Kahn (1990) described “employee engagement as the harnessing of people’s selves to their work, such that they fully invest their physical, cognitive, and emotional resources in their work roles. He suggested meaningfulness, safety, and availability as essential conditions and important indicators of engagement”.
Employee Engagement refers to employee being psychologically involved in, connected to, and committed to the job. Employee engagement is important because many employee behaviours, including turnover, reflect the degree to which employees are engaged. Based on surveys by the Gallup organisation, business units with the highest levels of employee engagement have better chances of higher productivity, sales, and profitability (Corbin, 2017). Similarly, in a survey conducted by consultants Watson Wyatt Worldwide, it was found that companies with highly engaged employees have higher revenue per employee (Worldwide, 2008).
Seijts and Crim (2006) has provided ten Cs for employee engagement. These are : “Connect, Career, Clarity, Convey, Congratulate, Contribute, Control, Collaborate, Credibility, and Confidence”. Let us learn them.
1) Connect: Managers should develop connection with the employees by showing value to them.
2) Career: Employees should be provided opportunities for the development of their career.
3) Clarity: Employees should be provided clear vision to make them understand the goals of the organisation. The contributions of employees should be highlighted.
4) Convey: There should be clarity regarding the expectations of the employees. The feedback of their performance should be provided.
5) Congratulate: The employees should be appreciated for their performance.
6) Contribute: When employees realise that their contribution leads to the success of the organisation, they feel happy and confident.
7) Control: Employees should be encouraged to participate in the working of the organisation. The deviations should be controlled for effective performance.
8) Collaborate: Employees should work as teams. They should develop trust and cooperation with their team members.
9) Credibility: Managers should make effort for enhancing reputation and credibility of the organisation. Employees should be proud of their jobs, performance and organisation.
10) Confidence: Managers should make effort for instilling confidence among employees. The confident employees feel pride for being part of the organisation.
Kumar and Singh (2013) analysed the drivers of employee engagement and impact of employee engagement on certain organisational outcomes in Indian context. They developed spiritually aligned employee engagement scale in which spirituality, meaningfulness, and alignment are the profound dimensions. ‘Fit’ between an individual’s self-concept and role assigned to him/her leads to an experienced sense of meaning, and thereby point towards spirituality as an opportunity to grow, and to contribute to society. They have highlighted the factors like “experienced meaningfulness of the job, work-role-fit, co-worker relations, psychological safety, supportive supervisory relations, group norms, self-assessment, and work-role security as the important drivers of employee engagement”.
Fostering Employee Engagement: In addition to above factors, employee engagement may be improved by :
1) Employees should realise about the contribution of their department for the success of their organisation.
2) Employee’s efforts should be linked to the company’s goals, and
3) Achieve a sense of accomplishment as a part of working in the organisation.
