Employee Engagement And Effective Competitive Advantage

It is amazing how many companies out there struggle with the simplest of things with understanding the value of their employees. Engaged employees are critical to the success and growth of any company. Having read and watched several articles about some trend setting companies, I already see ideas and attributes to take back to my management career.

Employee Engagement: It’s a known perception that an engaged workforce provides many intangible benefits that is linked directly to retention. HR policies should focus on employee engagement initiatives that stimulate motivation levels of employees to perform better and bond with organisation. This process should be initiated right from induction and continue throughout their tenure by opening channels of continuous communication and encouraging interpersonal relations. HR is responsible to incorporate methods to measure engagement and at regular intervals track engagement contribution to company’s success.

The opportunities to engage employees in corporate America has plenty of room for improvement based upon this survey. Towers Watson conducts the research in order to provide a benchmark to organizations each year. The survey offers engagement opportunities for sustainable engagement. Towers Watson (2014) defines effective leaders as being committed to an organization’s strategic priorities and modelling its values and culture and perform across four key dimensions and associated competencies: envisioning the future, inspiring others to follow, transforming the organization to achieve the vision, and adapting to changing the internal and external conditions (see Appendix C). Employees appreciate being motivated by the leaders of an organization,

In other nations meeting the altruistic and simple human needs of being part of something greater than yourself are the driving forces to an engaging environment (Vorhauser-Smith, 2013). According to Major Angelo’s actions of communicating with employees and developing a relationship with them demonstrate how leaders begin to create an engaging environment. According to Harter & Adkins (2015), employees whose manager communicate with them through meetings are practically three times more likely to be engaged as employees whose managers do not hold regular meetings with them. Another method to engage employees is by ensuring they understand their goals and helping them understand the big picture of how their role impacts the whole organization structure.

Successful organizations demand satisfied employees. Figure 1 below shows a theoretical one-way linkage chain called the "Engagement-Profit Chain." This chain directly shows how active employee engagement leads to good service which ensures that customers will to continue coming back, providing a solid foundation on which the company can grow. As employee effort is indeed discretionary, it has been observed that higher levels of engagement, or the way management commits itself emotionally to employees, pushes a higher level of discretionary effort (Kruse, 2014). It is not by chance that

The organization is developing cannot without employee engagement, during the past decade, employee engagement have experienced the pressures of innovation, reform, become a mature system to use in company development. A succeed organization the employee must have complete employee engagement system, meanwhile the organization should understand how to control employee engagement system to create more profit for organization. Similarly, linking employee engagement to company should to connect the use of modern HRM theory with mangers personal control, gain competitive advantage compare with other company. This paper will try to answer those follow problem relation with employee engagement. For example, this report will brief introduce definition of employee engagement, and explain what function made employee engagement important, and discuss organization how to drive employee engagement.

Companies that have higher levels of engaged employees have higher earnings per share (EPS) than companies that have lower engagement levels (Kelleher, 2011). Engaged employees are more productive, have higher levels of customer loyalty and help their employers become more profitable. An engaged employee is less likely to leave their current position. This saves their company money because there is no need to spend money to hire and train new personal. These saving can be passed along to the employees for increased wages, bonuses, and benefits. All of these items help in motivating employees, to attempt to engage the disengaged.

Leaders also try to achieve the same quality for their own status, which allows them to pursue greater strength, achieve personal goals and future endeavours. According to a recent study conducted by Psychometrics Canada a pioneer in research assessment, has mentioned in one of its report that employee engagement in the organisation plays a major role in the success of any organisation. Accordingly it says that the best way to increase the relation is by working out a strategy that builds positive environment and culture relations between the workers and ensuring a good leader to fit for the purpose. Leaders in the organisation can try to achieve a better employee engagement by listening to followers opinions, communicating his vision with a clarity, providing and developing strategies and solution for the success, and finally recognising the ability of the followers and praising their contributions. Thisaspect of leadership is displayed by general feedback, generating ideas and possess enthusiastic in requesting for help (Bradley P. Owens, 2013). One example of this leadership quality is described by DAVID J. BOBB(David J B, 2013) in his book saying following servant leadership is very difficult as it is not a natural talent to anyone. He takes the example of George Washington, though considered to be a man of high temper and showing excess pride in his capabilities and qualities during his period as a freedom fighter. As he has foreseen the global position he is getting

