As per Wikipedia, an “engaged employee” is one who is fully absorbed by and enthusiastic about their work and so takes positive action to further the organization’s reputation and interests.
An organization with “high” employee engagement might therefore be expected to outperform those with “low” employee engagement.
Employee engagement first appeared as a concept in management theory in the 1990s,[2] becoming widespread in management practice in the 2000s, but it remains contested. It stands in an unspecified relationship to earlier constructs such as morale and job satisfaction. Despite academic critiques, employee engagement practices are well established in the management of human resources and of internal communications.
Employee engagement today has become synonymous with terms like ’employee experience’ and ’employee satisfaction’. The relevance is much more due to the vast majority of new generation professionals in the workforce who have a higher propensity to be ‘distracted’ and ‘disengaged’ at work.
Many books on management cite the story about an engaged janitor at NASA who when asked by Kennedy what he was doing, replied “I’m helping to put a man on the Moon”.
Employee Engagement Theories
William Kahn provided the first formal definition of personnel engagement as “the harnessing of organisation members’ selves to their work roles; in engagement, people employ and express themselves physically, cognitively, and emotionally during role performances.”
In 1993, Schmidt et al. proposed a bridge between the pre-existing concept of ‘job satisfaction’ and employee engagement with the definition: “an employee’s involvement with, commitment to, and satisfaction with work. Employee engagement is a part of employee retention.” This definition integrates the classic constructs of job satisfaction (Smith et al., 1969), and organizational commitment (Meyer & Allen, 1991).
Defining employee engagement remains problematic. In their review of the literature in 2011, Wollard and Shuck identify four main sub-concepts within the term:
- “Needs satisfying” approach, in which engagement is the expression of one’s preferred self in task behaviours.
- “Burnout antithesis” approach, in which energy, involvement, efficacy are presented as the opposites of established “burnout” constructs: exhaustion, cynicism and lack of accomplishment.
- Satisfaction-engagement approach, in which engagement is a more technical version of job satisfaction, evidenced by The Gallup Company’s own Q12 engagement survey which gives an r=.91 correlation with one (job satisfaction) measure.
- The multidimensional approach, in which a clear distinction is maintained between job and organisational engagement, usually with the primary focus on antecedents and consequents to role performance rather than organisational identification.
Drivers of engagement
Some additional points from research into drivers of engagement are presented below:
- Employee’s personal resources -“…it is found that the positive perceptions that individuals hold of their own personal strength and ability allow them to be engaged with the organisation.”
- Employee perceptions of job importance – “…an employee’s attitude toward the job’s importance and the company had the greatest impact on loyalty and customer service than all other employee factors combined.”
- Employee clarity of job expectations – “If expectations are not clear and basic materials and equipment are not provided, negative emotions such as boredom or resentment may result, and the employee may then become focused on surviving more than thinking about how he can help the organization succeed.”
- Career advancement / improvement opportunities – “Plant supervisors and managers indicated that many plant improvements were being made outside the suggestion system, where employees initiated changes in order to reap the bonuses generated by the subsequent cost savings.”
- Regular feedback and dialogue with superiors – “Feedback is the key to giving employees a sense of where they’re going, but many organizations are remarkably bad at giving it.” In fact, employees that feel like their supervisors are supportive are 67% more engaged.
- Quality of working relationships with peers, superiors, and subordinates – “…if employees’ relationship with their managers is fractured, then no amount of perks will persuade the employees to perform at top levels. Employee engagement is a direct reflection of how employees feel about their relationship with the boss.”
- Perceptions of the ethos and values of the organization – “‘Inspiration and values’ is the most important of the six drivers in our Engaged Performance model. Inspirational leadership is the ultimate perk. In its absence, it is unlikely to engage employees.”
- Effective internal employee communications – which convey a clear description of “what’s going on”. “‘
Measure Employee Engagement
Employee engagement surveys have been developed specifically to measure the performance, strategic alignment, competency and satisfaction of contributors. Engagement surveys must be statistically validated and benchmarked against other organizations if they are going to provide useful results. Without these things, it is difficult to know what you are measuring and whether the results are good or bad.
Engagement can be accurately measured with short surveys that contain just a few questions, but such short surveys can only provide an indication of whether employees are engaged. They have a hard time explaining why employees are engaged or disengaged because they lack detail. Without sufficient information, an organization cannot develop meaningful activities, training programs, strategies, and initiatives to raise levels of engagement.
In order to get a complete picture of employee engagement, a survey needs to include about 50 to 80 questions that cover a complete range of relevant topics. There should also be open ended questions to further diagnose potential engagement problems in a company.
Pulse Surveys
Short, frequent surveys are a great way to maintain a consistent pulse on the vibe in your office. There’s no need to make this process complex. You just want to find a regular way to ask anywhere from 5-10 questions about how people are feeling at work and what (if anything) they would change.
One-On-One Meeting
Having regularly scheduled, hour-long meetings where you can have an informal chat with each member of your team is a great way to get a real sense of what’s going on with them. The advantage of this method of collecting feedback is that it’s in person, and because it’s a private, safe conversation, you can get much more detail about each issue that’s brought up. The key for managers is to remove that fear from employees so they feel safe opening up.
Stay/Exit Interviews
Using structured interviews for employees is a great way to collect feedback and find out what makes them engaged or what holds them back from being engaged.
Exit interviews are fairly common in most organizations, but one great idea that should be done more often are stay interviews, where you ask employees that are clearly happy at work what makes them want to stay. Exit interviews can be great, but the only issue with them is that it might be too late by the time you get to that process. Ideally, you use both inside your organization.
The goal with an exit interview is to find out what you could have done better to improve engagement, and the goal of a stay interview is to find out what you’re already doing well (and what you could improve on). Here are a few examples of questions you could ask in both types of settings.
- What’s your relationship with your manager like?
- What do you dislike most about your job?
- What makes for a great day of work to you?
- If you could, what’s one thing you would change with your role?
- What makes you want to stay with this organization?
- What makes you want to leave this organization?
eNPS
Using the employee Net Promoter score (eNPS) is one of the most effective and simple ways to measure engagement. It’s one simple question that truly gauges loyalty.
It’s one thing to be happy at work, but would you be willing to recommend the organization as a good place to work? Would you be willing to recommend the products/services they sell?
