Inportance of HR Policy and Other Factors in Employee Engagement - Essay Example

?Importance of HR Policy and Other Factors in Employee Engagement Introduction Human Resource (HR) department has earned a fundamental status in any organization in the recent history. It facilitates the formation of an effective infrastructure in which employees can excel and achieve goals in accordance with the vision of the company. HR functions encompass the art of providing an environment for the managers such that they are able to engage their employees and achieve desired results. Alfres, Truss, Soane, Rees and Gatenby (2010) defined employee engagement as the presence and active participation of the employee in the happenings of the organization, alongside maintaining effective and meaningful relations with the colleagues. Lockwood (2007) stated that the employees who possess greater levels of commitment with the organization tend to perform 20% better than the others and there are 87% less chances of them leaving the organization. Therefore, it can be said that better organizational results can be linked to greater employee engagement. A performance driven environment that is fuelled by competent employees is achieved by the presence of effective HR policies. Humane, flexible and clear HR policies ensure a fair and amiable working environment that helps to engage employees by protecting their rights and interests. However, the formulation of valuable HR policies is not the only factor that is used to attain employee engagement in the organization. This paper discusses various other aspects that are adopted by organizations to enhance employee engagement. 2. Strategies Related to Engaging Employees There are many factors that are related to the attainment of employee engagement. Saks (2006) discussed some factors from the models proposed by Kahn (1990), Maslach, Schaufelli, and Leiter (2001). He amalgamated some of the important ones in the following figure: Figure 1: Model for Employee Engagement (Saks, 2007) Some of the above mentioned factors, along with few others have been discussed in the proceeding sections: 2.1 Perceived Style of Management of Immediate Managers Immediate managers, may also be known as line managers, have extensive responsibility to manage their employees in an effective management style since they interact with the employees on a daily basis and form the link with the senior management. Figure 2: Managers’ practices influence the level of employee engagement and ultimately the business results (Vance, 2006) Alfres, Truss, Soane, Rees, and Gatenby (2010) considered the following factors to bear great relevance when employees rate their line managers; communication, trust and level of fairness. Along these lines, the managers are expected to assign tasks in a fair manner in accordance with the skills and expertise of the employees. The employees expect clear and unambiguous guidelines from their managers so that the employees can direct their efforts in a consistent direction and produce results according to the expectations of the managers. Vance (2006) discussed the job characteristics model from the 1970s that increased the attention on the relation of job design with job satisfaction. This model promotes the consideration of the following aspects; skill variety, clear identification of task, relevance of task, independence to perform the task and feedback of the performance. Line managers are also responsible for ensuring that the efforts of the employees are rewarded in an according manner. 2.2 Team Cohesiveness and Mutual Support Mutual understanding and cohesiveness are important traits of any team since these factors work towards the enhancement of employee engagement. Albercht (2010) stated that exchange of knowledge, skills and abilities (KSAs) helps the employees to improve their work performance and stay directed towards the achievement of the goals of the team. Mutual support promotes an amiable environment in the team which develops personal relations within team members; such relations provide the feeling of belonging to a specific establishment. Albercht (2010) also stated that positive attitudes about a certain outcome of a task tends to get all the employees hopeful about similar results and makes them appreciate the relevance of their individual task. The realization of the value of the efforts makes the team members strive in unison towards the objectiveness of the goals and hence the vision of the organization; such team spirits also denote zeal and energy among the team members. Teams that have a strong identity are known to have socially interdependent members. Social interdependence induces the feeling to care about the needs and concerns of the team members thus resulting in loyalty and dedication to the team. In contrast, team members working in hostile and disengaged environments tend to be directed towards the attainment of their own personal goals and agendas (such as attainment of a high level position or yearly reward), thereby surpassing any spirits of loyalty for the team and organization. 2.3 Perceived Organizational Commitment and Support It is a natural inclination for humans to feel secure and loyal to the things that care for them and value their existence. In the similar manner, Saks (2006) stated that employees develop a sense of safety within an organization that perceives to care about them. Supporting and trusting relations tend to enhance feelings of psychological safety. Cropanzano and Mitchell (2005) stated that employee engagement can be understood under the encapsulation of social exchange theory (SET). He explained that obligatory behaviour is usually witnessed between interdependent parties that may have been loyal and trustworthy to each other over a certain span of time, provided the interactions took place in the presence of few rules of engagement. In the presence of such logic, it can be said that employees tend to portray reciprocating loyalty and support to an organization that values and cares about its employees. If the employees realize that their organization takes considerable measures to benefit them then they render responding actions by working towards the attainment of the objectives for the organization. 