Category: Employee Engagement

The concept of Engagement

Engagement maybe understood as the extent to which one is positively attached to ones undertaking. It has a positive effect on ones productivity or the rate at which one is willing to take on new tasks. It is often denoted by the level of intellectual and emotional involvement of that person in the undertaking (Schmidt et al., 2002).

For instance, a student who is highly engaged in his education will not feel bored by class attendance and other routine activities that he or she must perform as part of his or her course. People who are engaged tend to be absorbed in their ventures and are also very alert (Snyder & Lopez, 2002). They are also less likely to abandon their activities than those who are not engaged.

Engagement in Business

In business, engagement is the process by which stakeholders, such as employees and customers, are committed to, satisfied with, and involved with an organisation. This may be witnessed through a high level of customer engagement or employee engagement. Engagement in business ensures that companies can retain customers or employees, and this leads to desirable business results.

Some of them include better customer service, better productivity, better departmental performance, great financial performance, and even better organisational-level performance (Weiss & Brief, 2002).

Engagement in business is not a holistic construct; it may be understood as a collection of a series of qualities that are cognitive, behavioural or emotional. Most indications of employee engagement are behavioural in nature. Therefore, measures of the same concept should be behavioural.

The Research Objectives

The overall research objective is to determine the drivers of employee engagement in an organisation. This objective is split into smaller objectives that are as follows:

1. To investigate whether quality of work is a driver for employee engagement
2. To investigate whether tangible rewards affect employee engagement
3. To examine the relationship between growth opportunities in the future and employee engagement
4. To investigate whether an enabling environment is a driver for employee engagement
5. To investigate whether inspiration values are a driver for employee engagement
6. To investigate whether work life balance is a driver for employee engagement

The Research Focus

This research will specifically focus on identifying the drivers of employee engagement. In other words, it will not focus on other types of business engagements such as customer engagement. This is necessary because employee engagement has a profound effect on other stakeholders such as customer themselves (Macey et al., 2009).

Additionally, the research will not get into the effects of employee engagement, even though these play an important role in determining the outcomes of the organisation. Furthermore, the research will not attempt to find a definition of employee engagement as this has already been done. This research will not attempt to analyse the extent of employee engagement in the country, region or business environment.

Doing so would require massive resources, and would also expose the research to many errors in sampling and methodology. It is better to work with a select number of employees from the same institution in order to minimise biases that arise out of organisational environments.

As stated earlier, employee engagement has many facets; all these elements will be analysed in the research under various headlines.

The research will focus on the extrinsic as well as the intrinsic factors that cause employees to be engaged in their firms. Extrinsic factors relate to rewards, enumeration and other material benefits. Intrinsic factors are all those factors that dwell on internal issues such as work growth, being part of an organisational process.

Literature Review

Definition of Engagement

Employee Engagement is a positive behavioural, emotional and cognitive state that workers direct towards organisational outcomes. Prior to the 1990s, most employees looked for a stable work environment (Becker et al., 2004). They were satisfied with reasonable pay and job security. However, after this period, most companies began reengineering themselves.

Furthermore, employee mindsets began to change. Lifelong commitment to one employer was no longer the norm. Instead, workers started looking for personal fulfilment in their workplaces. Now, most employees feel that it is their right to work in a rewarding business environment. If they cannot find this in one institution, many of them are willing to look for it somewhere else (MatzCosta & Pitt Catsouphes, 2008).).

One of the reasons why employees leave their workplaces is the absence of engagement in their present environments. Companies, therefore, have an important incentive to keep engagement up as this causes them to maintain some of their most talented individuals.

On top of that, companies stand to benefit from greater value, which stems from greater productivity. This leads to customer satisfaction and eventually customer loyalty. The ultimate result of customer loyalty is greater opportunities for growth and profitability.

Engagement should be understood as something that goes beyond motivation but is also an advancement of the motivation concept (Borman, 2004). It causes staff members to commit to the values within an organisation and to help others in their daily endeavours. Employees now look for opportunities to air out their views to their administrators. Additionally, a number of them want to know about the goings on in their institution.

This is the reason why engagement is vital to the company. Additionally, employees need to believe that their supervisors are just as committed to the firm as they are (Hui et al., 2000). This means that there ought to be a two-way connection between the employer and his staff. No one factor is responsible for the ultimate feeling of engagement within ones institution, but it is the combination of these factors that matters.

Measuring Engagement

In order to measure engagement, firms must utilise a series of platforms in order to get to all the relevant issues. Normally, one can use employee opinions from surveys in order to measure engagement. Additionally, a company can combine the surveys with personal interviews with managers as well as employees. They may also use focus groups in their institutions in order to assess this phenomenon.

Alternatively formal meetings between stakeholders can allow firms to measure engagement. Performance measures may also do the trick; however, they must relate to the progress that the entity is making towards engagement.

Engagement Challenges: impact of engagement on performance

Engagement presents a series of problems to the institutions that use them. First, financial challenges tend to knock  off employee engagement from the priority list. Tough economic times often shift company attention towards retrenchments, restructurings, mergers and acquisitions or cost cutting. It is quite difficult to stay committed to engagement when one is simply trying to stay profitable.

However, company owners need to realise that the very survival of their institution is at stake if they neglect employee engagement. It is during times of crises that companies need to have their staff in their corner. Employers must resist the temptation to ignore this phenomenon during hard economic and financial times.