Employee engagement is today’s leadership priority. However, the catchphrase goes a long way back in the beginning of the 21st century. It has gained interest to this date, which can be credited to Gallup’s first version of the Q12 in the 1990s commonly termed as the Gallup Workplace Audit (Gallup Consulting, 2006). Subsequently, Gallup has continuously refined and expanded their Q12 for current business challenges. Furthermore, several literatures, surveys and evidence-based studies abound that exhibited positive results with employee engagement such as increased performance, safety, retention and profits among others.

Employee engagement has a huge impact on the motivation of the workforce. It impacts employees’ passion and attitude towards their day-to-day responsibilities. The banking sector employs a significant percentage of workforce. However, various engagement policies have been initiated in the banking sector. The first step has been recognizing the role of immediate supervisor as the key person in driving employee engagement. Banks are also building a value- based culture, talent management strategies, mentorship and training, internal communication and feedback mechanisms and transformative leadership. These strategies infuse a passionate workforce dedicated to the accomplishment of the organization goals. The level of engagement is the banking sector can be considered moderate but has gained momentum and is likely to improve over the years. The primarily limitations of employee engagement are that they do not necessarily guarantee increased productivity, the costs implication are high and employee engagement does not necessarily guarantee employee retention.

Researchers have found only 30% of employees in the United States are actively engaged in the workplace (Gallup 2013). In 2010, data provided by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (as cited in Moreland, 2013) show more individuals are voluntarily quitting their jobs. With over 70% of US workers disengaged, this topic has arguably prompted an interest that continues to be earnestly pursued by many. As a result, the Gallup Q12 expands the need for additional research based on their finding of employee engagement.

Engaging employees and keeping them motivated in their job is important for an organization. Engaged and disengaged employees perform differently from each other. Shuck and Wollard (2013) stated that engaged employees are 18% more productive, 12% more profitable, 12% better at engaging customers, 62% less likely to be involved in a workplace accident, and 27% less prone to absenteeism (as cited in Fleming & Asplund, 2007, p. 169). Additionally, engaged employees are 87% less likely to leave an organization than disengaged employees (Corporate Leadership Council, 2004). Supervisors can play a role in helping employees feel more engaged; therefore leading to less turnover and more productive employees within the organization. There are many theories that have been produced about employee engagement and motivation. Frederick Herzberg produced a theory in 1968 called Motivation – Hygiene Theory. This theory, along with a few others, marked a change in how employee motivation was viewed. This theory will be examined and discussed in terms of social service employees’ engagement and what role supervision plays.

Our in-depth research has further solidified what was already speculated: employee engagement is a popular phenomenon in the corporate world with employers taking particular interest in its impact on business. Dale Carnegie Training has revealed that annually $11 billion is lost due to employee turnover rates while conversely companies that have engaged employees outperform others by 202%. Lost money is lost revenue and thus a huge concern for businesses that are losing both profits and employees. This is only one of many ways in which employee engagement has an influential impact on business. According to Aon Hewitt’s 2013 Global Tends Engagement Report, 6 out of 10

Crim and Seijts (2006, p.1) define employee engagement as “a person who is fully involved in, and enthusiastic about, his or her work”. Employees that are engaged are inspired and go above and beyond their job functions to support the company and help the company achieve its goals. The lack of engaged employees are a major problem in the United States. According to Gallup, in 2014 only 31.5% of employees were engaged (Adkins, 2015). Even though this sounds low, it is actually the most engaged the United States workforce has been since 2000. The author’s research is important because if there is a link between leader’s

Employees are key to creating sustainable competitive advantage. Consistently, research has shown that employees who are engaged significantly outperform employees who are not engaged on several different key performance metrics. As global replication of technology and processes becomes easier and easier, the differentiation of service becomes critical for a organization in order to shine in an increasingly competitive market.