Employee Engagement and Their Satisfaction - Assignment Example

Employee engagement Table of Contents How employee engagement and satisfaction empowers an organisation and what are the challenges that the company faces in achieving the same? 1 What is employee engagement? 1 The Elements of Employee Engagement 2 What is Employee satisfaction at the job and why it is important? 6 An organisation can satisfy its employees by more than one element but we chose 5 only? Why we chose these 5 ? 8 Conclusion 12 How employee engagement and satisfaction empowers an organisation and what are the challenges that the company faces in achieving the same? What is employee engagement? Employee engagement can be defined as an employee’s involvement and dedication to achieve the goals underlined by an organisation. Employee engagement is found in those employees who have a high level of intrinsic motivation and are totally committed to the organisation for which they work. Employees are said to have a high level of engagement if they bear a positive attitude towards their work and are always ready to give their best to the organisation, so that it can achieve its objectives readily. Employee engagement helps in lowering absenteeism rates, labour turnovers and thereby enables to attain a stable workforce which ultimately triggers the overall performance rate of the organisation. Employee engagement levels help an organisation to understand the type of relationship that employees share with an organisation. It helps to understand whether the employees are emotionally and rationally satisfied with the organisation. Employee engagement can be defined as: “Engagement is the state in which individuals are emotionally and intellectually committed to the organisation as measured by three primary behaviors: Say, Stay and Strive.” (Wellins R. S., et.al., n.d.) “The extent to which employees put discretionary effort into their work, in the form of extra time, brainpower and energy.”( Working Today: Understanding: What Drives Employee Engagement, 2003) The Elements of Employee Engagement To retain the workforce and to minimise attrition levels, it has become necessary for organisations to ensure that its employees feel engaged with the work they perform and the nature of activities they carry out on a daily basis, which would help them to achieve high levels of employee engagement. Employee engagement is closely associated with job involvement and job satisfaction. If an employee is not satisfied with the job profile and feels that his/her potential is not recognized within the organisation, chances are high that the employee would soon leave the organisation. With the changing perception of employees, organisations are no longer recognized as being paternalistic with employees believing that they would retire from the organisation at the old age but are viewed as a potential resource which would help them in further career development. Employer and employee relationships have molded over the years with the values such as loyalty, commitment and dedication gradually eroding away and so it has become important to take suitable measures which would enable the organisations to generate employee loyalty within its workforce. Provision of huge monetary benefits is no longer the key to a highly motivated workforce but it’s of absolute necessity to adopt non financial motivators which would help the companies to retain their workforce. To ensure high levels of employee engagement, an organisation needs to adopt proper strategies to ensure career development of its employees and give clarity about the career path that it has planned for its employees (Exhibit I). Inability to provide clarity about the career growth path within the organisation leads to demoralization of the workforce which becomes one of the vital causes for employees leaving an organisation. To ensure employee engagement, an organisation needs to adopt proper methods of appraising the potential of the employees and to ensure that it provides equal treatment to all its employees without getting biased. Levels of employee engagement would increase if an organisation is able to convince its employees that it values its employees and is always on the search of finding measures to ensure their well being with regards to their physical, mental and emotional aspects. A sense of belongingness and a feeling of being an important part of the organisation plays a significant role in raising the levels of employee engagement. It is the sole responsibility of the employers to design the working environment in such a way that employees feel the urge to give their best. The working environment needs to be friendly supportive and intellectually stimulating. Formal environment and bureaucratic management styles lower levels of employee engagement. Exhibit I: Elements increasing levels of Employee Engagement Source: Vazirani N.,2005/2007 Employee engagement basically can be broadly divided as emotional engagement and rational engagement (Reconnecting with Employees- Quantifying the value of engaging your workforce, 2005) (Exhibit II). Employees who have high levels of emotional engagement are intrinsically motivated and they are the people who feel aligned with the organisational objectives whereas rational engagement defines those employees who are task oriented and have a high level of job satisfaction. To ensure higher levels of employee engagement, companies need to ensure that their employees must have high levels of emotional engagement with the organisation as it has been found that employees having high levels of rational engagement also leave organisations for better opportunities elsewhere. So companies needs to devise strategies to satisfy the emotional quotient of the employees which can be done with the help of career planning processes, taking measures to ensure self-development of the employees and reward the employees for their performance which may be monetary or non-monetary such as recognizing them and praising them in front of the entire department