The Desirability of Organizations and Employees for Engagement Strategies - Literature review Example

?The Desirability of Organizations and Employees for Engagement Strategies Employee engagement, as the implies, is involvement of the employees in the organizational planning, operations, and systems so that they understand the strategic planning of the management and are able to optimize on their potential to deliver maximal productivity and best quality work. Employee engagement can be defined as “the harnessing of organization members' selves to their work roles; in engagement, people employ and express themselves physically, cognitively, and emotionally during role performances” (Kahn, 1990). According to the International Survey Research (ISR), employee engagement can be defined as “a process by which an organization increases commitment and continuation of its employees to the achievement of superior results” (Dicke, Holwerda, and Kontakos, 2007, p. 5). Engagement strategies aim at the establishment of mutual respect for what employees can be and what they can do in the organization given the right context that is beneficial for all stakeholders including the organizations, the consumers of services, and the employees themselves. Although engagement strategies are desirable for all organizations, yet they are not desirable for all employees, though for a considerable population of employees, engagement strategies are desirable. Although engagement strategies are generally desirable for the organizations, yet the same cannot be generalized for all employees. These days, many employees keep looking for employment opportunities elsewhere that would offer them better salary and job privileges rather than wanting to stay in the same organization for a very long time particularly when they are not content with their salary and/or job benefits. In the present age, there is scarcity of jobs in many industries in a vast majority of countries around the world. In such circumstances, employees tend to avail any opportunity that they get irrespective of whether or not they are being offered sufficient salary and meanwhile, keep looking for better employment opportunities. Hence, to say that engagement strategies are desirable for all employees is not logical. According to mspb.gov (2012, p. 2), there are three components of employee engagement for the federal government, namely employees’ discretionary effort to give goal-directed performance, commitment to the organization, and employees’ satisfaction with the organization. The Corporate Leadership Council (2004) defines emotional engagement as “the extent to which employees derive pride, enjoyment, inspiration, or meaning from something or someone in the organisation. While rational commitment is defined as the extent to which employees feel that someone or something within their organizations provides financial, developmental, or professional rewards that are in their best interests” (Corporate Leadership Council, 2004). This can be stated without doubt that employees’ satisfaction has been and continues to be one of the biggest challenges in front of the management in any organization. Accordingly, the desirability of engagement strategies for the employees is limited. According to Macleod and Clarke (2009, p. 66), there are four main factors that serve as barriers to effective engagement in an organizational context; firstly, leaders either do not know what employee engagement is, what its usefulness for the organization is or they are not aware of its importance. Secondly, leaders may be interested in engagement strategies but may lack the knowledge required to address the issue. Thirdly, leaders and managers may not consent upon the idea of employee engagement. While the leaders might emphasize upon engagement strategies, managers might be ill-equipped to implement them. Consequently, the organizational culture cannot deliver effective engagement. Finally, leaders that do emphasize upon engagement strategies vary in their perception of and commitment to it. Many leaders tend to underestimate the potential of employee engagement. While for some leaders, engagement is just an annual survey of staff whereas for others, a survey is just a tool in a wider approach according to which, employee engagement is the focus of an organization’s strategy. This suggests that while an organization may be interested in implementing engagement strategies at large, individual leaders or managers may not be quite as enthusiastic about implementing engagement strategies for any of the aforementioned reasons. There are different ways in which employee engagement operates in favor of an organization. The custom-developed models that have been developed for the institution are the best. The case study of John Lewis Partnership provides evidence of a company that is owned by the employees. John Lewis Partnership is clear that the factor that has played a critical role in the success of the company; its shop-floor voice and engagement model, is not just its ownership structure’s function, but indeed originates in a profound belief that “people working in the business are central to its success” (Macleod and Clarke, 2009, p. 4). Another case study that provides evidence of how organizations benefit from employee engagement is of Tesco. When Tesco found out that it knew its customers more than its employees, it set about understanding the employees’ needs, desires, and motivations, and the approaches that that best built on them. Tesco achieved this in collaboration with USDAW, the retail workers’ union. This speaks of the fact that “there is an increasing understanding that people are the source of productive gain, which can give you competitive advantage” (Besley cited in Motivation Matters, 2009). The importance of engagement as a driver of well-being and performance of the public servants is also growing in the public sector. This is evident from the Civil Service’s decision to conduct its first service-wide research regarding