According to Scarlett Surveys,
"Employee Engagement is a measureable degree of an employee's positive or negative emotional attachment to their job, colleagues and organization which profoundly influences their willingness to learn and perform at work".
It has not been very long that the organizations have started to fiddle with the word ‘employee engagement’ because
Employee engagement has been found directly proportional to employee retention and also to the productivity of the organization. According to HRSurveys, People higher in levels of organizaton show higher levels of engagement because of the power vested in them to make decisions and the authority to influence the decision making process.
Some of the outcomes of employee engagement are emotional attachment, involvement, commitment and productivity. These are discussed below:
Emotional attachment
Emotional attachment of an employee with the organization has a love-love relationship with engagement. Better employee engagement creates stronger bonds of emotional attachment and vice versa i.e. strong emotional attachment invokes better employee engagement.
Involvement
The studies have indicated that more the team involvement, trainings and incentive pay schemes, more is the employee involvement which has been found to be liked with productivity. But the more important by product of the involvement at employee level is what I call ‘employee-empowerment’. Employees find themselves empowered which brings in confidence and trust.
Commitment
Studies have statistically demonstrated that engaged employees are more productive, more profitable, more customer-focused, safer, and less likely to leave their employer.
Productivity
In a study of professional service firms, the Hay Group found that offices with engaged employees were up to 43% more productive.
But the bigger question what are the different ways or the activities to improve employee engagement? Some of the ways could be:
Attitude towards the job: The employees that have positive attitude towards their job and the organizaton, tend to stay connected with the management and play a very proactive role in the change management or disaster management processes. Thus the organizations must provide with an environment conducive to the development of positive attitude towards work.
Employee clarity of job expectations: It is very important that the employers pass very clear expectations to the employees which in turn results in better communication and positive work culture. All employees must be clear about their job expectations, department vision, success measures, priorities, hierarchy flow etc. Unclear expectations, on the other hand, give rise to resentment and negative emotions. This can be easily implemented by having a good
appraisal system in place which ensures that all the employees get to know the success measures, department vision, heirarchy etc.
TimeMerlin has excellent appraisal system that is so simple and easy to use and doesnot create a overhead task on any employee in the organization.
Career advancement/improvement opportunities: Generally speaking all the individuals have an instinct to grow in their career. The organizations and the management has to provide that fodder for growth constantly so that all the employees move ahead in their learning curve.
If at any point employee feels he has not landed in the right job, employers must provide the other opportunities wherever possible. Organizations should provide variety and an open environment that encourages employees.
Communication: Communication process has to be a two-way process. The management should communicate regularly with all the employees regarding growth of the organization, challenges in the industry and occasionally easy to understand company financial information. Utmost care has to be taken to process the communications in such a way that the employees are encouraged to express their positive or negative comments to the management. Constructive feedback should be put into practice and the employee who has given the feedback should be appreciated accordingly. Monthly or quarterly newsletter with employee section is a very effective tool in making the announcements and acknowledging success. Similarly blogs, forums and other discussions boards can be utilised to establish communication.
Quality of working relationships with peers, superiors, and subordinates: Team building activities, workshops, seminars, training opportunities or even simple group coffee breaks strengthen the relations. Healthy relationships are required not between peers but also supervisors and subordinates. Good communication is the key to build healthy and fruitful relationship. Inspirational and motivational leadership also helps the employees to look up to their role models and generate lot of loyalty.
Reward to engage: As mentioned earlier the employees must be rewarded for the active engagement. Individual, team and organizational success must be celebrate and appreciated. A simple group email with a thank-you note, a handshake and a thank-you phrase at the lunch hour or coffee break also goes a long way. Long serving employees should be rewarded as per the company and HR policies.
TimeMerlin is one stop shop to all the points mentioned above. It provides a platform to make announcements, discuss employee growth and list the company expectations from the employees. Under the miscellaneous tab, the various seminars, talk-shows, or other company and project events can be listed and communicated to everyone in the team. TimeMerlin also has its secured chat functionality for internal use. This will ensure that all the employees stay connected to each other without the hassle of anyone outside the network bothering them.
Chat bar is placed at the bottom of your browser—no installation or assembly required. From this bar you can view your list of online colleagues and open conversations with any or all of them. Unlike the Inbox, the messages are delivered and displayed to your colleague as soon as they're sent, so you should expect a response right away and without any page loading. You can collapse conversations to get them out of the way, and go offline if you don't want to use Chat at all. Chat is there when you want it, and tucked away when you don't.
