Employee Engagement: Explicating the Contribution of the Work Environment - Essay Example

Employee Engagement: Explicating the Contribution of the Work Environment Employee engagement is a vast area that covers almost all sections of human resource management with a close link to the strategic human resource management applicable. In the case of failure to address any of the strategic human resource approaches appropriately, the employees’ full engagement is in jeopardy while responding to such mismanagements. The construct employee engagement is built on a foundation of concepts like job satisfaction, employee individual motivation and commitment and the organizational citizenship behavior. Proper employee engagement integrates several aspects and development variable both from the employee, the employer, and the work environment. Employee engagement is a predictor of a positive organizational performance and the overall business success. According to Simon, 2011, Employee Engagement is a workstation approach designed to guarantee that all staffs are steadfast to the objectives and values of their institute. The approach incorporates employee motivation to contribute to organizational success, and the individual staff is able at the same time to enhance self-sense of well-being. In employee engagement as an aspect, attitude, behavior, and outcome are important engagement terms (Simon, 2011). Attitude describes employee’s feeling of pride and loyalty; behavior is employees will and ability to being the company’s advocate to the clients or extending efforts to finish up a piece of work. Outcomes include low accidents rates, higher productivity, fewer conflicts, increased innovations and level on days and maximum productive engagements. Work Environment defines everything that forms part of workers’ participation in the assignment. It includes aspects such as the relationship between the other workmates and supervisors, organizational culture, and allowance for personal growth and development. Positive work environment contributes to employees’ active contributions and the overall success of the project. The analysis in this essay describes the various employee engagement variables that are relevant to any organization in understanding employee’s effort towards the achievement of organizational goals. Employee orientations can either be an engaged disengaged or entirely non-engaged. The important variables in understanding employee engagement include relationship orient variables, personal growth variable and system maintenance variables. According to Robinson et al. 2004, “employee engagement describes the workers active attitude towards the daily endeavors in achieving the organizational goals and values” (121-132). An engaged employee takes keen the various organizational set goals; the employee is self-motivated to involve the other colleagues in ensuring the set goals are achievable within a defined time. Positivity in a workplace means active involvement, little supervision, and self-motivation. Worker engagement describes the energies an employee dedicates in the daily organizational commitments. Practical participation is not only committing individuals’ time to regular attendance but giving much energy to the daily calls to achieving the organizational goals. Engagement defines worker engaging personal ability in realizing the set standards. Employee participatory power, differentiates engagement from mere commitment. Commitment only limits to organizational focus while meeting focuses on the work itself. A committed employee works for corporate appreciations while engaged employees work for efficient job completion. According to the Chartered institute of Personnel and Development, the three concepts that define employee engagement include emotional engagement, cognitive engagement, and physical participation.(Shuck, M.B, Rocco & Albornoz, 2011 pp. 300-325). Emotional engagement is worker getting on with the dailies emotionally. Emotional engagement is dependent on organizational morale in cases of economic downfall emotional involvement is important. Most employees can lose confidence in the organization by citing uncertainty over the organizations future. However, with emotional attachment the employees will continue working effectively despite the economic hiccups because of the psychological attachment to the organizational achievement (Simon, 2011). Passionate employees have the ownership feeling; they are more enthusiastic and support the organization at all times. Cognitive employee management describes worker focusing hard whilst on assignment. Self-design is useful because the drive to a high-involvement arrangement necessitates an exceptionally high amount of learning among workers and front-line employees. By employee participation in the process of examination and development of system changes, employees, and their administrators gain the opportunity (Shuck, M.B, Rocco & Albornoz, 2011 pp. 300-325). The opportunities help to both absorb the information required to make a change and develop an understanding and skills required for successful changes. Cognitive employee has more focus on the output of the daily endeavors. Physical engagement involves the will and ability to go the spare mile to the manager and the organization. The employee is full commitment to the success of the organization by giving a hand in the Nitti gratis of the organization. The physical operators act on the achievement efforts hands on doing the physical work. Effective employee engagement comes in three different degrees. The three levels include engaged employees, disengaged employees and non-engaged employees. The involved employees in all involvements work with passion and have a pounding feeling connecting with their organization. The engaged employees drive innovation and move the organization forward. The engaged employees have full commitment to the success of the organization. The workers involve in coming up with new ideas for improving the output from the company. Engaged employees are self-motivated and can extend the effect on other colleagues to work together in achieving the goals of the enterprise. The employees don't just admit