Some corporate structures or values may hamper employee engagement tremendously. Some companies, especially government-affiliated ones, tend to place too much emphasis on bureaucracy.

This implies that so many of them think of their superiors as bosses or masters. They also feel that they are nothing more than servants. Such cultures often cause employee values to conflict with those ones that are required in a well engaged atmosphere (Harter et al., 2004).

Additionally, interdepartmental or inter-team conflicts can minimise employee engagement greatly. When teams are too independent within an organisation, then chances are that they will all be heading in different directions.

Their least concern will be the overall benefit of the organisation and they will eventually hamper the level of connectedness between the stakeholders in the enterprise. For instance, if the operations department receives supplies from the logistics department on time, then they are likely to think of it as a work obligation rather than a service (Bakker et al., 2006b).

Governance structures can also be an impediment to existence of employee engagement. If a company lacks mechanisms for establishing accountability and proper governance, then this can make it quite difficult to foster a spirit of engagement in the firm (Ruddy et al., 2006). Members will always feel like they are on their own and that there is no point in doing things in an ethical manner.

Employee engagement is also challenging because one must maintain company morale at all times. Employees feel especially vulnerable when change takes place in their institution. This may come in the form of an outsourcing service or a merger. At such times, employees may have doubts about their place in the institution and this could compromise on their commitment towards the organisation (Towwers-Perrin, 2003).

How to maintain and improve engagement

To maintain and improve engagement, one must illustrate to ones employees that one cares about them. This means furnishing them with all the resources they require to get a job done (Eisenberger & Rhoades, 2002). A number of workers develop a sense of dissatisfaction, frustration and disengagement when they lack the necessary support needed to carry out tasks (Conway & Coyle Shapiro, 2005).

Additionally, company owners must ensure that they show employees the big picture when carrying out their individual tasks. This will build a sense of commitment to the institution even through tough times. Managers and business owners must cultivate an atmosphere of fairness within their enterprises. All workers need to feel that they have an equal voice and that they are valued in their companies (Maslach et al., 2001).

Companies need to synchronise employee strengths with their work roles. Doing challenging work can lead to a great sense of engagement because it ascertains that all the employees are maximising on their talents. It is also makes them feel like they are making an important contribution to the enterprise. In lien with this approach, a company should also provide employees training opportunities.

This will allow them to take advantage of advancements in their enterprises. They will also feel that they have a say in the way decisions are made in their institutions. Doing this also increases the likelihood of accepting decisions in the future if they were involved in them. If they can do projects that contribute to their growth, then this will definitely boost their level of engagement (Bakker et al., 2006a)

Business owners need to cultivate a sense of trust in their enterprises by treating their employees personally. They can communicate policies and procedural changes individually so as to achieve this effect.

Employers, supervisors or managers need to appear as engaged to the company as they expect employees to be (Rama Devi, 2009). Additionally, business owners need to start engagement initiatives among superiors as they have the capacity to spread their enthusiasm to other individuals within the company. Superiors should never be left out in such programs (Greenberg & Colquitt, 2005).

Summary of key findings

Previous research on employee engagement reveals that there is a positive correlation between productivity and engagement. Therefore, it is in the best interest of an organisation to ensure that engagement is a top priority (Durkin, 2007). Additionally, one must realise that employees are intrinsically and extrinsically motivated. One must measure these two types of facets during the process of assessment (Shaffer, 2004).

Research shows that financial difficulties, poor governance structures, bureaucratic relationships and low morale all act as challenges to proper employee engagement (Schmidt et al., 2001). Business owners must, therefore, lead by example, offer ample resources for work, give their employees a voice, and offer them advancement opportunities if they wish to improve employee engagement (Murlis & Schubert, 2001).

Methodology

This research will employ a quantitative approach because the research question is something that can be measured (Schindler et al., 2006). The association between employee engagement and its drivers is something can be quantified. Aside from that, several quantitative studies exist, and this justifies the use of such a method. Additionally, this is more of a confirmatory analysis rather than an exploratory one.

Quantitative methodologies are always appropriate when confirming hypothesis rather than creating them (Caulkin, 2001). Time constraints also necessitate the use of quantitative research as it does not require too much attention to detail like qualitative research.

The research approach

The independent variables in this research include quality of work, tangible rewards, growth opportunities, an enabling environment, inspiration values, work-life balance. The dependent variable in all the cases is employee engagement.

If a positive correlation is found between the dependent and independent variable, then one can assert that the independent variable is a driver and if the opposite is true then it will be ruled out as a driver for employee engagement. It should be noted that tangible rewards include things such as benefits, pay and recognition awards.

Growth opportunities include career advancement as well as learning and development (Csikentmihalyi, 1990). An enabling environment is one in which the proper tools, processes and information are available. Inspiration values denote leadership, recognition and organisational values. Work life balance refers to the income security, social environment and the ability of a company to recognise an employees life cycle needs.

Quality of work refers to the workload, sense of achievement and work relationships in the enterprise. These traits were suggested by the Murlis & Schubert (2001). It will be imperative to identify them first before asking employees to give their views. This will create more structure in the research.

The research strategy and the time horizon

The first step in the research was to identify the variables involved. These have been mentioned in earlier portions of the paper. Thereafter, the type of data needed was determined, and this included the six independent and one dependent objective. The best data collection was chosen and this was the use of questionnaires.

Later on, samples were selected from an existing institution through stratified sampling. Thereafter data was collected and analysed. The time horizon for the research was six months because ample time was needed to collect the samples and to follow the protocol needed to respond to the queries (Leedy, 1997).

