Employee Engagement Issues - Essay Example

EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT Introduction Globalization is rapidly changing business processes and labor sectors across the world. Unlike in the past when businesses concentrated on making profits through high sales, the contemporary changes are making employees appear as fundamental assets for businesses. Competition is stiff to an extent that institutions that disregard human resources but insist on direct efforts to make profits end up failing. Employee engagement is a new way through which institutions mobilize employees to work creatively and device unique competitive advantages to encounter competition. As part of organization, engagement of employees in the process line of production and running of organizations defines important tool in ensuring improved performance and institutional productivity. McLeod, D & Clarke, N. Engaging for success: enhancing performance through employee engagement. Viewed 7Feb. 2014, < http://www.academia-research.com/filecache/instr/e/1026338_e.relations.1.pdf>. McLeod and Clarke (2011, pg. 1) define employee engagement as creation of opportunities for workers to interact with manager, colleagues and the wider organization. Engagement in employment setting also involves creation of environment that motivates employees and makes them want to link with work and care about performing their tasks appropriately. McLeod and Clarke elaborate that engaged employees are aware of the fundamentals of operation of a given business as well as its objectives and goals. Engaged employees also understand frameworks of practice prescribed by the given organization in ensuring achievement of the goals and objectives of the organization. It is within these contexts that engaged employees work closely with their colleagues to improve job performance and maximize benefits for the given organization. According to McLeod and Clarke, it remains the responsibility of organization and its leadership to establish and nurture employee engagement that builds upon employer-employee interrelationship. Effective employee engagement manifests through three items that include attitude, behavior and outcome. Attitude relates to feelings of loyalty and pride among employees that make them act responsibly and with great accountability. Behavior manifests when employees become great advocates of the individual organizations to clients or make extra efforts to complete a piece of task. Outcomes synonymous with effective employee engagement include low incidents of accident due to enhanced care when performing duties, higher productivity and reduced conflicts. In addition, outcomes also manifest through more innovativeness of employees, lower rates of sickness and few employee exits or resignations. McLeod and Clarke (2011, pg. 4) argue that organization managers can realize great satisfaction and success when they consider employee engagement as an approach designed within the workplace to help employees show commitment to the achievement of values and goals of their organizations. The approach should also prove motivational to employees and help them contribute towards success and enhance their senses of wellbeing. According to McLeod and Clarke (2011, pg. 4), engaged institutions depict strong and genuine values characterized with clear fairness and trust founded on mutual respect. There is clear understanding and direct fulfillment of two way commitments and promises made between employee and employer. Even though improved productivity defines the benchmark of engagement, employers should desist from achieving discretionary efforts through manipulation of employees’ emotions and commitments. Managers should understand that engaged employees willingly and voluntarily provide discretionary efforts as part of their daily obligations and integrity to improve the work environment. McLeod and Clarke (pg. 2) list benefits of engagement to employee as including job satisfaction, job involvement, organizational commitment and empowerment. These are also the basis that can help in the measurement of employee satisfaction and engagement in particular. Measuring engagement can involve research activities such as surveys, questionnaires and interviews. McLeod and Clarke educate that the way employers treat employees has direct impact on how employees handle customers. The way clients interact or view an organization depends on how they receive treatment from employees of a given organization. Quality interaction between clients and employees ensures advocacy, brand loyalty and capable of giving an organization a dependable competitive advantage that if rooted can be hard for competitors to copy. Sarkar, S. A study on the employment engagement at manufacturing industries. Global Managemennt review, vol.5 (5), 2011. Sarkar (2011, pg. 1) begins discussion about employee engagement in manufacturing by appreciating the impact of globalization that has expanded the focus of organizations from only sales and profits to encompass retention of employees. According to Sarkar (2011, pg. 2), the importance of human resource as an asset for organization is increasing rapidly due to globalization. Sarkar defines employee engagement as the level of involvement and commitment that employees demonstrate towards organizations and their values. Engaged employees understand the business context of their organizations and collaborate with colleagues to raise performance and ensure maximum benefits for the organization. Sarkar posits that engaged employees demonstrate positive attitudes toward their organizations and exercise total commitment when serving their respective organizations. Engaged employees also strive to stay within their respective organizations irrespective of upswings and downtrends underwent by the organization. It is under this framework that Sarkar refers to engagement as positive attitude demonstrated by employees towards their organizations and their values. To gain and share more insights about facts of employee engagement, Sarkar (2011, pg. 4) refers to studies conducted on manufacturing industries and related to employee engagement. Procedures favored by Sarkar in conducting study about employee engagement included visiting of organizations and discussing engagement issues with human resource managers. Another procedure included preparation of questionnaires for determining engagement strategies practiced by individual organizations. Last procedures are analysis of the questionnaires and gaining of insights on engagement strategies. Sarkar (2011, pg. 2) insists that organizations bear the responsibility to establish and nurture employee engagement whose