What Is Employee Engagement?

Employee engagement is the emotional commitment the employee has to the organization and its goals.

This emotional commitment means engaged employees actually care about their work and their company. They don't work just for a paycheck, or just for the next promotion, but work on behalf of the organization's goals.

Engaged employees lead to better business outcomes. In fact, according to Towers Perrin research companies with engaged workers have 6% higher net profit margins, and according to Kenexa research engaged companies have five times higher shareholder returns over five years.(Kevin Kruso., Jun 22,2012)

Employees could appear contented at work but this does not necessarily mean that they are engaged in the true sense. These employees may turn up at work without complaining and get along to doing their tasks of the day. However, making them happy is far different from making them engaged.(Heryati R)

Performance = Engagement x Alignment x Competency

10 Employee Engagement Strategies

1. Provide Opportunities for Development

Employees will feel disengaged if you don’t offer opportunities for them to progress. No matter your industry, everybody wants the opportunity to grow in their career and feel like they’re fulfilling their potential.

2. Adopt Transparent Leadership

Employees often struggle to trust business owners and managers, especially if things are often kept secret and communication is limited. As a result, you should communicate openly with all your employees and ensure they’re not left in the dark about certain developments. Provide job security and always deliver on your promises.

3. Ensure a Good Work-Life Balance

Maintaining an equal work-life balance is essential in all work environments. If employees feel under great amounts of pressure with workloads and deadlines, it contributes to employee burnout, staff being signed off work, and people leaving their job.

4. Offer Personal Incentives

To increase employee engagement, you shouldn’t just offer more incentives and benefits. Instead, offer ones that are personal and customized. Incentives should suit the specific needs and values of each specific employee, so ask them what benefits they’d like most from your business and work on arranging them.

5. Invest in Health and Wellness

When staff feel stressed at work they’re more likely to feel disengaged. Focus on improving employee wellbeing and consider even implementing your own work place wellbeing program.

6. Create a Better Work Environment

Motivation and production are reduced when environments are dark and dingy. On the other hand, when people are comfortable in their surroundings, their work improves and they feel more satisfied.

7. Celebrate Your Employees and Their Achievements

Nobody wants to feel that their hard work isn’t recognized or appreciated. You should always aim to give back to your employees – after all, you wouldn’t have a company without them. When a member of staff goes above and beyond you should reward them.

8. Establish a Great Company Culture

Company culture is especially important in all workplaces – nobody wants to work in an environment where people don’t get on, feel unmotivated, and where morale is low. All staff wants to feel comfortable and happy in the work environment they’re in.

9. Have Values

You should establish clear company values and communicate these to all employees so they know what they’re working towards.

10. Show Respect

Everybody wants to feel respected, especially in an environment where they spend 8 hours a day. You should always respect your employees and what they value.

(Ellie Collier., October 1, 2018)

CONCLUSION

Employee Engagement is a fundamental concept in the effort to understand and describe, both qualitatively and quantitatively the nature of the relationship between an organization and its employees.

REFERENCES

Kevin Kruso., Jun 22, 2012. Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kevinkruse/2012/06/22/employee-engagement-what-and-why/#3345264b7f37

Heryati R. Available at: https://inside.6q.io/the-definition-of-employee-engagement/

Ellie Collier., October 1,2018. Available at: https://www.highspeedtraining.co.uk/hub/employee-engagement-strategies/

Leadership and "The Learning Organization"

The term "learning organization” describes an organization with an ideal learning environment, perfectly in tune with the organization's goals. Such an organization is a place "where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning to see the whole (reality) together." (Senge 1992)

What are the five disciplines of learning organizations?

1. Building a Shared vision

In learning organizations, the vision should be created through interaction with the employees in the enterprise. Many leaders have personal visions that lack transferring them to a shared vision. The only way to create a shared vision is by compromising the organization’s and individual’s visions. People who do not share the same vision might not contribute as much to the organization.

2. Systems Thinking

Instead of focusing on individual issues, systems thinking reflects the observational process of an entire system. Managers have to understand that every action and consequence is correlated with another.

3. Mental Models

The employees must identify the values of the company and what the business is all about. A correct understanding of who we are will enable us to visualize where to go and how to develop further. The organization has to be flexible in accepting changes to new mental models and a new image of the company.

4. Team Learning

To accomplish excellent functional team dynamics, team-learning is a primary importance. It is the discipline by which personal mastery and shared vision are brought together.

5. Personal Mastery

Personal mastery occurs when an individual has a clear vision of a goal, combined with an accurate perception of reality. The gap between the vision and reality drives the employee to practice all necessary related activities to realize the vision. This creative tension depends on a clear understanding of current reality. For this reason, for personal mastery and the related discipline of a shared vision, looking at, and sharing the truth is a crucial fundamental.

CONCLUSION

A learning organization is the term given to an organization which facilitates the learning of its employees so that the organization can continuously transforms itself. Learning organization develops as a result of the pressures which are being faced by the organizations these days for enabling them to remain competitive in the present day business environment.