The participants

The participants were members of an anonymous organisation that has one hundred and twelve workers. Since the company had various departments, it was essential to select members from each department in order to minimise biases that may arise out of ones work area.

This is the reason why the research used stratified sampling. All the subjects were selected in a way that would ensure equal representation and equal numbers from the department. 5 members from each of the six departments resulted in a total number of 30 participants.

The research instruments

Questionnaires were the main research instruments in this survey. The research questions were framed in such a manner that would allow the candidates to select one of the five points in a Likert scale. They has to select one of these choices: Agree, Disagree, Strongly disagree, Strongly agree and Do not agree or Disagree (Anderson et al., 1998).

Ethical Considerations

Participants should not feel obligated to participate in the research. They should receive informed consent and this should only take place when they are sure about their role in the research. Since the research involves collecting sensitive information, then the respondents anonymity needs to be maintained; it would be unethical to jeopardise their jobs for the research (Kraut, 2006).

Individual responses will not be singled out in this research. As a researcher, one needs to avoid bias by manipulating results. Additionally, one should select the right methodology in order to avoid biases in the sample. It would also be wrong to use the information found in the research in order to manipulate findings in the future.

Conducting the primary research

The research was carried out among thirty participants in an anonymous organisation. To protect the jobs of the subjects, this report will not mention their institution or their names. After ensuring that the percentage of workers representing the various departments was alright, one week was selected for carrying out the interviews. Each day involved an analysis of six candidates.

Prior to the actual data collection, the key concepts were first described. Participants were told about employee engagement and also about the six variables. Thereafter, they were expected to select the drivers that mattered to them.

After obtaining the information, a tabulation was done and then a histogram created to indicate whether the employees thought that the six variables were drivers of employee engagement (Hussey & Collis, 2003).

Analysis of the data

Data analysis was done through the use of histograms. Shown below is a summary of the key findings.

The limitations of the research

The research only relied on survey questionnaires as a source of information. No qualitative analysis of employees opinion was done in order to determine their perceptions of drivers of employee engagement (Viswesvaran & Cooper Hakim, 2005).

Furthermore, because the research was based on preset answers in the questionnaire, employees were limited to the choices that the researcher had made during questionnaire design. There could have been other factors that were overlooked in the research process, yet employees were not allowed to give their suggestions. The independent variables in the research were multifaceted.

In other words, one variable represented a myriad of other factors that employees might consider as potential drivers. Although all participants knew what the variables represented, a number of them may have been prompted to select one answer over another because of a minor characteristic.

For instance, an employee may state that work balance does not affect his or her employee engagement simply because of the fact that he does not value work relationships. Additionally, some employees may not necessarily understand the concept of employee engagement.

All the responses are dependent on their interpretation of the term. However, to minimise this problem, the researcher made a point of explaining to all participants what employee engagement was. Thereafter, they had to pick on the factors that they thought led to that situation.

Summary of key findings

In the research it was found that the key drivers of change are quality of work, tangible rewards, growth opportunities, enabling environment, inspiration values and work life balance. The histogram was skewed towards agree and strongly agree. It is likely that some employees were uncertain about quality of work because they did not understand the parameter fully.

References

Anderson, H., Hair, J., Black, W. & Tatham, R. (1998). Multivariate data analysis. NJ: Prentice Hall

Bakker, A., Schaufeli, W. & Gonzalez, V. (2006). Burnout and work engagement: independent factors or opposite poles? Journal of vocational behaviour, 68, 166-173

Bakker, A., Schaufeli, W. & Salanova, M. (2006). The measurement of work engagement with a short questionnaire: a cross-national study. Educational and psychological measurement, 66, 701-716

Becker, T., Meyer, J. & Vandenberge, C. (2004). Employee commitment and motivation: an integrative and conceptual analysis model. Applied Psychology Journal, 89, 991-1007

Borman, W. (2004). The concept of organisational citizenship. Current directions in psychological science, 13, 238-241

Caulkin, S. (2001). The change agenda. London: CIPD

Conway, N. & Coyle Shapiro, J. (2005). Exchange relationships: Examining psychological contracts and perceived organisational support. Applied Psychology Journal, 90, 774-781

Csikentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: the psychology of optimal experience. NY: Harper and Row

Durkin, D. (2007). How loyalty and employee engagement add up to corporate profits. Chief Learning officer, 6(11), 30-34

Eisenberger, R. & Rhoades, L. (2002). Perceived organisational support. Applied Psychology, 87, 698-714

Greenberg, J. & Colquitt, J. (2005). Handbook of organisational justice. NJ: Erlbaum

Harter, L., Gilson, R., May, D. (2004). The psychological conditions of meaningfulness, safety and availability and the engagement of the human spirit at work. Occupational and Organisational Psychology, 77, 11-37

Hui, I., Sun, H., Frick, J. & Tam, A. (2000). Employee involvement and quality management. The TQM magazine, 12(5), 350-354

Hussey, R. & Collis, J. (2003). Business research. Basingstoke: Palgrave

Kraut, A. (2006). Getting action from organisational surveys. San Francisco: Jossey Bass

Leedy, P. (1997). Practical research planning and design. NJ: Prentice hall

Macey, W., Schneider, B. & Barbera, K. (2009). Driving customer satisfaction and financial success through employee engagement. People and strategy, 32(2), 23-27

