Introduction
What
drives employee engagement is a topic researched over the years. Discerning enablers
of behavior for engagement is as challenging as finding a single definition for
employee engagement. Reason for this is because a variety of drivers are
suggested among consultancy literature and academic literature (Smith &
Markwick, 2009).
Drivers of Employee Engagement
There
are three main physiological factors suggested by Khan (1990, p. 718), that influences
employee engagement; meaningfulness, safety and availability. These factors influence
employees at different situational levels as individual, interpersonal, group,
intergroup and organizational. This implies that engagement is based on
employee perception of the situation experienced (Khan, 1990). This theory is
further supported by Robinson,
Perryman & Hayday (2004, p. 21), stating ‘that strongest driver of
engagement is a sense of feeling valued and involved’. Therefore, an employee
who can convey his views and managers who listen and value this contribution,
employees involved in decision making and can develop in their jobs are
considered engaged. The organizations concern for the employee’s health and
wellbeing also has an impact on engagement (Robinson, Perryman & Hayday,
2004).
From
a practitioner’s perspective; based on multiple research conducted, many conclusions
are drawn on what drives’ employee engagement. Conference Board (2006),
identified 26 different drivers of engagement. Commonly reported drivers are;
trust, integrity, nature of the job, line of sight between individual and
company performance, career growth opportunities, pride in the company,
relationships with co‐workers/team members, employee development and the
personal relationship with one’s manager (Smith & Markwick, 2009).
The
Global Workforce Study conducted by Tower Watson (2012), identified 5 top
drivers that impact engagement as shown in table 3.0. This indicates that culture
and relational aspects of the work experience are the major factors impacting engagement
and these are felt through by employees from daily interactions across the
organization (Tower Watson, 2012).
Engagement Drivers at my work place
In
support of the above theories, I would like to highlight few observations from
my work place. These practices evidence the organization’s effort to sustain
and improve employee engagement. The organization I work for is a leading quad-play
connectivity provider in Sri -Lanka. There are 7 corporate values, which we believe
and work towards, of which ‘One Team, Responsible Leadership, Uncompromising
Integrity’ can be considered as having a direct relationship to engagement. On
a quarterly basis CEO conducts direct discussions, separately with all portfolios;
of which company performance, achievements, roadblocks, goals and objective for
the next quarter are discussed. Employees can directly interact with the CEO
for any clarifications at these sessions. This build’s employees trust, moral, a
sense of belonging and value. The company has a range of benefits focusing on
employee and their family’s health, education, loans, insurance and few more benefits
that provides employee with a sense of caring by the organization. The bond
between teams are highly encouraged with team outings sponsored by the company
with varies of activities and gathering held throughout the year to engage all
levels of staff. The company also
conducts an annual engagement survey to keep abreast of employees evolving
sentiments and to continuously act on areas impacting engagement.
Conclusion
In
conclusion, it could be stated; there are multiple factors that drive employee engagement,
and this differs from person to person and could be situational based. For this
reason, organizations must identify these enablers that are relevant to them, which
drives engagement for a sustainable business.
References
Armstrong, M & Taylor, S 1977, Armstrong’s Handbook of Human Resource Management Practice, 13th edn, Kogan Page Limited, London
Global
Workforce Study: Engagement at Risk: Driving Strong Performance in a Volatile
Global Environment, 2012, Tower Watson, viewed 31st October 2020,
Kahn, WA 1990, ‘Psychological Conditions of Personal Engagement and Disengagement at Work’, The Academy of Management Journal, vol. 33, no.04, pp. 692–724
Robinson, D, Perryman, S & Hayday, S 2004, ‘Drivers
of Employee Engagement’, report 408, Institute for Employment Studies, viewed
23rd October 2020,
< https://www.employment-studies.co.uk/system/files/resources/files/408.pdf>
Smith, GR &
Markwick, C 2009, ‘Employee Engagement: A review of current thinking’, report
469, Institute for Employment Studies, viewed 17th October 2020,
< https://www.employment-studies.co.uk/resource/employee-engagement-review-current-thinking
According to your blog Employee Engagement, Drivers of Employee engagement, The Global Workforce Study conducted by Tower Watson (2012), identified 5 top drivers that impact engagement as shown in table 3.0. Talented work force and development of them is a major concern at this point of view.
