Employee Engagement as a Great Issue in International HRM - Assignment Example

EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT AS A CONTEMPORARY ISSUE IN INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT By Employee Engagement as a Contemporary Issue in International HRM Introduction The modern changes in technology have created ripple effects on the human resource development of organisations. Employee engagement is imperative in enhancing the employees’ motivation and competencies for engaging in various activities of the organisation. Employee engagement is a unique approach that is designed to ensure that the employees are committed to the organisational values and goals, motivated to contributing to the organisational success, and are also able to enhance their sense of the well-being at the same time. Employers all around the world agree that the business world today is in dire need of a more productive and competent workforce. Organisations are constantly searching for the new and improved ways that can enable them to stay ahead of their competitors by creating efficient and effective competitive advantages. For this reason, employers have realised that this goal can only be achieved by shifting their focus to employee engagement, even though, opponents of employee engagement argue that it is not be the real cure for all the problems that the organisations face today. However, the implementation of the engagement strategies is a key to the overall organisational effectiveness as well as the path to the creation of personal and career development for the employees. This report is aimed at discussing the employee engagement as one of the contemporary issues in the international human resource. Employee engagement is a necessary strategy for an organisation to create competitive advantage in the business world arena. According to Macey & Schneider (2008), employee engagement is a never ending process. He goes to say that the key ingredients for employee engagement is provision of an enabling environment to the employees, which gives them emotional and meaningful enriching experience. He further asserts that the employee engagement is not about keeping the employee happy and rewarding them for the tasks that they have done. It is much deeper than this (Macey, & Schneider, 2008). According to Kahn (1990), employees use different emotional, physical and cognitive levels or abilities in their work performances daily. From the HR perspective today, the employee engagement continues to be of critical consideration in the business world today. Due the challenging economic climate, most organisations now more than ever before have decided to restructure and re-size, which has resulted in the organisations investing in the new approaches to human resources management in order to maintain and increase employee engagement Kahn (1990). The Employee Engagement Concept Harter, Schmidt, & Hayes (2002) asserts that the three basic aspects of the employee engagement are; the employees and their unique psychological experience and make-up; the employers and their ability to create conditions that promotes the employee engagement, and the interaction between the employees at all the levels. Based on this, it is, therefore, evident that it is within the realms of the organisation to create a conducive culture and environment that promotes this critical partnership. Enablers of Employee Engagement In assessing the effectiveness of the organisational approaches to employee engagement, four fundamental enablers of the engagement can be identified. These includes the following empowering leaders and providing strong strategic narratives about the organisation’s past, present and expected future; engagement of managers that are focused on their people and defines to them their scope, treats or handles them as individuals as well as stretches and coaches them (“The Four Enablers”, n.d.). The other enablers are; there is always employee voice in the organisation for challenging and voicing their views on organisational functions and decisions, and they are recognised as the pillars to the organisational problem-solving. Finally, there is organisational integrity and that the values on the wall are usually reflected in the day to day behaviours of the organisation (“The Four Enablers”, n.d.). Categories of Employee Engagement According to Meesala (2014), three types of employee engagement exist vis-à-vis engaged, disengaged and actively disengaged. Engaged The engaged employees are usually passionate, enthusiastic and completely absorbed in what they do. This types of employees always work in the best interest of the organisation. Employees in this category are known to have high levels of work performance. They are willing to use their skills, competencies and abilities every day to work (Maesala, 2014). The engaged employees are committed to the organisational and tend to not only stay long in the organisation but focus on the growth and quality of their work. The employees are usually engaged when they have the following; they have a strong relationship with their superiors, clear communication between them and the top management, have clear goals that are set for them, have strong interpersonal relationship with their colleagues, and they motivate and encourage other employees to take the risks and strive for the excellence (Maesala, 2014). Disengaged The employees that are disengaged will put all the necessary effort in order to finish a task but will not have the energy or the passion for working (Maesala, 2014). Disengaged employees have no positive or negative feelings about the organisation and, usually go through emotions daily without having to commit themselves. They are usually task oriented rather than being goal oriented. Actively Disengaged These are employees that are opposed to almost everything. Actively disengaged employees will not miss a chance of spreading negativity about the organisation. They are not interested in the goals and mission of the organisation. Disengaged employees can be detrimental to the image and functioning of the organisation (Meesala, 2014). Some of the factors that might lead to the actively disengaged employees include; lack of the career growth and advancement, poor communication, lack of the recognition, employees’ salaries might not be related to the market, lack of the training for the employees, constant work overload, lack of the teamwork, and among other factors. Drivers of Employee Engagement Employee engagement is the outcome of the interplay between several organisational and individual factors at the workplace. Although there exist little empirical research on the factors that predict employee