Maslach, C., Leiter, M. & Schaufeli, W. (2001). Job burnout. Annual Psychology Review, 52, 397-422

MatzCosta, C. & Pitt Catsouphes, M. (2008). The multigenerational workforce; workforce engagement and flexibility. Community, family and work, 111(2), 215-229

Murlis, H. & Schubert, P. (2001). Engage employees and boost performance. Working paper, 1-30

Rama Devi, V. (2009). Employee engagement is a two-way street. Human resource management international digest, 17(2), 3-4

Ruddy, T., Gilson, L. & Mathieu, J. (2006). Empowerment and team effectiveness: an empirical test of an integrated model. Applied Psychology Journal, 91, 97-108

Shaffer, J. (2004). Measurable payoff. Communication world, 21(4), 22-27

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Schmidt, F.. Hayes, T. & Harter, J. (2002). Business unit level relationship between employee satisfaction. Employee engagement and business outcomes. Applied Psychology Journal, 87, 269-279

Snyder, C. & Lopez, S. (2002). Handbook of positive psychology. Oxford: OUP

Towwers-Perrin, W. (2003). Working Today: understanding what drives employee engagement. Stanford: Author publishers.

Viswesvaran, C. & Cooper Hakim, A. (2005). The construct of work commitment: testing an integrative framework. Psychological bulletin, 131, 241-259

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Introduction

Flexible working is a policy practiced by many businesses with its employees in terms of working time, location and pattern of work (Budd 2004). Flexible working arrangement (FWA), according to the employment act 2002, indicates that all employees have a statuary right to request for a flexible working arrangement with the employer (Befort and Budd 2009).

This should follow specific procedures, which must be adhered to. It is a crime for an employer to refuse or dismiss any attempt of the employee requesting for flexible working arrangements (Hrcouncil, 2010).

However, the policy should only cater for all employees who meet certain criteria set inorder to apply for a flexible working arrangement. The policy also mandates the employer to dismiss any FWA, which may turn out not to be cost effective to the company (Dontigney 2011).

Discussion: Key considerations in the development of a flexible working policy

Proper guidelines

The first consideration when introducing FWA in a company is to set up proper guidelines, which employees must follow for the success of the program implementation (Ackers and Wilkinson 2005). There is also need to first address on all business needs and to make sure that all the new steps are compatible with the existing company objectives.

Clear guidelines on the application process, reversibility and any change on the employee status should be properly set to avoid future confusion and misunderstanding (Salamon 2000).

Moreover, the company should clearly formalize basic guidelines primarily to head off any complains coming from employees concerning favourism or any form of unfair treatment. This will ensure success of FWA to both the company and the employees.

Training

Another key factor to consider when implementing the FWA is to make sure that all employees are trained and educated about the policies, which they should be comfortable with (Referenceforbusiness.com 2011). This should be occasionally practiced by any company, which actively practice FWA program.

The major objective of this training is to make sure that all employees operate and participate in such an initiative manner that will not hurt the company and their careers. Although many people regard those who enroll to FWA to be committing career suicide, its the mandate of the company to make arrangements for such training programs (Referenceforbusiness.com 2011).

Control

Ultimately, most companies will only tolerate this FWA if it benefits the companies financial and production goals. In this aspect, there is need to ensure that the program is maintained at whatever costs.

Considerably, it is indeed the duty of companies managers to ensure that despite the offer, all business considerations remained paramount to all other options. Notable to mention is that, employees and work teams can be helpful when it comes to shaping and Setting up flexible proper guidelines at all costs to ensure the success of FWA program is attained (Referenceforbusiness.com 2011).

Evaluations

The other major consideration, which must be implemented for the success of FWA, is to ensure that evaluation is exercised on a regular basis (Businesslink.gov.uk 2010). It is the responsibilities of business managers and owners to conduct continuous evaluation processes.

Such evaluations with time will provide basic information accounting for the progress of the program, just to secure the business and also promote FWA. In an example, some companies may launch very good FWA without frequent evaluations. In such incidents, they end up losing the both the business progress and the effectiveness of the program due to neglect (Referenceforbusiness.com 2011).

Advantages and disadvantages of such policies

Advantages

It has been proved that the implementation of FWA has reduced absenteeism in many companies and workplaces (Businesslink.gov.uk 2010). FWA is also considered to be legitimate business rationale, which not only has it managed to strengthen employees commitment, but also gives them full mandate to clear out any situation that can lead to absenteeism.

Moreover, FWA also creates a venue for the business to increase employees loyalty. This in fact, FWA also develops a positive impact on the productivity of employees who are capable of attending to family needs and at the same time concentrates on employment duties.

Disadvantages

Though FWA has many apparent advantages, various critics have emerged to point out all the possible negative impacts it has on businesses. First, it is good to note that FWA will never be appropriate for all employees. The in and out movements of employees at different hours again is not cost effective to the company.

Moreover, the customers may suffer when being attended to by two or three people at two or three hours interval (Referenceforbusiness.com 2011). Incase of a factory operation, it is the manufacturing sector that suffers most.

This is because; it is obvious that operators always depend on each other support for the efficiency in output manufacturing. Finally, critics also point out that manager suffers most whenever FWA is implemented. This is because they have a difficult time when it comes to equality especially when considering who goes and at what time (Referenceforbusiness.com 2011).

