Different Levels of Employee Engagement
Many categorizations on different levels of employee engagement can be found on literature but all such categorizations are similar in the sense that they simply endeavor to partition the spectrum of “engagement”, from “not at all engaged” to “fully engage”. Research conducted by Gallup organization (2006), categorizes employee engagement in to 03 levels. Figure 1.0 describes those three types of employee engagement in an organization.
Source: Gallop Employee Engagement Insights (2013)
Engaged: An organization should strive to drive all their employees to “Engaged” level as these employees provide organizations with vital competitive edge over their competition, engaged employees are highly productive and impose low risk of employee attrition (Vance, 2006). Engaged employees put in voluntary efforts in to their work and do not depend on extrinsic motivation (Armstrong, 2009).
Not-engaged: This type of employees usually does the minimum work needed to fulfil the job
requirements and do not show enthusiasm or concern for the organization or the
customers. They are more likely to miss work (take sick days off) and to
leave the job if they see opportunity elsewhere. (Adkins, 2006). Not-engaged
employees can be seen as a good opportunity for improvement in an organization
in the sense that with the right “people strategy”, they can be transformed in
to “engaged” employees, resulting in great improvements in overall
organizational performance (Reilly, 2014).
Actively
disengaged: This type of employees can cause harm to the organization
they work for. They are not just unhappy, but they also openly act on their
unhappiness and can drive customers away. The disengaged employees will
endeavor to undermine and demotivate the engaged employees - possible
double-impact to the organizational performance (Reilly, 2014).
Leveraging Employee Engagement for Competitive Advantage
Employee
engagement has emerged as a critical driver of business success in today’s
competitive marketplace. Further, employee engagement can be a deciding factor
in organizational success. Not only does engagement have the potential to
significantly affect employee retention, productivity and loyalty, it is also a
key link to customer satisfaction, company reputation and overall stakeholder
value. Thus, to gain a competitive edge, organizations are turning to HR to set
the agenda for employee engagement and commitment (Lockwood, 2007).
Levers for Employee Engagement
Employee
engagement, as a work-related state of mind, can be characterized by vigor,
dedication and absorption. Vigor means high levels of energy and mental
resilience on the job, persistence in the face of difficulties and a
willingness to invest effort in one’s work. Dedication refers to a sense of
inspiration, pride, significance, enthusiasm and challenge at work. Absorption
is being happy, fully concentrated and deeply engrossed in one’s work so that
time passes quickly, with difficulty detaching from work (Lockwood, 2007).
Trends
in Employee Engagement
Today, society and business are witnessing
unprecedented change in an increasingly global marketplace, with many companies
competing for talent. As organizations move forward into a boundary less
environment, the ability to attract, engage, develop and retain talent will
become increasingly important.
Figure 3.0 - In view of these changes, a number of trends, as identified in the SHRM Special Expertise Panels 2006 Trends Report, are likely to have a significant impact on employee engagement and figure 3.0 reflect the top trends lead to focus on the employee engagement.
For example, the increased demand for work/life balance and the changing relationship between employers and employees are driving the need for HR professionals and their organizations to truly understand what employees need and want and then determine how to meet those needs while at the same time developing and leveraging workplace talents at all levels (Society Human Resources Management, 2006).
References:
Adkins,
A. (2016) Employee Engagement in U.S. Stagnant in 2015. [Online] Available
at:https://news.gallup.com/poll/188144/employee-engagement-stagnant-2015.aspx [Accessed
on 05 October 2019].
Armstrong, M. (2009)
Armstrong's handbook of human resource management practice. 11th ed. London:
Kogan Page, pp.337-339.
Corporate
Leadership Council (2004) Driving performance and retention through employee
engagement. Washington, DC.
Chatterjee, S (2016) CEO World Biz https://ceoworld.biz/2016/08/05/whats-next-employee-engagement-survey/
Jacoby, M.(2015) Just What is Employee Engagement and How Important it is https://www.mjms.net/blog/employee-problems/just-what-is-employee-engagement-and-how-important-is-it/
Killham,
E. and Krueger, J. (2006) Who's Driving Innovation at Your Company?. [Online]
Available at: http://news.gallup.com/businessjournal/24472/whos-driving-innovation-your-company.aspx [Accessed on
30 September 2019].
Lockwood, Nancy (2007) Leveraging Employee Engagement
for Competitive Advantage (SHRM Research)
file:///C:/Users/Demel/Downloads/1592302_2_lockwood-2007.pdf
Reilly,
R. (2014) Five Ways to Improve Employee Engagement Now. [Online] Available
at: https://www.gallup.com/workplace/231581/five-ways-improve-employee-engagement.aspx [Accessed
on 05 October 2019].