or giving them some gifts etc. Exhibit II: Two main forms of employee engagement Source: Reconnecting with Employees- Quantifying the value of engaging your workforce, 2005 What is Employee satisfaction at the job and why it is important? Employee satisfaction depends largely on the job satisfaction of an employee and on the working culture and conditions provided by the organisation. Employees feel satisfied when they are happy carrying out the job responsibilities assigned to them, when their individual job preference meets the one they are presently carrying out in an organisation and when they are internally motivated to give their best to the organisation. A satisfied employee has a high morale and bears a positive attitude. This increases his/her individual performance levels and also helps in creating a motivating environment within an organisation. Employees have high levels of job satisfaction when an organisation provides the following (Exhibit III): Exhibit III: Factors which increase levels of employees’ job satisfaction ■ Senior management’s interest in employees’ well-being ■ Challenging work ■ Decision-making authority ■ Evidence that the company is focused on customers ■ Career advancement opportunities ■ The company’s reputation as a good employer ■ A collaborative work environment where people work well in teams ■ Resources to get the job done ■ Input on decision making ■ A clear vision from senior management about future success. Source: Working Today: Understanding: What Drives Employee Engagement, 2003 Employee satisfaction has become one of the areas of major concern for organisations of today. Organisations that are successful in making their employees satisfied by instilling motivators within the job and building working conditions accordingly, have been able to retain their workforce for a longer span of time. This has helped them to reduce the labour turnover costs, recruitment and selection costs and the adverse consequences which could affect the overall productivity of an organisation. Job satisfaction increases job involvement and plays a vital role in enhancing the morale of the employees thereby constantly motivating them to increase their performance standards. A demoralised workforce leads to a de-motivating work culture which affects the entire organisation having a spiral effect leading to poor performance standards. To remain competitive in the changing business scenario, it is of utmost importance for organisations to understand that without a motivated and satisfied work force, an organisation cannot meet the challenges required to be met in order to sustain in the competitive business environment. Organisations should understand that it is not only the monetary benefits that leads to employee satisfaction but they should acknowledge and give due importance to the non-financial motivators and try to imbibe them within an organisation’s work culture. Non-financial motivators like proper recognition for a well performed job, helping an employee to track the career growth path and providing an environment to nurture and improve the skills and knowledge base of the employees play a vital role in increasing the satisfaction level of the employees. A satisfied work force helps a company to register higher profits and helps it to strengthen its competitive edge in the market which is absolutely necessary for a company to successful in its business operations. An organisation can satisfy its employees by more than one element but we chose 5 only? Why we chose these 5 ? Though there exists a lot of factors which helps an organisation to increase the levels of employee engagement ,the discussion has been restricted to five of the most important parameters which are motivation, promotion, supervisor’s role, co-workers’ importance and the role of the working environment. These five factors are the major forces which trigger the levels of employee engagement thus increasing levels of job involvement and satisfaction. These factors are highly inter-related so they all together play a vital role in making an employee satisfied. Dissatisfaction with any of these factors can make an employee totally demoralised which would lower the levels of employee engagement abnormally, ultimately leading to his/her quitting the job. To understand the role played by each of these factors in employee engagement, one needs to discuss each of these factors separately, which has been done as follows: Motivation: An employee feels motivated if his /her need is satisfied. In regard to an organisation, an employee has a high level of motivation when the person is provided financial benefits along with the non-financial ones such as proper recognition for a well executed job and high levels of praise from the management in carrying out efficiently a tough task. If an organisation is successful in motivating its workforce, it would be able to retain its workforce for a longer span which would ensure higher productivity levels. A de-motivated workforce would lead to huge labour turnover rates, piling of grievances which may ultimately lead to industrial disputes such as strikes, ruining the entire work culture of an organisation. The consequences could also be reflected in the company’s annual financial performance. With regards to the Hertzberg motivation theory, an organisation needs to focus both on the ‘hygiene factors’ (related to the working conditions) and on the ‘motivators’ (such as reward, recognition) to ensure that its employees are satisfied. Motivators play the most important role in deciding a company’s future prospects. A company needs to identify the motivators which should be imbibed within the organisation’s culture to ensure higher growth. For example, if the employees carry on a routine set of tasks on a daily basis, it may lead to frustration and depression. They would start losing interest in performing the tasks which can be realised from the increasing levels of absenteeism. This problem can be handled by building a challenging work environment where employees