survival relies on two-way interaction between employees and employers. To Sarkar, employee engagement is comparable to a barometer that measures attachment of employees to their organizations. According to Sarkar, among indicators used to measure employ engagement include absenteeism, productivity, employee referrals and attrition rate of employee. Factors that influence employee engagement in organizations are top managers, coworkers, managers, motivation, career opportunities, resources, benefits, policies, recognition, work environment, training and development. Other factors affecting employee engagement are involving employees in daily decision making process and provision of environment without disturbances. According to Sarkar (2011, pg. 3) employee engagement results to benefits such as reduced attrition, customer satisfaction, and high productivity, employee support during downtrends, reduced absenteeism and marketing of the organization by employees. Proper strategies relevant for enhancing employee engagement include and not limited to medical support, social and cultural programs, basic incentives, development, training and issue of operative allowances to lower staff. Strategies such as performance appraisal, provident fund and job elevation are necessary and relevant for the top management. For new recruits, engagement strategies can include induction and training in classroom and on job. Engagement strategies for high performance include but not limited to salary increment, job elevation, performance appraisal and recognition. According to Sarkar, employee engagement requires improvement to ensure efficient and proper engagement outcomes. Practices that can improve employee engagement include and not limited to regular update on goals direction of the corporate, provision of growth opportunities, demonstration of care for employees and thorough training. Jameson, H 2011. Engaging and involving employees at Circle. Colebrooke Row; London: IPA Publisher. Jameson (2011, pg. 1) uses Circle as the case study to discuss and bring out the real concepts of employee engagement. According to Jameson (2011, pg1), Circle is a social healthcare enterprise based in UK and co-owned by employees. The institution operates many independent hospital and treatment centers. According to Jameson (2011, pg. 5), Circle operates six strands of approach to the involvement and engagement of employees. The first strand is ownership that aligns interest of employees with those held by the organization. This approach intends to encourage accountability of workers to the experience of patients and outcomes. Ownership approach helps employees to feel valued within the organization irrespective of their individual roles in the organization. Another employee engagement strategy is recruitment and usually designed to determine if attitudes and behaviors of individual candidates fit with those of the organization. The thorough scrutiny at the recruitment stage ensures selection of candidates who have the willingness to engage with Circle and help promote efforts to improve services. Another level of engagement is at the management, where Circle mandates doctors to act as managers and team leaders to guide clinicians as well as mobilize resources and skills that enable, facilitate and develop strong teams. Different centers have freedom to choose any form of decision depending on their stability and time of operation. Circle also recognizes involvement of employees in decision making and exercise of autonomy as important way to ensure effective engagement of employees. The institution encourages decision making at two stages with one being at the clinical unit and another at individual level. The organization encourages employees to take charge of issues and lead towards change (Jameson 2011, pg. 3). Decisions by employees remain valid and acceptable provided they can promote interest of unit, team, company or site of work. Furthermore, Circle encourages its employees to voice their concerns openly to the management regarding the running of the institutions. Many employees confirmed to have been contracted regularly by the management to assess their levels of satisfaction with the running of the sites or the company. Employees continually feel free to influence decisions deemed to affect their work. Rewards after half yearly performance appraisal also define important engagement strategy implemented through share allocation and pay. Jameson (2011, pg. 5) reports that the employee engagement strategies employed by Circle results to significant benefits. Sites run by Circle experience regular improvements in productivity characterized with redesign of patient pathways and services. Circle has been receiving positive feedbacks depicting high patient satisfaction with characterized with improving clinical outcomes. The strategies practiced by Circle also ensure that employees involved in improving patients’ experiences and outcomes by ensuring continuous improvement. Feelings about ownership of the organization encouraged employees to involve in a lot of innovation destined at improving standards of the organization. Comparison of the articles The three articles provide elaborate coverage of the concepts of employee engagement. Articles by McLeod and Clarke, and Sarkar provide similar definitions and nearly similar concepts about employee engagement. The two articles define employee engagement as commitment and involvement demonstrated by employees towards improvement of performance through collaboration with other colleagues to ensure increased productivity and maximization of benefits to individual organization. The three articles also seem to cohere on the responsibility of organizations to establish and nurture employee engagements. Jameson demonstrates the concept by direly referring to organizational arrangement of Circle. In so doing, Jameson refers to the frameworks established by the organization and the mandate of employees to abide by the provisions to achieve prosperity. The three articles also draw similarity in that they all rule out manipulative and compulsive techniques in enhancing and encouraging employee engagement. The articles instead agitate for freedom and creation of environment that allow employees to exercise their own personal discretions in improving performance and increasing productivity. The three articles appear to agree on the importance of employee motivation, inclusion in decision making process, recognition and appraisals among others towards enhancement of employee engagement. Treating employees to such processes make them develop sense of ownership of the given business enterprise and encourage