Vance, R. J. (2006) Employee Engagement and Commitment. [Online] Available at: https://www.shrm.org/hr-today/trends-and-forecasting/special-reports-and-expert-views/Documents/Employee-Engagement-Commitment.pdf [Accessed 05 October 2019].
Understanding the levels of engagement of employees within an organization is important as it helps leaders to strategically think how they can act to improve the overall performance through that. For an example, if the organization has more somewhat disengaged people in it, it is difficult to move forward as an organization and the leaders should influence these employees in effective manners to get them engaged (Billet, 2001)
ReplyDeleteThank you Shenali for your comments on my post. According to Penna research report (2007) meaning at work has the potential to be valuable way of bringing employers and employees closer together to the benefit of both where employees experience a sense of community, the space to be themselves and the opportunity to make a contribution, they find meaning. Employees want to work in the organizations in which they find meaning at work (Markos, 2010).
DeleteHi Malika, Overall job satisfaction varies among organizations as well as among individuals. On average, some organizations have happier employees than other organizations. Those with happier employees tend to be more productive. Yet even organizations with high overall levels of job satisfaction have individual employees who are not happy with their jobs (Strewart and Brown, 2011). According to this statement job satisfaction manly affected to the different level of engagement.
ReplyDeleteThank you Ranga for your comments on my blog post. I would like to further add that job satisfaction is a result of employee's perception of how well their job provides those things that are viewed as important. According to (Mitchell and Lasan, 1987), it is generally recognized in the organizational behavior field that job satisfaction is the most important and frequently studied attitude (Ayeni, 2007)
DeleteEmployee remuneration is an important attribute of work engagement as it motivates employees to increase their work performance (Anitha,2014). The level of remuneration must be appraising acceptable if high levels of engagement are to be expected. Anitha (2014), state that fair pay influences the engagement and performance of middle and lower managerial employees in small-scale organizations. In a cross-cultural analysis, fair pay was amongst the most important tools of employee engagement (Sanchez and McCauley, 2006).
ReplyDeleteI appreciate your comments on my blog post Chamila and would like to add that organizational commitment is determined by a number of factor, including personal factors (e.g., age, tenure in the organization, disposition, internal or external control attributions); organizational factors (job design and the leadership style of one's supervisor); non-organizational factors (availability of alternatives). All these things affect subsequent commitment (Ayeni 2007).
DeleteMihaly Nagy (2017), in his article quotes Dr. Dave Ulrich, a Professor at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business and father of modern HR in an interview at The HR Congress in 2010. “Employees who find meaning at work will have a better work experience that will translate into improved performance, more satisfied customers, and more profitable companies.” Dave lists seven actions leaders could take to become meaning makers: Identity: Who am I?, Purpose: Where am I going? , Relationships: Who do I travel with?, Work environment: What are the routines or culture of our work?, Work challenges: What work do I do?, Learning and Growth: What do I learn from at work?, and Civility and Delight:
ReplyDeleteThe future of HRM will require a decision science for talent resources that is as logical, reliable, consistent and flexible as finance, the decision science for financial resources, and Marketing, the decision science for customer resources (Boudreau 2002).
DeleteIt has been found that through the job interviews and site visits have significant impact on subsequent employment decision as it does help the applicant to get an idea about the organization environment and evaluate whether it does match with their personality (Alshathry, Clarke & Goodman, 2016). Hence, it is concluded that the employer brand depicts the various aspects of the organization indicating the person organization fit to the potential job seekers (Weerawardane and Weerasinghe, 2018).
DeleteAgreed. It is further to mention that Job satisfaction, productivity and performance are the three factors that affect employee engagement. The willingness of an organization to maintain employee engagement is closely linked to its ability to achieve high levels of performance and the consequences of superior industry. It has been found that high rates of commitment are correlated with a variety of positive effects, including high performance levels (Krishnan,2013)
ReplyDeleteThank you Sohan for your comment. I do agree with you. Job satisfaction has also been found to have a significant relationship with employees’ performance (Gu & Chi 2009). According to several researchers (Karatepea et al. 2006; D’Amato & Zijlstra 2008) employee performance is improved when the latter feels self-efficacy in the organization. In addition, it has been found out that when person-job fit exists, it can lead to improved task performance and contextual performance (Greguras & Diefendorff 2009).