Unionized and a non-unionized workplace

The most fundamental difference between unionized and non-unionized workplaces as afar as the employees relations is concerned is that; when it comes to payment, unionized workers have higher wages than the un-unionized workers. For example, currently in Canada the wages of unionized workers is $20.29 an hour while those who arent in any union earn $17.22 per hour.

This basically means that, there is the union wage advantage which is about 40% more than un-unionized workers. Moreover, it good to mention that gender balancing in terms of wages is strictly considered in unionized work places. This is evident in Canada, where women in unionized workplaces earn 89% of the wages earned by men as compared to low 79% earned by women in un-unionized work places.

However, employees working in non-unionized work places also enjoy several benefits those in unionized work places dont. For example, when it comes to promotion the boss can decide to promote any worker based on the workers ability and potential (Dontigney 2011). Contrary, for unionized workplaces, the time the employee stays in employment is the key consideration before anyone is promoted.

Finally, it is good to point out that unionized workplaces suffer most whenever their unions impose fees and dues to all its workers (Acas.org.uk 2011). This is never experienced for non unionized employees, who avoid such costs potentially boosting their total take home wages (Dontigney 2011).

On the basis of job security for un-unionized work place, the future security of the job lies at the mercy of the boss. At anytime, one can get fired. Often, if an employee has any grievance or complain the only option is to talk about it with the manger first and then it is upon the same manager to either accept, ignore it or even punish the worker for raising such an issue.

This is perceived differently in unionized work places. For instance, workers dont have to face the boss to express their issues its the responsibility of the union to hire representatives who will always ensure that they support individual workers when treated unfairly.

Most unions do offer varieties of short courses and training to boost their members general knowhow. Again most unions involve in many activities such as community services, all in the name of making working condition better for all employees. In many occasions, most unions have been in the fore front to pressurize employers and the government to adjust and increase salaries for their workers.

The same union also takes responsibilities of advising the government and other employers not to overwork people and also set the minimal amount a person can earn as salary.

This is different in un-unionized institutions, where the boss dictates over the working hours and salaries. This is so because they dont have recognized voice to fight for them. Therefore, exploitation is exhibited and anyone who tries to speak is immediately fired.

Conclusion

In todays business world, flexible working and telecommuting for the employees continue to grow, in large measure because it is evident that most businesses that introduce them continue to prosper and simultaneously improving the life of their employees. In my opinion, it really pays for one to join any union. This is basically for the benefit of workers who will be stronger especially when they face management, they will never be alone.

References

Acas. 2011, NonUnion Representation Text. Web.

Ackers, P and Wilkinson, A 2005, British Industrial Relations Paradigm: A Critical Outline History and Prognosis Journal of Industrial Relations.

Befort, S F and Budd JW 2009, Invisible Hands, Invisible Objectives: Bringing Workplace Law and Public Policy into Focus, Stanford University Press, California.

Businesslink. 2010, Flexible working  the law and best practice. Web.

Budd, J W 2004, Employment with a Human Face: Balancing Efficiency, Equity, and Voice, Cornell University Press, New York.

Dontigney, E 2011, The Advantages of a Non-Unionized Workplace. Web.

Hrcouncil.ca 2010, HR Policies & Employment Legislation. Web.

Referenceforbusiness. 2011, Flexible work arrangements. Web.

Salamon, M 2000, Industrial Relations: Theory and Practice, Prentice Hall, New Jersey.

The process of sharing a companys vision and goals is important to motivate employees to participate in work activities. This stage is essential for a growing company as employees may be unaware of the organizations vision, and it should be shared effectively. The purpose of this paper is to provide summaries of recent sources in which this problem is discussed in detail.

Folkmans 8 Ways to Ensure Your Vision Is Valued

In his article, Folkman analyzes specific strategies that can be applied by employers to guarantee that their visions are valued and followed by their employees. According to Folkman, workers need to understand how their activities or performance can contribute to the development and vision of the company. Referring to data from more than 50,000 employees, the author of the article explains eight ways to make a companys vision effectively shared, meaningful, and actively followed. These strategies include communicating the vision through several different channels, making the vision motivating, and making it contribute to employee satisfaction. The problem that many companies have when trying to get employees to follow the vision is that the vision is not communicated or shared appropriately. All leaders need to participate in this sharing process (Folkman). More approaches include a focus on innovation, employees concentration on actions while being guided by managers, and a focus on the openness and integrity of company leaders. Furthermore, it is also critical to make sure that companies quickly respond to employees needs based on their vision; by doing so, the associated benefits can be easily observed.

Harrisons Employee Alignment: The Secret Sauce to Success

The problem of employee alignment based on sharing organizational visions, values, and goals, as well as communicating with employees and developing commitment, is discussed in Harrisons article. The author provides several examples of how it is possible to ensure employee alignment by focusing on accentuating the visions, missions, and goals of an organization. In her examples, Harrison refers to the experience of Andre Lavoie, the CEO of ClearCompany. According to the article, leaders need to deliver messages directly to receivers, align everyday activities and tasks with the general goals of the company, and ensure that employees know and are committed to the organizations aims. Besides, it is also important not to organize weekly meetings in situations where all employees share the companys goals and have demonstrated their commitment (Harrison). However, it is necessary to provide employees with feedback to discuss their strengths. Finally, to achieve employee alignment, leaders need to support transparency in the company.

