Employee Engagement - A Driver for Business Strategy

Employee Engagement is defined as “the extent to which an employee commits to work or something in the organisation, how hard he/she works and stays in the organisation out of that commitment” [SHRM] However, we often use the word Employee Engagement interchangeably with Job Satisfaction and measure the employee’s engagement level. Job Satisfaction is basically how the employee feels about the nature of work he/she is doing, work environment, pay or benefits.

Source: http://www.peopleinsight.co.uk/

There exists a relationship between organisational strategy and employee engagement. It has been researched and proved that employees who are engaged in an organisation perform better and as a result contribute more towards the business strategy. Engaged employees work harder, are more loyal and likely to go extra mile towards the organisational objectives. They believe in the vision and mission of the organisation. The engagement of an employee is ‘Emotional’ i.e. how they believe about the company or the leadership and ‘Behavioural’. This behavioural factor is shown as how much effort the employee is putting towards the organisation which can be in terms of energy or time.

Here, while talking about the Employee Engagement, we should start differentiating between Engaged Employee and Actively Disengaged Employee. Engaged employees work towards the goals of the company while actively disengaged employees just come to the company and are more busy on acting out their unhappiness.

As what SHRM describes, the levers of Engagement can be characterised by Vigour, Dedication and Absorption. Vigour means filled with high energy and passion, Dedication refers to a sense of pride and inspiration towards work and Absorption defines the feeling of happiness and engrossed in the work without being detached.  Employee Engagement is greatly influenced by the reputation of the organisation, its culture and also its internal communication. Internal communication is essential as the employees especially Gen Y believe in the values of trust and transparency as discussed in my earlier blog. It is often believed that ‘Culture’ is a soft lever. However, employees are far more engaged where there is a culture of innovation, job enrichment and safety. Culture is established through the organisation’s reward and recognition programs, its policies on work-life balance and the opportunities it provides for the career development and growth.  Engagement is heavily dependent on the Manager-Employee relationship as it is widely said “Employees don’t leave organisation, they leave managers.” The managers create the bridge between the employee and the organisation.

Now the question arises that how do we measure the employee engagement?

Organisations are widely using employee satisfaction surveys, focus group discussions and surveys. Out of these Gallup’s Q12 is the favourite and widely used employee engagement indicator tool. The common themes that are used for employee engagement measurement are: Job Satisfaction, Pride of working with the current employer, Learning and Development, Reward Programs, Relationship with the Manager, Understanding of the organisation’s Vision & Mission and Intention to Stay in the organisation.

As discussed in earlier blog Employer Branding plays a pivotal role in attracting the right talent. With the Gen Y workforce, organisations have to create more employee friendly and innovative workplace culture along with emphasising more on the so called softer elements of HR viz work life balance, job quality, flexibility, diversity, career pathing and freedom at workplace. These are the new factors which have to be accounted for getting the right talent and the engaged employees.

Like the Doctors, HR Managers should keep on checking the pulse of their employees so that they get to know the probable gaps which need to be filled before these gaps collapse and lead to attrition.   

Employer Branding: A Strategic HR Tool

Employer branding is a tool which is used by every organisation be it small, midsized or a transnational organisation. The organisations need to market themselves as the best place to work for if they want to get the right talent in this competitive market. Employer Branding is like Sales where you have to sell your practices, culture and your USP to the prospective candidates. You have to differentiate yourself form what the competitors are already offering.

The process of creating your brand in the talent market starts right from how you do the onboarding, what are your practices and procedures in the organisation till the employee exits from the organisation. The employer brand is not created in a single day or through a single advertisement. It’s a long process that is built step by step. Organisations often believe that by simply having the best entrance and stringent recruitment processes they will create their brand in the market. However, the employer brand is built on the basis of what you are going to offer him/her on a daily work day and through his/her career path.

Trust and Transparency in the organisation plays a vital role in creating a strong employer brand as the rewards and recognition does. The Gen Y specifically believes in this theory where they want that the organisation should have a total trust in them and in their work, a place where there is transparency in the system and processes. If the organisations can place themselves a transparent organisation Gen Y employees will flock that place. 

Many organisations design catchy slogans and advertisements to attract the right talent. But they forget that every organisation is doing the same in some other way. They have to search within themselves and analyse their own respective strengths and weaknesses. They have to identify their own distinguishing feature that separates them from the rest of the crowd. Based on that USP they can sell their brand to the prospective candidates.

Organisations have to constantly sell their brand to the candidates as it takes time to build brand as an employer. When the time comes for recruitment an organisation cannot build its brand in a week or two, they have to constantly keep on building it even though there have been instances where they have to give pink slips.

The best way to build the employer brand in today’s scenario is the social media where the organisations can post the testimonials from the employees on how their every day of work is which will help the candidates to understand better about the organisational culture and would make them a better fit.

By making a flashy recruitment process and showing candidates descriptive JD’s where there is every possible task to be performed for that role will not build the company’s brand. They can get the candidates for that opening but very soon such candidates after coming inside the organisation will start sending the resumes again !!!

Apps and Us

Are we ready to take the ride on the various apps that are being used by the new generation?

There are number of apps available for free download for the Android, iPhone or Blackberry users. Android with over 130,000 apps is becoming very popular with the new recruits entering the organisation. The question that arises today is that are We, the organisations, leveraging on these mobile applications which are becoming the new fad among the Gen Y people.

Recently one of the largest Food and Nutrition Company of the world launched an android app that targets the new recruits. The app is freely available for download and explains the values and culture of the organisation. The app also has links to the Youtube videos which help in creating and establishing the organisation brand.

Through these apps we can propagate the best practices of our organisation that will help us in attracting the best talent. In order to make ourselves as an employer of choice we need to enter the mobile software market. The reason is that the new generation frequently uses these apps to find the right career opportunity. It will also help us in finding the right candidate if we post our job requirements via such apps.

Organisations should make a strategy to use these increasingly popular apps to be included in their recruitment and branding strategies. In the near future the mobile market would be the place where all the job posting and search will be done. To become the leader in this market, organisations should start focussing and also developing applications that will help in employer branding.