ReplyDeleteOn the contrary Tower Watson (2012) highlights, organizations having learning and development opportunities will harness the engagement of their staff. The point you made of developing a talented work force being a major concern, it is a large part of being a great manager. Managers must be able to see talent of their team members before others see it and be able to unlock this potential. It’s not just best employee for each role but vise versa, best role for each employee, that will create first class teams. Therefore, managers should also be great talent agents (Premuzic, TC & Kirschner, J, 2020). As such it could be suggested having a great manager who identifies and develops the talent of the team will ultimately drive engagement as well.
ReplyDeleteIn 'Employee Engagement in Theory and Practice', Crawford, et al., (2013) argues that, there are seven main factors which drives Employee-Engagement.
ReplyDelete1. Job Challenge - Challenging job provides an opportunity to strengthen, develop, and learn skills applicable to the work world and personal growth for an employee.
2. Opportunities for development – Development opportunities make work meaningful to the employee because they provide pathways for growth and for fulfilling personal objectives (Penna, 2007).
3. Autonomy – This provides the right or condition of self-government. Allow employees to schedule their work at their own procedures.
4. Variety – Being able to perform different activities which required different skill levels makes the job interesting
5. Feedback – Providing regular feedback to the employees about the effectiveness of their performance.
6. Fit - The existence of compatibility between an employee and a work environment allows individuals to work in a confidant.
7. Reward and recognition - Incentives, rewards, and recognition are the major factors that impact employee motivation (Danish and Usman, 2010). Often, rewards and recognition take the form of extra compensation for employees who carry out the activities.
Yes Malithra, as stated in my blog, it’s difficult to discern a unique set of drivers that drive employee engagement. Though not detailed in this post, SHRM suggests there are 2 main factors that influence engagement; organizational drivers and managerial drivers. Organizational drivers are what an organization does to engage all employees. Top Management and Leaders are the key for this factor. In Managerial drivers, it’s based more on employee’s direct relationship with the immediate manager. What behaviors are seen by the manger to drive positive enhancement of the individual staff and the team (SHRM, Toolkits).
DeleteGibson and Harter (2004) built on Kahn’s model and tested the three psychological conditions related to engagement and disengagement which are meaningfulness, safety and availability. The authors conducted a survey of a large insurance company in the United States. Their data showed that employees have a positive link between psychological significance and safety in those who invest energy into their roles. In addition, job enrichment and job fitness are positively linked to psychological meaning.
ReplyDeleteSimilarly, Khan (1990) developed the model based on a research study conducted for 2 different groups. One a summer camp and the other an architectural firm. Based on the study of these 2 groups statistics, it was noted that personal engagement was connected to higher levels of psychological availability than personal disengagement. The results suggest people were personally engaging in situations for which they were more psychologically available (khan ,1990).
DeleteAccording to Mutunga (2009) Factors Affecting Employee Engagement is Remuneration, Training and development, Career growth and Fair treatment by supervisor
ReplyDeleteTo support your findings, I also like to present my experience: Factors Affecting Employee Engagement in Banking Sector
Financial rewards vision of the Bank
Job design Image of the Bank
Supervision Communication
Salary plan Job Satisfaction
Personal traits Leadership
In support of what you have stated for engagement drivers in banking sector, could be related to academic and practitioner’s perspective. Robinson et al (2005) reported job satisfaction, feeling valued and involved and equality of opportunity are the three strongest drivers of engagement. Ixia Consultancy reported three key critical drivers which underpin engagement; work, manager and autonomy (Smith, GR & Markwick, C, 2009).
DeleteAccording to Mutunga (2009) Factors Affecting Employee Engagement is Remuneration, Training and development, Career growth and Fair treatment by supervisor
ReplyDeleteTo support your findings, I also like to present my experience: Factors Affecting Employee Engagement in Banking Sector
Financial rewards , vision of the Bank
Job design , Image of the Bank
Supervision , Communication
Salary plan , Job Satisfaction
Personal traits , Leadership
In support of what you have stated for engagement drivers in banking sector, could be related to academic and practitioner’s perspective. Robinson et al (2005) reported job satisfaction, feeling valued and involved and equality of opportunity are the three strongest drivers of engagement. Ixia Consultancy reported three key critical drivers which underpin engagement; work, manager and autonomy (Smith, GR & Markwick, C, 2009).