Lavoies How to Engage Employees Through Your Company Vision Statement

The purpose of Lavoies article is to provide three recommendations on how to motivate and involve employees with the help of a companys vision. The author emphasizes the idea that the formulation of clear and effective vision statements is essential to leading a company to success because it creates engaged and motivated employees (Lavoie). According to the author, employees should not only learn a companys mission, vision, and goals but should also follow them while being engaged in the process. Therefore, leaders need to reformulate their vision statements to accentuate the goals that should be achieved by employees. Furthermore, a good vision statement needs to be visible, and Lavoie discusses how this vision should be related to all employees of the company. It is also important to apply the practice of storytelling, with a focus on sharing stories of success, to guarantee that all employees know their companys vision. These approaches are discussed by Lavoie as an effective means of attracting employees and making them more involved in the process of working on strategic goals as a result of the shared vision.

Martin et al.s The Importance of Inspiring a Shared Vision

In their article, Martin et al. focus on identifying specific advantages of promoting a shared vision concerning the role of the leader in this process. The researchers conducted a mixed-methods study based on collecting data with the help of interviews and protocols. It is important to note that as a result of their research, the authors have some interesting details to discuss. When employees are concentrated on the shared vision, they follow organizational goals more effectively, and their commitment to the company is also high. Leaders need to pay much attention to using the vision as a way to orient employees, help them interact with each other, and help them participate in organizational transformations (Martin et al. 7). The researchers conclude that a vision shared in any company could be viewed as an effective driving force to make employees more focused on achieving the companys goals while working as a team.

The paper has presented summaries of four sources that can be used while selecting effective methods of sharing a companys visions and goals with its employees quickly and efficiently. The authors ideas are reviewed in detail so that these notes can be used for further research on the problem.

Works Cited

Folkman, Joseph. 8 Ways to Ensure Your Vision Is Valued. Forbes. 2014. Web.

Harrison, Kate. Employee Alignment: The Secret Sauce to Success. Forbes. 2014. Web.

Lavoie, Andre. How to Engage Employees Through Your Company Vision Statement. Entrepreneur. 2017. Web.

Martin, Jacqueline, et al. The Importance of Inspiring a Shared Vision. International Practice Development Journal, vol. 4, no. 2, 2014, pp. 1-15. Web.

The International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation, with headquarters in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and markets computer hardware and software, and offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas ranging from mainframe computers to nanotechnology.

In IBM employees typically undergo intensive training to ensure that they fulfill their roles and duties according to the standards of the organization. In addition, learning, motivation and growth pathways ensure that all IBM staff gain the expertise and skills required to ensure that IBM becomes competitive with its competitors.

In this relation, IBM has also adopted Schulers et al model (Schuler et al., 2008). IBM considers exogenous and endogenous variables when designing global strategic business companies by implementing the business. Industry and national characteristics are exogenous factors, while some of the endogenous factors include international business structure, organizational structure, strategic strategies and experience of international management.

IBM’s strong awareness about its business environment both internally and externally played a key role in ensuring the implementation of productive and successful solutions that made it competitive in the short and long run.

Some years back IBM started to get complain about their onboarding process.This particular process set intial foundation of employee engagement, whem employee joins the organization.

At first, they felt they should only rework their traditional orientation classes. However, when they asked new workers about their ‘fresh and better’ on-board experience, their feedback was a wake-up call. There was a major difference between the perspectives of the IBM HR team (which produced the classes) and the enthusiasm of the employees. The blue chip’s clunky method has not impressed new hires and frustrated them.

Speedy implementation of aI solutions aims to threaten jobs and update current HR services. The AIS solutions are now being developed. Leading companies are searching for IP to help develop individualized employee education systems through applicant discovery.

Technology vendors and consultancies are racing to provide new AI-enhanced talent solutions to support workplace transformation. IBM has deployed products in the cognitive field for years with its Watson solutions. Now IBM’s Global Business Services group has introduced a new set of talent and workplace transformation solutions called the IBM Talent & Transformation service. It’s a new business designed to help companies navigate the coming challenges and opportunities associated with AI and automation. IBM’s offering provides new services, AI tools and related training initiatives. AI can complement employee skills, redefine tasks, and increase productivity, but that requires training, development and new ways of working.

IBM uses artificial intelligence to generate suggestions/advices, starting with employees’ profiles, which include prior and current roles, expected career trajectory, and training programs completed. The company has also created special training for agile environments.it is using, for example, animated simulations built around a series of ‘personas’ to illustrate useful behaviors, such as offering constructive criticism.

IBM is also embracing agile talent practices and are giving a lot thought to how employees experience the workplace and in some aspects, handling them like customers.

But it has required a shift in mindset. Before, we tended to rely on experts to build our HR programs. Now we bring employees into the design process, co-create with them, and iterate over time so that we meet people’s needs.

IBM also relying more heavily on technology to find and track candidates who are well suited to an agile work environment.

To keep things moving, the team focuses on vacancies that have cleared all the hurdles, no requisite get started if debate is still ongoing about the desired attributes of candidates. Openings are ranked, and the team concentrates on the top-priority hires until they are completed. It works on several hires at once so that members can share information about candidates who may fit better in other roles. The team keeps track of its cycle time for filling positions and monitors all open requisitions on a Kanban board to identify bottlenecks and blocked processes.