engagement, it is possible to identify quite a number of the potential antecedents from various studies and models. Perrin (2003) identified the senior management’s interest in the employees’ well-being, decision making authority, challenging work, career development opportunities, and collaborative work environment, customer orientation to the organisation, work resources, top management vision, and the employer brand as the drivers of employee engagement. According to Perrin (2003), the communicational climate and culture of the organisation and styles significantly impacts on the levels employee engagement. He goes on to argue that workers feel valued by the organisation when the senior level management communicates about how they were performing their assigned duties. Therefore, it’s essential that organisations establish individual lines of communication rather than group lines of communication to communicate to employees about their performance to better employee engagement. These findings by Perrin have been backed by Lyndsey (2010), who asserts that communication is one of the drivers of the employee engagement, especially in the accounting firms. She goes ahead to cite “growth and development opportunities; the amount of teamwork or collaboration and support; overall firm quality and integrity; communication; the level of innovation; and employee empowerment” as the drivers of employee engagement since these factors affect employees thinking, feeling and acting. Schaufeli and Salanova (2011) identified the difference between the workaholism and employee engagement. They argue that Workaholism is an addiction. The employees are usually driven by compulsion and guilty. On the other hand, the engaged employees work because work is like fun to them. The engaged employees work hard because they usually enjoy what they are doing and not because they are driven by the feeling of guilt when not working (Schaufeli & Salanova, 2011). The workaholism is deeply rooted in the negative behaviours. The workaholism spends majority of their time on the work and other work related tasks. Thus, this makes them be perceived as compulsive workers. Competing Positions in Academic and Professional Debate Over Employee Engagement William Kahn is widely regarded as the “father” of the field of engagement with his extensively cited paper on the personal engagement published in the 1990. Kahn believed that employee engagement is rising when “people bring in their personal selves during work-role performances” (Kahn, 1990, p., 702), in terms of their emotional, physical and cognitive expression. He further argued that employee disengagement involved the “uncoupling of the people’s authentic selves from their work experiences.” (Kahn, 1990). Thus according to Kahn, employee engagement is strongly associated with the needs of satisfaction approach to motivation. However, other researchers have viewed the issue of the employee engagement differently. For instance, other scholars perceive employee engagement as the opposite of the burnout; as the extension of the work satisfaction or in a multi-dimensional framework in reference to the locus of the engagement (Shuck, 2011). A multitude of the different scales have been formulated to measure the employee engagement (Fletcher and Robinson, 2013), and confusion is ripe as to what constitutes the employee engagement. For instance, Christian et al., (2011, p. 89-90) concludes from his research that, “engagement research has been plagued by inconsistent construct definitions and operationalisations.” However, practitioners and other researchers that are concerned with the management of engagement in the organisational settings have looked at the whole issue of the contention of employee engagement from a rather different angle. MacLeod and Clarke (2009), uncovered more than 50 definitions of engagement. However, their chosen definition was, “engagement is the workplace approach designed to ensuring that the employees are committed to their organisational goals and values, motivated to contribute to the organisational success, and are able to enhance their sense of well-being” (MacLeod and Clarke, 2009, p. 9). These differing perspectives of employee engagement mean that academics and the practitioners have not been involved in a meaningful dialogue about the whole contention of the employee engagement issue. In general, the academicians have been cautious of the fact that practitioners’ are focused on the employee engagement strategies and actions only, and not the perceived lack of interest in the definitions, theory and the countervailing arguments. The practitioners regard the academicians’ emphasis on the precise definitions and the intricacies of the complex attitudinal measures as being less relevant than the question of what ought to be done in practice to bolster high levels of engagement. These diverse viewpoints have led to the lively discussion on the issue of the employee engagement on the international human resource management that has brought together the practitioners and academics to debate on the topic. Why Employee Engagement Become Prominent in the Field of Human Resource Management Employee engagement has emerged recently as an integral concept in the human resource management (HRM). Therefore, it has become the subject of discussion among a few researchers. Despite this, the idea of the employee engagement appears to have resonated well with employers and, therefore, it has become a prominent feature in the world human resources field as well as within the organisations. Khan (1990), however, was among the first scholars and researchers to discuss the notion of the employee engagement in HRM. He suggested that employees have varied degrees of disengagement and engagement at the workplace and as a result they, use various amounts of their personal selves such as emotionally, physically, and cognitively in performing their roles and working lives. Until the recent past, very little research that links the issues of the HRM field to employee engagement had been carried out (Shuck and Rocco, 2013). The area of employee engagement has henceforth become very significant and promising for the development of the employee engagement research. For instance, there is little known about how the employee engagement relates to the collectivist forms of the representation (Townsend, Wilkinson & Burgess, 2014). Employee engagement is normally positioned at the individualist end of the employee relationship spectrum and, therefore, understanding how it relates to the more collectivist forms is likely to receive more attention from scholars and researchers in the future. Employee engagement has been widely adopted