DeleteAdding more to your post, an alternative model of engagement comes from the ‘burnout’ literature, which describes job engagement as the positive antithesis of burnout, noting that burnout involves the erosion of engagement with one’s job (Maslach et al 2001). According to Maslach et al, six areas of work-life lead to either burnout or engagement: workload, control, rewards and recognition, community and social support, perceived fairness and values. They argue that job engagement is associated with a sustainable workload, feelings of choice and control, appropriate recognition and reward, a supportive work community, fairness and justice, and meaningful and valued work. Like burnout, engagement is expected to mediate the link between these six work-life factors and various work outcomes (May et al., 2004).
ReplyDeleteThank you Malithra for your comment The term “job burnout” described a social problem that had existed for a long time and had several expressions which vary according to the period, researchers, across countries, and languages (Schaufeli et al., 2009). Job burnout is a condition precipitated by prolonged susceptibility to stress at work. It has many costs for the organization and the employees themselves. The value of job burnout is outlined by its association with various types of unfavorable organizational outcomes (e.g., absenteeism,) (Schaufeli et al., 2009).
DeleteAgreed and adding something more Malika, engaged employee consistently demonstrates three general behaviors which improve organizational performance:
ReplyDelete1 - Say-the employee advocates for the organization to co-workers, and refers potential employees and customers.
2 - Stay-the employee has an intense desire to be a member of the organization despite opportunities to work elsewhere.
3 - Strive-the employee exerts extra time, effort and initiative to contribute to the success of the business. ( Baumruk and Gorman, 2006)
Many thanks Kanishka for your comment. High performance of an organization can easily be achieved through adoption or adaption of a good leadership behavior in organization (Jong and Hartog, 2007) reported that innovative role-modeling behavior of leadership is lined with putting efforts and championing in development, generating ideas, exploring opportunities, and innovative behavior. Providing vision leadership behavior is connected with providing directions for future actions, communication of preferred typos of innovation, and communication of explicit vision. Consulting leadership behavior is associated with incorporation of suggestions and ideas in decision, and examining before initiating changes (Jong and Hartog, 2007).
DeleteOrganizational performance is determined by gaining intrinsic and extrinsic rewards. Several studies are in line with this theory, which can be referred to as motivation as a predictor of organizational performance (Deci and Ryan 2000).
ReplyDeleteMany thanks Asanka for your comment. Managers, seeking to improve performance, will often look at the motivation theory for support (Bratton & Gold 2003), that states that motivation is related to high performance levels of the staff (Makim, Cooper & Cox 1996). Moreover, job satisfaction has also been found to have a significant relationship with employees’ performance (Gu & Chi 2009).
DeleteIn recent years, there has been a great deal of interest in employee engagement. Many
ReplyDeletehave claimed that employee engagement predicts employee outcomes, organizational
success, and financial performance (e.g. total shareholder return) (Bates, 2004;
Baumruk, 2004; Harter et al., 2002; Richman, 2006). At the same time, it has been
reported that employee engagement is on the decline and there is a deepening
disengagement among employees today (Bates, 2004; Richman, 2006). It has even been
reported that the majority of workers today, roughly half of all Americans in the
workforce, are not fully engaged or they are disengaged leading to what has been
referred to as an “engagement gap” that is costing US businesses $300 billion a year in
lost productivity (Bates, 2004; Johnson, 2004; Kowalski, 2003).
Thank you Surendra for your comment. Employee engagement is critical to any organization. Deci and Ryan conducted the most influential study on employee engagement in 1985 (Berens, 2013). Deci and Ryan (1985) expanded on early work by differentiating between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Competence, autonomy, and psychological relatedness which are psychological needs, motivate the individual to initiate behavior essential for psychological health and well-being of an individual and if satisfied may lead to optimal function and growth (Deci & Ryan, 1985). The basic needs of satisfaction have been found to directly relate to dedication of employees (Vandenabeele, 2014).
DeleteNice Article! Digital employee engagement platform - SOS helped organizations to build a digital platform to help the corporate employees be more productive through positive engagement and brand connection.
ReplyDelete