The constant changes and demands in businesses requires a fluid workforce which can adapt according to the changes. A challenge for the organisations is to engage, develop, and build loyalty among the employees to gain a competitive edge in today’s global marketplace (Taneja, Sewell 2015). An application of totalitarian management, unlike the previous decades, cannot be applied in current businesses as the managers require a two-way collaboration for decision making and delivering results (Markos & Sridevi 2010). This has led businesses to focus on the needs and requirements of employees in order to create a more efficient and productive workforce. Studies in the field of organizational productivity imply that efficiency and productivity of employees lie within their ability ,commitment and the relationship with managers (Markos & Sridevi 2010). Managerial behaviors impact employee engagement, which is the reason managers are considered drivers of engagement.

Background

Managers are the drivers for employee engagement, which becomes important for them to understand what employee engagement actually means. Currently, there is no single, universally accepted definition of employee engagement (Bridger 2018, p. 1). But based on related research, it is defined as harnessing the individual self with the work role and indicated that the more employees align themselves with work roles, the more they will be motivated toward achieving performance excellence. (Bridger 2018, p. 1). Engagement relates to respect, recognition, trust all relate to engagement at various levels between managers and employees. Studies have shown that such behaviors are important for managers to drive employees for better performance. (Dasgupta 2014).

Method

The business report presents the impact of managerial behaviors and methodologies impacting employee engagement in organizations.The primary sources of data include peer-reviewed articles, case studies, and organizational & market surveys. The secondary sources used were ebooks, scholarly blogs, and other articles from the internet that are used as a part of the research. The approach used to formulate this report was researching and dissecting a given article for information required and its application when necessary. The research was performed using the university library database, search engines like Google Scholar and the data sourced from scholarly blogs from the internet.

Literature Review

Engagement is considered as an asset by the organizations as it benefits in various dimensions and can be a tool for competitive edge due to its impact on productivity. In this segment, the review is done at the individual level, organizational level along with an approach to increase engagement. Understanding the managerial behaviors impacting engagement requires an in-depth understanding of engagement at an individual level. The cognitive and psychological conditions have to be met by the managers in order to address the factors that drive engagement. (Joseph & Rogelberg 2013). These conditions significantly impact the engagement levels of employees(Rooney, Gottlieb, & Newby-Clark, 2009). Their application requires managers to address psychological meaningfulness, safety, and availability to fully engage employees in their work role, which are the aspects relating to the psychological safety of an individual (Joseph & Rogelberg 2013).

The engagement at the organisational level relates to understanding the organizational factors(drivers) that impact engagement in employees. In this analysis, Aon Hewitt’s model is used to derive and analyze the engagement drivers at the organisational level. According to this model, there are six main drivers, which are termed as engagement drivers in an organization (Merry, J. 2014). These drivers relate to organizational as well as managerial contributions. The application of drivers as a part of engagement will result in three behaviors from employees which can be an indication of employee engagement in the organization. (Merry, J. 2014)

1. Say – When employees say positively regarding their peers, team members, and stakeholders involved with the organization.
2. Stay – The sense of belonging and a sense of attachment to the organization shown by employees.
3. Strive – The motivation by employees to assert efforts toward their job in order to positively contribute to the success of the organization.

Managers can reflect upon these three behaviors and their demonstrations by employees to reflect their engagement levels.. :

The managerial behaviors required to increase employee engagement in organizations require understanding the needs and drivers of engagement for employees. This relates to what employees want from the organization, how they want, why they want and to provide it in a proper way to keep them committed to the organization. The main needs are studied based on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and based on it, the engagement analysis is done(Kelleher 2013, p. 53)

The needs of the employees in the organization are mapped based on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and the role of the manager is to constantly monitor and to make sure the employee’s basic physiological needs are provided which is essential to complete a given task. (Borysenko 2017). Safety relates to personal safety and workplace safety, which covers the physical and psychological safety relating to their place in the organisation. The manager has control over the cognitive aspects of the employee which relates to coordination and conformance to the employee about his/her importance in the workplace. A positive work culture among teams requires managers to provide employees a sense of belonging in the workplace. Providing trust, support, productive conflict, psychological safety would be fostered on the team to get to the best outcome of the efforts. The recognition of the contributions to the workplace by the manager increases the self-esteem of employees. (Kelleher 2013, p.53). Recognition is a key part of engagement and is considered as a tool to optimize the contribution of employees as it directly relates to their self-esteem. (Kelleher 2013, p.53). The manager’s job is to help employees realize that employees are best in what they do and it aligns with maximizing their true potential, which is defined as self-actualization and is the final level of the hierarchy. Successful engagement in a team requires the fulfillment of these needs by the managers along with developing an engaged culture in an organization.

Analysis of issues and problems

Understanding Engagement Levels

Although the benefits emanating from the engaged workforce have been established by research over the years, the supposed negative outcomes of disengagement cannot be overlooked. There are three levels of employee engagement in the workplace: the actively engaged, disengaged, and actively disengaged. (Hundley & Drizin 2014) Actively engaged are the ones who are highly committed and their commitment reflects high levels of performance, a drive for innovation and efficiency. The disengaged are the ones who complete their tasks but are unenthusiastic and are not fully committed to a given task and are only driven by money. (Rastogi et al 2018) The actively disengaged employees are those who actively negative and voice their displeasure in the workplace and are considered as damaging to the workplace environment and impacting motivation levels of the team. (Hundley & Drizin 2014). The application of different employee engagement approaches by the manager relates to the consideration of individual levels of the employee. A problem that an organization faces is the reliance on monotonous approaches to various engagement levels of employees. The plans and visions developed for employee engagement are considered taking into consideration that levels of engagement are bare minimum and these actions are applied even for actively engaged employees. (Luthans et al 2002). The monotonous approach of employee engagement also relates to its classification. The engagement is a broad domain and employee engagement can be different for a job profile and the engagement can be different for the organization. This relates to the clarity of intended action for organizations and managers who are accountable when such plans fail to deliver the desired outcome as planned by the organization. (Luthans et al 2002).