accountability and responsibility over every of their actions. The three articles seem to agree that measurement of engagement levels relies on reduced attrition or accidents at the place of work, reduced absenteeism, low rate of employee referrals and improved performance. Benefits of engagement considered by the articles include and not limited to enhanced innovation, increased productivity, improved performance and customer satisfaction. The three articles also appear to agree that effectively engaged employees demonstrate focus and concentration on their duties and usually ready to stay within the given organization irrespective of upswings or downtrends. Another similarity that exists among the three articles relate to their use of case studies and examples in elaborating the concepts of employee engagement. The case studies considered by the three articles give outright and accurate prove to the concepts of employee engagement. For instance, Sarkar uses manufacturing industries to provide real time evidence of how employee engagement results, benefits, influencing factors and measures for improving engagement. Jameson also uses the case of Circle to demonstrate effectiveness and other important concepts of employee engagement in an organization. Contrast of the articles While articles by McLeod and Clarke, and Sarkar begin by explaining the concept of employee engagement independently, Jameson’s article develops employee engagement concepts through case study of Circle. With Jameson’s articles, the concepts of employee engagement seem hidden in the discussion about the organization and indirect. To realize the concepts of engagement in Jameson’s article, one needs to have prior knowledge of the issues related to employee engagement. Articles by McLeod and Clarke, and Sarkar provide preliminary discussion of the concepts before leading audience into the depth of case studies to understand practicality of engagement phenomenon. McLeod and Clarke, and Sarkar clearly introduce and define the concepts of employee engagement in such manners that enable audiences predict actual direction of discussions. While articles by Jameson and Sarkar do not recognize significant of corporate social responsibility in employee engagement, McLeod and Clarke appear to reiterate that involvement in corporate social responsibility is important in improving and enhancing employee engagement. Evaluation of the articles The article gives clear and broad coverage about employee engagement. The definition of employee engagement is clear and valid as backed with reasonable arguments and demonstrations. In fact, the article provides numerous definitions of engagement, which depict close correlations. To ensure that audiences gain proper understanding of the concept of employee engagement, the article uses known businesses and organizations as case studies. The use of various case studies including Google, Microsoft, Westminster City Council, Birmingham City Council, Runshaw College, Hansen Glass and Metro among others work to provide audience with real examples to refer to solidify understanding about employee engagement. The article also uses information from other existing research reports like those released by IPA, Hewitt, Gallup, Price Water House Coopers and Towers Perrin, which are competent research institutions. The use of the reports of the listed sources regarding employee engagement makes the contents of the article attain high credibility. The information in the article is of high integrity considering extensive comparison of various sources and live examples to demonstrate full concepts of employee engagement. The article further raises credibility of its information by gathering, analyzing and presenting data to confirm the effects of employee engagement on the performance of organizations. The authors of the article not only rely on secondary sources for statistical data used to prove certain concepts in the article but also engaged in primary surveys and studies. The authors then compared their results obtained out of the surveys with the existing data in secondary sources. Such step has heightened acceptance, validity and credibility of the information and data presented in the article. In presenting its argument on the concepts of employee engagement, the article makes coverage of manufacturing industry. The author of the article do not only rely on information recorded in secondary sources but also involved in actual survey that led to interaction with human resources officers, managers and employees working in the manufacturing industry. One of the secondary sources of information used by the author is Gallup’s 12Q. When combined, self conducted survey and data from secondary sources make explicit content that is reliable and valid. It is for reason that the article provides genuine and direct definition of employee engagement as well as providing explicit explanation of the concepts. The factors that influence employee engagement and even the benefits presented in the article are valid and in line with expectation of any audience who have good understanding of fundamentals of the topic. Even though the information contained in the article could have high credibility, the facts presented cannot apply to other industries since the study only focused on manufacturing industry. Practices and employee behaviors tend to vary with variation in industry or nature of work done. There could also be errors in the article regarding employee engagement since the survey of the manufacturing industry covered only ten institutions. The organization and planning of the article as earmarked with the case study coverage on Circle makes appear credible to audiences. The use of Circle in advancing explanation of the concept of employee engagement has worked effectively to give real examples about frameworks of the concept. One problem with the article relates to its likelihood to appear biased to audience considering use of only one case study. One can also be tempted to generalize the findings of the article as applicable and similar in other circumstances different from Circle. Overconcentration on Circle can also limit audiences’ ability to imagine and relate frameworks of employee engagement to other cases. References Sarkar, S. A study on the employment engagement at manufacturing industries. Global Managemennt review, vol.5(5), 2011. Jameson, H 2011. Engaging and involving employees at Circle. Colebrooke Row; London: IPA Publisher. McLeode, D & Clarke, N 2011. Engaging for success: enhancing performance through employee engagement. Viewed 7Feb. 2014, < http://www.academia-research.com/filecache/instr/e/1026338_e.relations.1.pdf>. Read More