by the human resource practitioners as the unique characteristic of the employees that strongly relates to the high productivity of employees (Truss et al., 2013). For instance, a recent research in the UK concluded that the high levels of the employee engagement can result in the lower sickness, absenteeism, better retention or lower employee turnover, higher customer service delivery, and improved overall performance and higher innovation in the organisation (MacLeod & Clarke, 2009). Research Findings on Employee Engagement Employee engagement and the different educational qualification categories Research in the banking industry established that different educational categories or qualifications such as the master’s degree, bachelor’s degree and the doctorate degree of the employees do not play a significant role in the overall employee engagement, levels (Sarangi, 2013). This is because many of the employees start their careers soon after graduation and then move up in the organisational hierarchy (Sarangi, 2013). Additionally, some of the employees take up their careers after the completion of their master’s degree. Therefore, educational degrees of the employees play very little in determining and predicting the levels of the employee engagement. Employee engagement and the different years of the organisational experience Research indicates that employees in the 0-5 years of the experience (work) have the highest levels of the employee engagement as compared to the more experienced employees (Kompaso, & Sridevi, 2010). This has been attributed factors such as the need for personal development and growth in the workplace, the need to gain experience and recognition, as well as the need for self-actualisation. Conversely, research indicates that employee engagement has no relationship to gender, even though, some studies argue that the female workers are likely to be more engaged compared to the male workers because they fear taking risks to find better employment. However, it is difficult to make a concrete conclusion because there is little research that postulates this argument. Research has demonstrated that there is a positive relationship between employee engagement and corporate social responsibility, which results from reduced costs due to low employee turnovers and high retention. For example, corporate social responsibility programs impacts on the employee engagement drivers such as employee motivation and behaviour, stakeholder attitude (Sarangi, 2013). The research also found out that the organisations that have consistent employee engagement programs keep their workforce active. The engaged employee is the most productive employee. Additionally, there exists a direct relationship between the employee engagement and employee retention, satisfaction, motivation, and productivity (Shuck & Wollard, 2008). The employee engagement programs in the office keep the employees relaxed and refreshed. Fun at the workplace will augment the team building, relieve stress, bring togetherness and make the employees emotionally bonded to the organisation and, therefore, affecting the attrition rates (Shuck & Wollard, 2008). Therefore, the employee engagement activities are very necessary if the employers want their employees to engage in the tasks that they have assigned. MacLeod, & Clarke (2009) argues that the UK has an employee deficit and that approximately a third of the country’s workers are engaged. This figure makes the UK be ranked in position ninth in the world, in terms, of the employee engagement levels. MacLeod, & Clarke (2009) goes on to say that the UK experiences productivity deficits. Thus, since productivity and the employee engagement are closely related to all the sectors of the economy this, therefore, highlights the reasons for the high levels of the employee engagement in the United Kingdom. Therefore, the employee engagement is a major contributing factor to the productivity of any given economy and thus should be given major priority by both the public and private organisations. According to Guest (2014), in addition to, productivity and the performance, employee engagement also influences positively on the levels of employee absenteeism, innovation, retention and turnover, customer service delivery and the staff advocacy. The global trends in the employee engagement continuous to rebound since they hit a low percentage in 2010. Statistics indicates in the period 2012-2013 the levels of employee engagement increased by 1% in the UK, representing about 61% of the global average. For instance, the North America increased by 2% points to 65%. On the other end, the European levels stayed the same at 57 percentages. The Asia Pacific also increased 3% points to 61% (Guest, 2014). These findings show that the global economy is leaning towards the employee engagement to improve their productivity. Implications Employee engagement is relevant to all the business organisations of the world as it provides them with the methodology and insight for measuring the appropriateness of organisational communication and culture, which have been identified as the most important predictors and determiners of the employee engagement in many organisations (Welch, 2011). This paper identified external orientation, autonomy, inter-departmental co-operation, improved orientation, and human resource orientation as the critical constituents of organisational culture that plays a major role in the shaping employee engagement. Conclusion The employee engagement is the most important aspect of the 21st century companies. The issues have thus become a contentious topic among many researchers, scholars and practitioners. However, despite all the debate, employee engagement has been cited to be a key component of improved productivity, reduced absenteeism, improved innovation and creativity and service delivery. Thus, it is evident that for organisations to create competitive advantages in their industries, management should recognise that the human capital is an imperative component and unique resource that should be protected and motivated through employee engagement. Ultimately, it is justifiable to say that employee engagement is a necessary tool, strategy that organisations should consider in creating a well-motivated human resource team Bibliography Christian, M. S., Garza, A. S., & Slaughter, J. E., 2011. Work engagement: A quantitative review and test of its relations with task and contextual performance. Personnel Psychology, 64(1), 89-136. Fletcher, L., & Robinson, D., 2013. 15 Measuring and understanding employee engagement. Employee Engagement in Theory and Practice, 273. Guest, D., 2014. 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