anything that arises along. When an alteration occurs, they would like to understand what is behind it and how they can associate with it (Carbonara, 2013 pp. 134-147). They're always energetic and enthusiastic while taking their duties, and never run out of things to do. They generate extra work for themselves in their area of capacity. They're loyal to their workgroup, firm, plus to their role, so much so that their obligation overcomes barriers and renewed relations. Not-Engaged or disengaged employees are organizational checkouts; the worker is a sleepwalking member. The non-engaged employees are always focusing on dedicating their time to the organization only while working days (Carbonara, 2013 pp. 156-167). The employing is committing their time but not energy or passion into the daily work. The main reason for the non-engaged employee continued involvement in the organization is wages and salaries. The workers are only keeping the regular attendance to get a monthly, weekly or daily pays. Such employees in most cases are not happy with the organizational packages or the job descriptions but have no ready alternative to switching. Actively disengaged employees are always unhappy at work and act out their unhappiness at work. Such employees continuously undermine the work of their engaged colleagues all the time. Actively disengaged people operate from a self-centered mindset, the individual believes they are fine, and the other colleges are not as okay. Such characters feel that they are doing what is right, and everyone else is wrong. Negativity is the major trait for an actively disengaged employee. In some cases, the employees may try to influence the other colleagues to support and reinforce their belief. Actively disengaged employees alternatively may close themselves off from other employees who will encounter them to become part of the resolution, rather than to stay separately as part of the problem. The employee attitude is important in getting an understanding the dissimilarity between an engaged and actively disengaged person. An engaged person occasionally becomes negative and agree to group the effort (Markos, & Sridevi, 2010 pp. 89-96). But an actively disengaged person will always find it almost impossible to convert part of the solution in allowing joint efforts because such character thrives on being part of the challenge. Studies show a positive relationship between employee engagement and the general organizational performance results (Markos, & Sridevi, 2010 pp. 89-96). Employ loyalty and retention, individual or group productivity, engagement profitability, customer loyalty, and safety are organizational achievements basing on efficient employee engagement. Engaged workers’ advocates for the organization to other colleagues, and can refer potential employees and customers to the organization. The employees take initiatives to add value to the efficient performance of the business. The engagement of employees plays a good role in ensuring the employee stick to the organization. Such engaged workers will always stick with the current group despite calls or opportunities to join other groups (Kruse, 2012 pp. 98-105). Engagement creates a substantial link between the workers and the organization. The connection builds up employee positive attitudes towards the task assigned improving the overall service delivery. Engagement is additional effort that defines the workers urge to exert extra time, effort and individual initiatives in contributing to the success of the business. Participation encourages the appreciation of challenges, group efforts and readiness to get new skills. The positive personal attitudes help the employees in improving their working skills and in turn enhance the output of the company due to improved labor skills. Embracing engagement with employees helps in improving the overall service delivery. The nature of work, the kind of assignment one has a direction to do in an organization contribute to the extent of his or her engagement. Aspects of job resources, the various job demands, the scope of allowable autonomy, the boundaries of job control, the amount of workload and the role descriptions. And clear clarification with no role conflict contributes to individual commitment (Shuck, M.B, Rocco & Albornoz, 2011 pp. 300-325). In jobs with no clear job description, overworking of the employees or lack of proper guidelines in the workplace affects the motivation and engagement of workers. Poor job aspects keep employees on their mark looking for greener pastures. The Work Environment is the surrounding within which the employee works is a significant contributor to the overall performance of an individual (Holbeche, & Matthews, 2012 pp. 76-89). Any employee cannot function in isolation from his/her environment as all skills are entrenched in one’s working environment. The increasing research and findings on employee engagement, the work environment is appearing to be a key contributor to employee engagement. Lack of proper organization in the workplace mostly results in role ambiguity, role conflict and in some cases overloading individual employee. Employer engagement in the provision of precise job descriptions, definition and stick to the workers positions in areas of specialty help in reducing the levels of ambiguity (Albrecht, 2010 pp. 101-115). The reduced levels of indistinctness contribute to employees’ satisfactory performance. If an employee has task dealing with things he/she understands best then, the employee is likely to enjoy daily assignments and get personal motivation. Involvements in decision making make the employees feel being part of the organization and contributes to morale in implementing the decisions. Rewards and appreciation of sound is another way of employer’s motivation for the employees. Co-workers are another significant environmental factor. The colleagues play a significant role in the development of interpersonal skills and the overall understanding of the assignment. In cases where the relationship amongst employees is weak the output of the organization is greatly affected (Xu, & Helena 2011pp. 143-152). Poorly relating workers hampers the successful work of the