2.4 Organizational Justice Organizational justice bears great relevance in the eyes of the employees since it affects their level of engagement with their jobs and organizations. Saks (2006) classified the organizational justice into two types; distributive procedural justice. Distributive justice is defined as the fairness of the act of distribution of the rewards whereas procedural justice involves the fairness of the actions or procedures that enable the organizations to make their decisions. The perceptions of the employees regarding the fairness level of the organization influences their level of engagement, for example fair acts of conducts from the organization provokes the employees to perform fairly according to their full caliber whereas unfair perceptions result in discouraging and demoralizing consequences for the employees. Olkkonen and Lipponen (2006) discussed another type of justice in their paper that has been introduced in the field in the recent history; interactional justice. Interactional justice refers to the perceived fairness of the type of behaviour and interaction that takes place between the management and the employees. These forms of perceived justices have been known to have various influences, for example, job satisfaction, employee engagement and sense of belonging to the organization. 3. Employee Engagement Survey Olkkonen and Lipponen (2006) conducted a survey to measure the general trend of employee engagement in different organizations. The survey consisted of 102 employees from a diverse range of organizations and fields of life. After initial inquiries, it was found that the participants had been working in the current fields for four years (on average) and had been working with the same organization for five years (on average). A Likert-type scale was used to measure the responses of the participants. The questions were directed to measure the level of perceived organizational support, supervisor support and active participation in the organization with the help of the following statements; “My supervisor cares about my opinions”, “Love getting involved with the happenings in the organization”, “Praises and promotions from the management’ etc. The results revealed that job and organization engagement were directly related to job satisfaction, organizational support and indirectly related to the intention of quitting the job. Therefore, it can be stated that employee engagement is affected by the level of perceived organizational support, perceived justice, team support, reward management and management style of immediate managers, rather than influenced by an isolated factor of formulation of HR policies. 4. Conclusion Employee engagement is an important aspect in the field of management that has attracted attention in the recent history. Researchers have started investigating factors that have implications on the level of employee engagement in an organization. Humane and clear HR policies have always played a part in satisfying employees and keeping them active in their job descriptions. However, HR policies cannot be analyzed in isolation since there are many other factors that influence the level of employee engagement in the organization. Extensive study on the matter revealed positive relations between employee engagement and perceived organizational support and commitment. Employees tend to stay committed and participative in the happenings of the organization if the team members are cohesive and support each other; the exchange of information and energy between each other ensures a consistent direction towards the attainment of common goals. Job autonomy, task identification, skill variety and relevance of the task prove to be important for employees in terms of the management style of their immediate managers. Therefore, line managers should ensure that they adopt appropriate management styles for their subordinates to keep them engaged. References Albercht, SL 2010, Handbook of employee engagement: perspectives, issues, research and practice, Edward Elgar Publishing, ISBN 184844821X. Alfres, K., Truss, C., Soane, C., Rees, C & Gatenby, M 2010, Creating an Engaged Workforce, CIPD. Cropanzano, R & Mitchell, MS 2005, ‘Social exchange theory: an interdisciplinary review’, Journal of Management, Vol. 31, pp. 874-900. Kahn, WA 1990, ‘Psychological conditions of personal engagement and disengagement at work’, Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 33, pp. 692-724. Lockwood, NR 2007, ‘Leveraging Employee Engagement for Competitive Advantage: HR’s Strategic Role’, Society for Human Resource Management Research Quarterly, ISBN-10 #: 1-58644-095-0. Maslach, C., Schaufelli, WB & Leiter, MP 2001, ‘Job burnout’, Annual Review of Psychology, Vol. 52, pp. 397-422. Olkkonen, ME & Lipponen, J 2006, ‘Relationships between organizational justice, identification with organization and work unit, and group-related outcomes’, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Vol. 100, pp. 202–215. Saks, AM 2006, ‘Antecedents and consequences of employee engagement’, Journal of Managerial Psychology, Vol. 21, No. 7. Vance, RJ 2006, Employee Engagement and Commitment, Society for Human Resource Management. Read More