DeleteAdding more to the post, Another important fact that is well documented is most of the resignation is happening due to employees being dissatisfied with their "Manager" to overcome this organization consider spending more t time and effort to develop leaders that are aligned with goals, culture, and employee investments. The new era of the industry has a young and energetic workforce that seeks autonomy in decision-making and increases responsibility and accountability(Kelleher, 2013)
ReplyDelete
DeleteYes Dilini, Managers role in engaging the team members is vital and mangers are the key to any organization when it comes to engaging their staff. Based on research conducted by Gallup in 2015, it has been identified that managers account for as much as 70% of variance in employee engagement score ( Harter & Adkins, 2015).
According to many authors, there are many key drivers of employee engagement and some are; Mani (2011) stated four drivers, namely employee welfare, empowerment, employee growth and interpersonal relationships as key drivers of employee engagement. Seijit (2006) point out the 10 Cs of Employee Engagement, namely Connect, Career, Clarity, Convey, Congratulate, Contribute, Control, Collaborate, Credibility & Confidence. The three elements of employee engagement as per Wallace et al (2006), were contributions, connections, growth and advancement.
ReplyDeleteYes chamila, literature review indicates many drivers that enable engagement for employees. From the 3 sets of drivers, that you have mentioned, you will notice some common drivers like growth, relationships and empowerment appear in different ways in all 3. As per Gallup one of their biggest discoveries of what drives engagement is a 'Manager', which they stated as 'managers account for 70% of variance in employee engagement score (Robison,2020).
DeleteEmployee Engagement is a concept gaining significant importance in the past 10 years. Organization today use engaged employees as a tool for strategic partner in the business. The concept of employee engagement has now gained even more importance, since many drivers have been identified, which impact employee performance and well-being at workplace (Bedarkar, M. & Pandita, D. 2018)
ReplyDeleteAs correctly said, it is definitely in the interest of the organization to understand what drives their employee's engagement. Studies indicate that many aspects of working life are strongly correlated with engagement levels. However, the strongest is a sense of feeling valued and involved (Robinson, Perryman & Hayday, 2004).
DeleteThe nature of work has the ability to become a valuable way to bring employers and workers closer together as stated in the Penna research report (2007), which encourages employees to experience group knowledge, become their own space and build opportunities to participate, and find motivation. Employees choose to work in organizations where they think work makes sense.
ReplyDeleteThis is as defined by 'The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development', 'Affective Engagement'. What it means is that employees are feeling positive about doing a good job (The Insights Group, 2014).
DeleteI have acknowledged your points. Honesty, employee voice, engaging line managers, leadership, relationships with co-workers are other commitment drivers at all levels (Robertson-Smith and Markwick,2009).
ReplyDeleteMost of the drivers that written in literature are similar to one another. However what's important for an organization is to correctly identify which drivers are unique to their company, that will drive the engagement of the employees (Harvard Business Review Analytics Services, 2016).
DeleteMiddle managers assume a critical part in employee engagement, making a conscious and confiding in relationship with their immediate reports, imparting organization esteems and setting desires for the everyday business of any association. Studies show that individuals leave managers, not organizations and guaranteeing managers are effectively partaking in and overseeing representative commitment is principal(Veraque, A, Sabado, G, 2012).HR practices has the key role in increasing employee engagement. Job enrichment, Recruiting, selection, training & development and strategic compensation are few that HR can provide to enhance engagement (Armstrong, 2014). Based on above background and support of HR practices middle managers need to be empowered by being given larger responsibilities, trained for their expanded roles and more involved in strategic decisions. If an organization's executives and HR professionals want to hold managers accountable for the engagement levels, they should:
ReplyDeleteMake sure that managers and employees have the tools to do their jobs correctly.
Periodically assign managers larger, more exciting roles.
Give managers appropriate authority.
Accelerate leadership development efforts.
Ask managers to convey the corporate mission and vision and to help transform the organization.
This is of empirical importance that employee engagement is heavily dependent on middle management involvement and that becomes a vital point to be considered by HR to streamline to avoid disengagement (Veraque, A, Sabado, G, 2012). Appreciate the current practice at your organization where all employees are directly exposed to the CEO in discussions, which vividly manifest the existence of subject matter at a different level in deed.