other affecting the overall performance. Trustworthy and supportive interpersonal relationship among employees leads to emotional safety. Trust amongst the employees can have cognitive or sentimental basis. An employee relying on others to work well relates to cognitive based-trust whereas the psychological relationships between characters influence affective trust. Organizational supervisor and quality of leadership and management form part of the managerial environment (Macey, Schneider, Barbera, & Young, 2011pp. 192-210). The positive relation between the employee and the superintendent has a direct impact on how safe the worker feels in the workplace. In organizations where the management embraces the role of supporting and serving the employees then majority of the employees get full engagement with the body. Studies show that the key contributor to employee engagement is the proper relation between the management. Open communication amid the workers and the supervisors improves employee confidence while working and opens room for consultations improving the employees overall performance (Macey, Schneider, Barbera, & Young, 2011pp. 192-212). Supervisory behavior intensely affects the development of trust in supervisor’s relationship with employees. Improper employee-supervisor relationship may instill fear in the employee resulting in lack of confidence affecting the output. Opportunities for Personal Growth, in organizations where the employees have rooms for developing new skills, the employees tend to stick with the body. Giving room for furthering individual skills motivates the employees and builds on the various skills available for efficient execution of work. According to Carter, 2010, personal factors different factors such as intrinsic motivation where the employee is self-motivated, competence in the daily duties (11-14). The employees understand better the expected tasks. The advancements in personal skills improve employee appreciation of self-accomplishment. Employee autonomy is also a positive work environment aspect. Independence allows the employee to have certain important decision on some aspects of the assignment at the time and the ways in which the tasks taken into play (Carter, 2010 pp.14-17). Enhancing increases the employees’ engagement as the employees feel the ownership and importance in the roles. The autonomous worker faces the challenges from the task hands on at any time. The immediate actions help in increasing the speed and efficiency of performing duties. Healthy work environment contributes to employee output directly and indirectly. Direct contribution describes the motivations that come with working in a hygienic environment that every employee is proud of the working place (Albdour, & Altarawneh, 2014 pp.121-132). Clean environment encourages employee attendance because less fear of health hazard. Indirect effect of environmental hygiene is the impact on the physical health of the workers. A healthy working population has a continual work attendance with minimal absenteeism (Albdour, & Altarawneh, 2014 pp.133-139). Clean environment saves the organization from losing an employee due to health complications. Healthy work full gives full effort to the daily activities improving the organizational productivity. Employee engagement is an important aspect of any organizational setup. Growing consensus among the authors that the employee engagement construct is different from related concepts in management such as employee commitment, organizational citizenship behavior, and job satisfaction. The concept is distinctive in such a way that employee engagement clearly reflects the two-way exchange of effort between staffs and employees, and it has overextended meaning beyond the aforementioned constructs. Research on participation is still in its early stages, trying to come up with more clear-cut and acceptable understanding. Most studies validate that feeling appreciated by management, management’s interest in employees’ happiness, two-way communication between management and employees and giving more opportunities for employees’ to grow the top drivers of employee engagement. Work environment is a key contributor to employee performance and also have effects on the extends of employee engagement. Nonetheless, as studies indicate, employees do not give much importance to pay and benefits. The employee focus might be the case because almost all the surveys were in companies working in economically-well-to-do nations. The priorities of teamsters might have varied if similar studies were experienced in other third world countries, like African countries. Therefore, must more global reviews including more number of countries. In conclusion, employee engagement has appeared to be a critical driver of the achievement of a business today. Engagement can affect employees’ loyalty, retention, and productivity. The predictors of employee engagements include factors like empowerment, employee welfare, interpersonal relations and employee growth. Therefore, a fully engaged employee is aware of the business objectives. The employee will works with colleagues to improve the performance and profitability of the company.It is, therefore, important that managers engage their employees fully to enable them be enthusiastic about their work. Bibliography Arbour, A.A. & Altarawneh, I.I. 2014, "Employee Engagement and Organizational Commitment: Evidence from Jordan", International Journal of Business, vol. 19, no. 2, Amabile, T., & Kramer, S. (2011). The progress principle: using small wins to ignite joy, engagement, and creativity at work. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&scope=site&db=nlebk&db=nlabk&AN=674898. Carter, R. 2010, "Increasing employee engagement and performance: drama-based interventions", Training and Development in Australia, vol. 37, no. 1, pp. 14-17. Macey, W. H., Schneider, B., Barbera, K. M., & Young, S. A. (2011). Employee Engagement Tools for Analysis, Practice, and Competitive Advantage. 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Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 32(4), 399-416. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/01437731111134661 Read More