would be given specific targets and on accomplishment of their individual or team goals they would be rewarded monetarily as well as non-monetarily such as giving discounts on some shopping items in a store. This would make the employees happy and motivate them internally to increase their performance levels accordingly. Promotion: Promotion plays a vital role in increasing the levels of motivation within employees. Organisations which promote employees based on their performance levels are able to retain their skilled workforce for a longer span. To ensure greater levels of job involvement, proper performance appraisal techniques should be chosen and appraisals must be conducted on a quarterly or semi-annual basis. This would make the employees aware that their performance is being monitored and the organisation plans to recognize their efforts which would increase their performance levels and loyalty towards the organisational values. For example, if an employee, despite being highly competent, is not recognized and is not promoted accordingly, then the concerned person would lose interest in the job and that would eventually leave him/her dissatisfied. This employee would ultimately leave the organisation. So the company would lose one of its competent staffs because of its poor retention measures. Supervisor: Supervisors are responsible for motivating the subordinates. If a supervisor is not supportive and is biased towards the subordinates, it would naturally trigger the levels of labour turnover. A supervisor is viewed by the employees as their leader. If the leader is authoritative and is very much task-oriented thereby compelling the subordinates to stretch themselves to meet the organisational objectives without considering the emotional quotient of the workers, then it would lead to dissatisfaction and piling of grievances amongst the employees. The supervisor must be a person who can strike a balance between task-orientation and relationship –orientation. Too much inclination on any of the factors could be responsible for lowering the performance levels of the employees. Leadership studies like Michigan studies and Ohio studies have revealed that superiors (leaders) who are friendly supportive and are easily approachable are the people who have been able to motivate their subordinates and this has increased the performance levels of the subordinates. A supervisor who is always ready to solve the job related problems faced by the subordinates would increase the levels of job involvement of the employees and would lead to higher levels of job satisfaction. This would lower the levels of absenteeism and the employees would be eager to give their best to the organisation. Co-workers: A workforce is highly motivated if the co-workers of the group share similar interests and job preferences. Taking this into consideration, many of today’s organisation have successfully build teams with like minded people sharing similar interests to handle specific projects. This helps an organisation to get the best results and reap higher profits. With reference to Maslow’s hierarchy theory, it has been identified that individuals have social needs and so if that need remains unsatisfied, an employee would not feel motivated to perform. So, it is of utmost importance for the organisations to give due importance to this aspect and build a socially interacting environment where employees can freely share their thoughts, emotions and feelings with other employees. This would motivate the employees to perform better amidst the companies of likeminded people and this would eventually lower the rates of absenteeism within the company. Work environment and conditions: Working conditions such as availability of proper lights, ventilation, proper seating arrangement and the ambience of the office affects the performance levels of the employees. If an organisation does not provide the basic amenities required for an employee to be productive, then it cannot expect that the employees would be able to perform at high levels. This would make the employees frustrated and they would start looking for better opportunities elsewhere. Employee’s perception about the importance of their job in an organisation greatly depends on the office environment. An employee would never feel motivated to perform in a humid and shabby environment. For example, even if a well-reputed company maintains a poor ambience, the employees would soon lose interest of working in that place and they would ultimately quit the company. A friendly supportive working environment is required to increase the performance standards of the employees. A bureaucratic style of management cannot increase the performance levels of the employees. Conclusion Employee engagement plays a vital role in deciding whether an organisation would be able to meet its long term objectives or not. Organisations should remember that it the human resource which is responsible for its productivity and higher growth and so it should adopt all the necessary measures to ensure that employees feel aligned with the organisational values and are satisfied with their roles in the organisation. References: Reconnecting with Employees- Quantifying the value of engaging your workforce, (2005), Retrieved May 19, 2009 from http://www.towersperrin.com/tp/getwebcachedoc?webc=HRS/GBR/2005/200505/Engagement_Report.pdf Wellins R. S., et.al., (No Date), EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT: THE KEY TO REALIZING COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE, Retrieved May 19, 2009 from http://www.ddiworld.com/pdf/ddi_employeeengagement_mg.pdf Working Today: Understanding: What Drives Employee Engagement, (2003), Retrieved May 19, 2009 from http://www.towersperrin.com/tp/getwebcachedoc?webc=hrs/usa/2003/200309/talent_2003.pdf Vazirani N., (2005/2007), Employee Engagement, Retrieved May 19, 2009 from http://www.siescoms.edu/images/pdf/reserch/working_papers/employee_engagement.pdf Bibliography Allen D. 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