Like you have stated, middle managers play a key role in engagement of employees. Therefore organization must take note to promote the right kind of people who can effectively lead and improve the morale of their team and not just promote an employee for tenure or success in a non supervisory role (Wandler, 2016).
DeleteAccording to Crawford, et al. (2013), job challenge, opportunities for development, Autonomy, feedback, variety, fit and rewards and recognition play major roles in the application of employee engagement concept.
ReplyDeleteTaking in rewards which you have stated plays a major role, it has been found that, 'recognition given for high performance' is considered most important term that drives engagement (Harvard Business Review Analytics, 2016).
DeleteThe potential drivers of engagement or those work conditions that might be related to employee engagement might not be important for all employees, in other words, the best approach for improving employee engagement might depend on each employee rather than aggregate levels of various working conditions s (Klie, 2007).
ReplyDeleteWhile I agree with you that engagement reasons differ from one individual to another,engagement is influenced by many factors. To identify what impacts engagement, most organizations conduct engagement surveys, which will tell what factors have the majority impact . Through this exercise organizations can tackle issues that are the most hindrance to engagement as a first step before going individual (The Insights Group - engagement survey, 2014).
DeleteWhile agreeing to your statement wish to comment, according to(Armstrong, 2006) reward is anything that could retain an employee in an organization could be in the form of benefits, increments, training and developments or complements.
ReplyDeleteWhen it comes to traditional rewards like a pay increase, organizations must understand that this is only short term and will not yield long term results. However if organizations do work on building trust and respect then it would be a true reward for both the employee and the organization (Marciano,2010).
DeleteEmployee engagement is a key factor which drives organization performance and engaged workforce outperform their competition (Osborn and Hammoud 2017). To be more engaged with the employees the organization must create a better and safe working environment which also will help to improve the motivation of employees. In current pandemic situation the employees are keener on their safety mashers within the organization and they expect a better return of their hard work. The employees are more look forward on Strategic Alignment and Managing Execution while they engaged with the organization and management must implement and identify the best ways to improve the engagement with subordinates (Sun and Bunchapattanasakda 2019).
ReplyDeleteAgree on the fact that you have stated on what drives engagement during this pandemic situation is better and safe working environment. This is further established by a survey done by McKinsey & Company on US employee, who stated that 'Stable, secure work place', is the most important factor that would drive engagement during this period (Emmett at al, 2020).
DeleteAdding more to post employee engagement as a multidimensional construct specified perceived supervisor support, rewards and recognition, procedural justice, distributive justice and perceived organizational support as the predictors of employee engagement (Saks, 2006)
ReplyDeleteYes for example if you consider 'Distributive justice', as a factor which refers to one’s perception of the fairness of decision outcomes will impact engagement from both job and organizational engagement (Saks, 2006).
DeleteWhat will happen to an organization if its employees are disengaged? Employees who are not engaged are likely to be spinning (wasting their effort and talent on tasks that may not matter much), settling (certainly do not show full commitment, not dissatisfied enough to make a break) and splitting (they are not sticking around for things to change in their organization), have far more misgivings about their organization in terms of performance measures such as customer satisfaction (White, 2006).
ReplyDeleteIf you have a workforce that is not engaged or rather disengaged then it will impact the organizations performance. Few such metrics are productivity, profitability, customer satisfaction, absenteeism and employee turnover (Gallup Meta Analysis, 2020).
ReplyDeleteEmployee engagement can also be explained as a sense of belongingness towards the job or the company (Pugh and Dietz, 2008). But with the globalization and complexities of human nature, simple pay and benefits have not been able to gain the right level of employee engagement (Robinson and Perryman, 2008). From many types of research done by many scholars, they have found out that trust, integrity, nature of the job, leader's nature, coworkers and many more factors drive employee engagement (Bedarkar et al, 2014).
ReplyDeleteAs correctly stated Shenali. Based on a engagement study conducted by Tower Watson in 2012, it was identified that traditional ways of engaging the employees would not be sufficient to provide employers with the sustainable performance lift required to keep employees doing their work effectively in today’s pressured and fast paced work environment. Rather employers must look to enable workers with internal
ReplyDeletesupport, resources and tools and create an energizing work environment that promotes physical, emotional and social well-being (Tower Watson, 2012).