Employee engagement is the level of trust and dedication an employee feels toward the organization and their job. It’s more than having the workers who are doing work and giving results. It’s about the attitude of Employees and the level of engagement with which they are working on a daily basis. For engaged employees, the job is a lot more than just a paycheck. They’re eager to take on responsibilities and carry out their duties well.
According to Wikipedia, An “engaged employee” is defined as the one who is fully absorbed by and enthusiastic about their work and so takes positive action for the organization’s reputation and growth. An engaged employee has a positive attitude towards the organization and its values.
In contrast, a disengaged employee may range from someone doing the bare minimum at work. An organization with “high” employee engagement might therefore be expected to outperform those with “low” employee engagement.
An HR not only has to identify the level of engagement of each employee in an organization but also do root cause analysis of the situation and work towards the betterment of that situation.
What Are The Different Types Of Employee Engagement?
Take a look at your staff. You’ll notice that your employees usually fall into one of three categories of engagement:
- Engaged – The employee believes in the business, wants to improve their work and the work of those around them, is willing to do what it takes to help in the organization growth and is motivated. Efficiency and enthusiasm are the most visible traits of an engaged employee.
- Disengaged – A Disengaged Employee does little more than the bare minimum, exhibits little passion for their job and sees work as an exchange of time for a monthly paycheck. These are the workers who have lost their enthusiasm for one reason or another.
- Actively disengaged – These employees really don’t like their job and makes that fact known to others wherever they go, spreading negativity across the organization and often dragging operational efficiency down with them.
- Hiring the Right People: One of the basic foundations of implementing employee engagement best practices is to hire employees who are the most likely to be engaged.
- Build an atmosphere of transparency, trust and communication.
- Build Strong R&R Policies: Putting efforts into creating reward and recognition programs is a great way to motivate your team.
- Provide Career Growth Opportunities: It is very important for your employees to feel like they are growing on some level in the organization. HR should facilitate in-house training programs, external certifications, or skill courses to encourage employees to broaden their horizons and explore the new and advanced areas of their work.
- Give Employees Freedom to get their work done: Trust your employees enough to give them the freedom to make their own decisions. Those who do not get the chance to be themselves and work at their own pace usually end up feeling unfulfilled, it is important for employees to feel the ownership of their work, it makes them more accountable and invested in their work.
- Employee Engagement Fun Activities: To break the monotonous spell of work, HR should include some fun activities in between to bring freshness to work and improve the overall productivity of employees.
Detailed Post on the topic – 6 Common but Underrated Practices of Employee Engagement.
Engagement, as a whole is hard to judge and define, as it can vary and depends on multiple factors. An Employee can be disengaged because of a bad day or some personal problem or it can be a result of long term dissatisfaction in life or work in general. But, what we can do is place a set of parameters to identify the cause and define the course of action based on that.
Here are the few ways you can set out to do that:
- Regular Feedback : Having regularly scheduled, hour-long meetings where you can have an informal session with each member of your team is a great way to get a real sense of what’s going on with them.
- Employee Engagement Surveys: Another way of collecting opinions is to gain insight into the level of employee engagement by using surveys. These surveys can differ based on your objective. Surveys are the more introspective way of getting feedback, it is useful for a large organization with people who naturally resonate with continuous feedback and information loops.
- Absenteeism Scale: Workplace absenteeism is an indicator of many engagement factors, such as poor working hours, management, bad leadership, or a lack of work-life balance. It can also be an indicator of employee satisfaction – as a high absenteeism rate correlates with low employee satisfaction
- Employee Reviews: Employee satisfaction is directly related to Employer Branding. Employee review websites like Glassdoor is an indicator of workplace satisfaction and is also an indicator of an organization’s ability to attract talent externally. A poor average rating on such sites is your biggest indicator that your employee engagement needs improvement.
You can also see more detailed post on this here – Ways to Measure Engagement of Your Employees.
Engaged Employees are the heart of any successful business. Especially at this time of pandemic, it is even more important to keep in the touch with their emotional as well as mental state.
Here are few of the ways Organizations can focus on Employee Engagement:-.
- Frequent check-ins from Managers: Clear communication between management and employees allow issues and concerns to be voiced, allowing time to more easily anticipate or resolve them.
- Virtual Team Building Activities: Virtual Team Building activities are great for keeping employees engaged, connected, and socially connected while social distancing.
- Online Induction Programs: New employees need a solid, consistent virtual employee induction program to help them settle into new roles during a period of uncertainty and confusion.
This topic can be read in detail here.
In Conclusion, Employee Engagement is making sure your people are emotionally invested in their work, care about what they do, and work as a team. When you have the established employee engagement system, you have staff that goes above and beyond their duty for the betterment of the organization.