EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT AND WHAT IT MEANS FOR HR IN TODAY'S VIEWPOINT

Today, employee engagement has become widely accepted concept since it identified as an essential factor in achieving performance in the workplace.

Engagement is about forming prospects for employees to connect with their coworkers’ managers and wider organization while creating an environment where employees are motivated and want to connect with their work while having a thought of doing a good job. As it is a concept places flexibility, change and continuous improvement at the heart of what it means to be an employee and an employer in a twenty-first-century workplace (CIPD, 2009).

Employee engagement can be recognized as the combination of commitment towards the organization and can be identified the positive belief of enthusiasm which help out organizational citizenship. Also engagement is something that the employee has to offer, while it cannot be ‘required’ as part of the employment contract (CIPD, 2007).

‘An engaged employee spread themselves in order to achieving organizational needs by taking initiatives proactively as well as support the organization’s culture and values, stay motivated and vigilant with believing that he/she can make a difference’ (Kaufman et al., 2007).

According to a survey of SHRM ,which conducted among 700 HR professionals, 47% said that employee engagement is the most important HR challenge at their organizations and also the majority (94%) of organizations believe positive feedback has an impact on improving employee performance (SHRM,2013).

According to Forbes, many researches confirmed that employee engagement is a key factor which contribute directly to increase profitability, however most organizations still have no proper engagement strategy in place to achieve the same.

As described in Forbes, Currently most of the CEOs are not holding their management responsibilities for increasing engagement with in the organization or providing them with the training to do so. According to their studies statistic shows that only 33% of employees at U.S. companies feel engaged at work which indicates a shortage of senior leadership attention within and commitment towards this important performance improvement tool.

According to the Forbes view point, alignment of job responsibilities with high concern will directly contribute to increase engagement. Also they says that an employee is 2.5 times more possible to be engaged when they strongly agree that management expectations for their work aligns with their actual work responsibilities. In the airline industry, customer service is not an easy task. Canceled flights and policy changes are rarely take place. Employees at Southwest Airlines are usually more welcoming and seem cheerful and always engaged at work because the employees feel like part of a bigger mission and strong drive lead by the company (Forbes, 2018).

References

Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development ,(2007). Reflections on employee Engagement: Change agenda. CIPD: London. [Online] Available: http://www.cipd.co.uk/changeagendas (Accessed on 3rd June 2018)

Charted Institute Of Personnel and Development. (2009) Employee engagement in context. London: CIPD: London: [Online] Available: http://www.cipd.co.uk/changeagendas :(Accessed on 3rd June 2018)

Jaramillo, S., (2018). Forbes. [Online] Available at:https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbeshumanresourcescouncil/2018/06/22/four-lessons-from-companies-that-get-employee-engagement. [Accessed 05 July 2018].

Kaufman JD, Mead AD, Rauzi T, DeVille JO (2007), An Empirical Investigation of the Stability of Employee Engagement, [Online] Available www.iit.edu/~mead/KaufmanMeadRauziDeville2007.pdf (Accessed on 3rd June 2018).

Society for Human Resource Management. (2013). SHRM/Globoforce Survey: Employee Recognition Programs. Retrieved fromwww.shrm.org.