong et al (2000)

Drivers of Employee Engagement

Research firms have identified the following as the key factors which are the drivers of employee engagement (The Conference Board 2006 cited in Singh 2016, pp.364-368).

• Trust & integrity

• Nature of the job and pride about the company

• Line of sight between employee performance and company performance

• Career growth opportunities and employee development

• Relationship with managers and coworkers

Outcome of Employee Engagement

High level of engagement is linked to the following (Stairs and Galpin 2010 cited in Armstrong 2014, p.197).

• Low absenteeism and high employee retention

• Increased effort and productivity from employees

• Improved quality with reduced error rate

• Increased sales, higher profitability and increased earnings per share

• Enhanced customer satisfaction and loyalty

Example on Employee Engagement

According to the surveys conducted by Gallup organization, they have found out that when employee engagement is in high degree business units perform 83% above the company median and in contrast the performance is only 17% when the employees are with low engagement (Dressler, 2013).

Southwest Airline was ranked 8^th in the world’s most respected companies in a survey of corporate executives by Fortune Magazine 2018.

Gary Kelly, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Southwest Airline said “Our employees are dedicated to the basics- Reliability, Hospitality, and low costs, but their dedication makes Southwest anything but basic. It’s what sets us apart. It’s an honour and a tribute to our employees to be the top 10 most admired companies in the world” (Anon, 2018)

From the above example we can see how the employee engagement has contributed towards the success of the organization.

References

Armstrong, M., 2014. Armstrong's Hand of Human Resource Management Practice. 13th ed. Philadelphia: Kogan Page.

Dessler, G., 2013. Human Resource Management. 13th ed. USA: Prentice Hall.

Singh, Y., 2016. Employee Engagement as a Contemporary Issue in HRM--A Conceptual Framework. International Journal of Engineering and Management Research, 6(5), pp. 364-368.

https://www.dallasnews.com/business/southwest-airlines/2018/01/19/southwest-airlines-named-among-worlds-10-admired-companies-fortune