Principal Dimensions and Components of Employee Engagement
Principal dimensions of employee engagement include emotional, cognitive, and physical commitment. Emotional engagement can ensure employees are loyal to our company and create a good public image for XYZ among consumers and other potential employees. People working at XYZ are more likely to be ‘corporate citizens’ (helping out their colleagues) by having a strong emotional connection to our company, its mission, and its values. Cognitive engagement means that our employees can recognize their roles and responsibilities willing to exceed our organization’s expectations. Workers that are cognitively committed are more interested in growing professionally, which can help us differentiate ourselves in a growing ITlaborr market (Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. Physical engagement demonstrates that employees strive for excellence as they put discretionary effort into their work.
Relating Employee Engagement to Other Concepts
Employee engagement is linked to ‘flow,’ a state of hyper-focus on the task, however challenging and time-consuming. In order to reach ‘flow,’ the tasks for workers need to align to their personal and professional goals, which is possible if employees are engaged (Oakwood International – CIPD Diploma in HR Management: Workbook Unit 5ENG). Organizational commitment is connected in direct proportion to job engagement. In contrast, job involvement does not always lead to commitment as employees are primarily focused on immediate, short-term tasks (Oakwood International – CIPD Diploma in HR Management: Workbook Unit 5ENG). Job satisfaction makes it more likely for XYZ employees to physically, cognitively, and emotionally engage because it is partly dependant on enjoyable working conditions and communication (Oakwood International – CIPD Diploma in HR Management: Workbook Unit 5ENG). All of the aforementioned concepts impact our evaluation and measurements of the business benefits of employee engagement.
Principal Drivers of Employee Engagement
At our company, we have a traditional way of measuring engagement through surveys that often demonstrate the general attitudes of our employees on pay, benefits, communication, and general working conditions. This measurement system, however, is not able to provide data regarding primary drivers of employee engagement, which becomes crucial as we intend to increase the levels of engagement at XYZ Company.
Principal drivers include transparent work full of meaning and purpose, opportunities for development, reward systems, as well as respectful relationships that originate from two-way communication systems, and inspiring leadership. Jobs at our company need to be organized in an engaging and meaningful way as we ensure that our employees understand how important their contribution is to the management and their colleagues.
Business Benefits for Key Stakeholders
XYZ Company has to ensure there are no disengaged employees as it can affect multiple areas of business. There is a strong linkage between engagement and high performance working (HPW) (Oakwood International – CIPD Diploma in HR Management: Workbook Unit 5ENG). Apart from HPW, the profitability and productivity of our organization depending on job engagement levels. Managers would be pleased to know that Total Quality Management and Lean processes improve as a result of strategic HR (Oakwood International – CIPD Diploma in HR Management: Workbook Unit 5ENG).
Engaged employees feel safer and more satisfied, generating positive emotions and an overall attitude towards their work (Oakwood International – CIPD Diploma in HR Management: Workbook Unit 5ENG). XYZ workers can utilize such an environment to come up with new ideas and technological solutions. Employee engagement drives innovation and improves customer service as engaged workers are more likely to identify customer needs (Oakwood International – CIPD Diploma in HR Management: Workbook Unit 5ENG). XYZ Company can benefit a lot from employee engagement in terms of leading the market based on customer satisfaction levels.
Evaluation of Different Diagnostic Tools
Employee engagement is the company’s opportunity to change our workplace approach towards employees and their satisfaction with the work they are engaged with. Through employee engagement, we can ensure the physical, mental, and emotional commitment of our employees to the goals and values of XYZ Company as well as their motivation to contribute to our success by putting discretionary efforts into the work.
Engagement evaluation in strategic HR can be challenging because of inconsistent management styles, lack of coherent and fluid communication channels, as well as lack of involvement initiatives, all of which should be taken into consideration by our new CEO (Gatensby, Rees, Soane, and Bailey – Employee Engagement in Context (CIPD Research Insight)). The process of evaluating the engagement both quantitatively and qualitatively is quite complex but immensely important during the changes XYZ Company is going through at the moment. An engaged workforce is more likely to participate in and contribute to corporate transformations our new CEO is set out to initiate.
A simple survey used at XYZ Company can be an effective tool to check the quality of engagement of the whole organisation or one of our departments, but it fails to collect necessary data on employee turnover, frequency of engagement, or absenteeism rates. Alternatives to traditional surveys include Gallup Q12 and the IES diagnostic tool. Gallup Q12, for example, creates a framework that helps companies communicate with their employees on a personal level. In my opinion, it would be great to add a pay equity statement as Gallup Q12 assumes our employees are paid equally.
Other diagnostic tools we could implement at XYZ include metrics such as absenteeism rates and employee turnover. Collecting such data is crucial in the process of identifying the possible causes of low job satisfaction and disengagement associated with employees’ unwillingness to be present and active at work. We can use these numbers to reduce employee turnover and absenteeism rates by creating new innovative managerial solutions. Through subsequent one-on-one conversations with our employees, we could identify what our competitive advantage might be in terms of salaries, rewards, and optimal working conditions.
A good idea, to my mind, would be the introduction of a people management style, which improved productivity and performance levels of PlasticCo (Gatensby, Rees, Soane, and Bailey – Employee Engagement in Context (CIPD Research Insight)). Low absenteeism rates, on the other hand, can identify the things we are doing right at XYZ Company as well as create a full picture of our workforce to develop an effective framework for future changes.
References
- Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. Web.
- Gatensby GatenbyC, Soane E, and Bailey C – Employee Engagement in Context (CIPD Research Insight).
- McMillen D. Oakwood International – CIPD Diploma in HR Management: Workbook Unit 5ENG.