the engagement of its employees which is likely to be amongst the largest single surveys to be conducted in the UK based on the data retrieved from more than 500,000 civil servants (Macleod and Clarke, 2009, p. 5). The implications of engagement strategies for organizations are generally extremely favorable. Engagement is definitely desirable by all organizations because this improves the productivity of the employees as well as profitability of the business (CIPD, 2013). Disengaged employees cost the organizations as much as 35 per cent of their payrolls (Deloitte, 2011). Macleod has drawn upon the benefits organizations foresee in improved engagement in these words, “When you get engagement right, it is a win for the organisation. If more organisations win, it’s a win for the country. And if you do this genuinely, it’s a win for the individual - because a sense of wellbeing is very important to engagement. More engaged employees with a greater sense of wellbeing - that’s the ultimate goal” (Macleod cited in Westaway, 2009). Macleod thinks that with the achievement of this goal, more organizations would try to benefit from and share these ideas. With this information being available to them, business leaders would rapidly implement engagement strategies in their own organizations. However, the implications of engagement strategies are not very favorable for all employees. It may be argued that engagement strategies are desirable for all employees in an organization because it helps them do their work better. While it is true that most employees do want to perform well at job, not all employees are actually that enthusiastic about performing well. There are many employees who just want to get paid without exerting much in work physically and/or mentally. This is one reason why certain employees display poor productivity at work. Secondly, many employees find it challenging to perform well particularly in the circumstances where management implements engagement strategies because this requires the employees to accept the change implemented by the management; implementing engagement strategies is essentially implementing change. A vast majority of academic sources and research studies to date have shown that employees tend to resist the change implemented by the management. This resistance surfaces because of many reasons that include but are not limited to reluctance to give away the old system of work that the employees are used to, and employees’ thinking that the new system would increase the challenges and reduce the opportunities for them. To enhance the employees’ desirability for engagement, there are certain strategies that organizations should implement. These strategies include clarifying the employment contract to the employees, recruiting the “right” type of employees (the recruitment strategies should be modified to evaluate the candidates’ preparedness and desirability for engagement), rewarding employees for showing engagement, and improving the channels of communication for engagement (McGee and Rennie, 2011). Concluding, employee engagement is generally desirable for all organizations, though employees may or may not have the desirability for engagement depending upon their individualistic preferences, choices, organizational culture, their level of satisfaction, and opportunities of development for them in the organization. While many employees want the implementation of such strategies, not every employee in an organization is necessarily satisfied and accordingly, might not want to be engaged more in the organization. However, for the organizations, employee engagement is something highly beneficial because with greater level of engagement of the employees, management can develop positive attitude of the workforce with respect to all aspects of work that include but are not limited to strategic planning, change implementation, and performance appraisal. If implemented successfully, engagement strategies can prove to be a triple win; for the organization, for the employees, and for the society as a whole. References: Corporate Leadership Council 2004, Driving performance and retention through employee engagement, Arlington, VA: Corporate Executive Board. CIPD 2013, Employee engagement, [Online] Available at http://www.cipd.co.uk/hr-resources/factsheets/employee-engagement.aspx [accessed: 21 January 2013]. Deloitte 2011, Performance in a cost-constrained Federal environment, [Online] Available at http://www.deloitte.com/assets/Dcom-UnitedStates/Local%20Assets/Documents/Federal/us_fed_Improving_111711s.pdf [accessed: 21 January 2013]. Dicke, C., Holwerda, J., and Kontakos, A. (2007). Employee Engagement: What Do We Really Know? What Do We Need to Know to Take Action? Center for Advanced Human Resource Studies, [Online] Available at http://www.uq.edu.au/vietnampdss//docs/July2011/EmployeeEngagementFinal.pdf [accessed: 21 January 2013]. Kahn, WA 1990, Psychological conditions of personal engagement and disengagement at work, Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 33, No. 4, pp. 692-724. Macleod, D, and Clarke, N 2009, Engaging for success: enhancing performance through employee engagement, [Online] Available at http://dera.ioe.ac.uk/1810/1/file52215.pdf [accessed: 21 January 2013]. McGee, R, and Rennie, A 2011, Employee Engagement, London: Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. Motivation Matters 2009, Best Practice Forum - The MacLeod Report, [Online] Available at http://www.motivationmatterslimited.co.uk/pages/324.htm [accessed: 21 January 2013]. mspb.gov 2012, Federal Employee Engagement: The Motivating Potential of Job Characteristics and Rewards, U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board, [Online] Available at http://www.mspb.gov/netsearch/viewdocs.aspx?docnumber=780015&version=782964 [accessed: 21 January 2013]. Westaway, L 2009, Engaging with the MacLeod Report, [Online] Available at http://www.simply-communicate.com/news/engaging-macleod-report [accessed: 21 January 2013]. Read More