Formulations of engagement policies

A problem surrounding employee engagement relates to the understanding of the engagement levels and deploying steps to increase it. Human Resources are responsible for the engagement procedures and policies implemented in the organization based on the observable behaviors while discounting the underlying psychological mechanisms at play (Saks 2017). The cognitive and psychological levels of employees are understood by the manager, but the task of the manager is to work and follow the integrated process to achieve organizational growth, The main aim is organizational growth through employee engagement, but employee engagement requires more than just a step of procedures(Saks 2017). It requires due-diligence for human resources rather than due care. This relates to deploying the psychological and behavioral aspects and finding them in a given candidate and selecting them based on it. A list of proven personality aspects includes Social Potency and Achievement Orientation related to engagement. (Albrecht et al 2015 ). A task that is required and formulated by the manager based on employees’ aspects, is in fact deployed by the human resources in organizations and is the major cause of disengagement in organizations. (Albrecht et al 2015)

Lack of Communication Transparency

Employees in an organization can be retained by three Rs, namely, reward, recognition, and respect, which are considered as important factors that influence the manager-employee relationship. (Kundu & Lata 2017). The importance of communication is a catalyst that drives trust in managers. The lack of transparency cascades to a lack of trust in employees. The problem that a manager faces is the concept of transparency perceived in an organization. A manager can be transparent in collaboration and decision making but senior management and cross-functional communication may relate to a lesser extent of transparency with employees. A study conducted in 2017 states that ‘24% of employees ‘feel strongly connected to their co-workers”’. But the response was different at the organizational level. (TinyPulse 2017,p. 5) The responses were negative for the organization except for their teams. The major reason was despite the manager’s best efforts to engage employees, external factors such as senior management and their coordination with employees lead to problems for managers. This problem relates to the psychological perceptions of employees based on behaviors by employees excluding their team. The way they are treated as a whole also signifies the shortcomings of a concrete organizational culture and something cannot be controlled.

Identification of Solutions

The managerial problems identified require focus as these problems can adversely impact the engagement levels in teams. The problem relating to understanding engagement levels requires a concrete cognitive method for managers to focus on levels of each individual. One of the solutions is taking a survey among employees backed with benchmark data to receive an accurate measurement of engagement levels. This method,despite its advantages does not take into account the other background and personal factors which affect the psychological behaviors of employees (Xi et al 2017). Another method is the self-efficacy method undertaken by the manager for measuring self-appraisal of an employee’s ability to cope with work demands, given the resources they possess. This method does not require additional resources and efforts as it relates to implementing the available resources for managers.

The formulation of engagement policies requires a concrete analysis of each individual’s physical and psychological condition in organisation. The approach followed in implementing policies is the top-down approach, which starts from senior management and is implemented based on overview of employee behaviors and patterns. A recommended method is the bottom-up approach, starting with implementation from employees and teams, and gradually moving forwards in hierarchy. This method is pragmatic and it focuses on engagement in each individual and it requires a shorter time frame for its implementation.(Malcolm 2018).

The communicational transparency requires communicational flow across the hierarchy of organisational structure. This requires a framework for organisational communication, which relates to consideration and communication among the individuals. This approach requires a long time frame, but would provide necessary engagement among employees.(Dasgupta, Suar, & Singh 2014).

Discussion of preferred solutions

Implementing the Self-efficacy Theory

The engagement levels of an employee are different and the identification of these levels is required, which results in a directive effort based on the levels. (Chaudhary 2014) A perceived solution for identification of engagement levels is the self-efficacy theory. This theory relates to individuals’ belief in their capabilities to achieve a given task under a given set of conditions. It reflects confidence in the ability to exert control over one’s own motivation, behavior, and social environment (Xi et al 2017). The concept can be used as an organizing factor for the team by managers. This relates to self-efficacy as a means to measure the level of employee commitment and engagement to a given task. Each individual has different engagement levels, which can be measured through the concept of self-efficacy (Lippke 2017). The relationship between self- efficacy and the three dimensions of employee engagement (vigor, dedication, absorption) is studied and proven in organizations (Xi et al 2017). Self-efficacy beliefs affect the choice and the amount of challenge and commitment to personal goals. Self-efficacy, as a measure can be increased in team members through various ways through training and professional development practices, improved managerial leadership and mentoring practices, and to exhibit confidence in team members (OVP Management Consultancy Group 2018). The implementation of self-efficacy as a part of managerial behavioral practices would be an important indication of individual engagement levels of team-members and also would help to increase the efficiency of the group.

Approaches to deploying engagement

The engagement policies and practices are developed and implemented by the senior management and not the managers of the team. The reason why this approach is not effective is the policies are formulated based on organizational challenges and problems focusing at an organisational level and not an individual level (Nolan 2011). Each team member as a part of the team has different experience and engagement levels, which are meant to be addressed individually by the manager, but it is the senior management who decides the common addressing factors to individuals, which reflects disengagement and minor impact on the solutions to be addressed (Nolan 2011). A preferred solution is to implement a bottom-up approach while implementing employee-engagement policies and frameworks. (McPolin 2017) There are numerous positives of such an approach. As employee engagement is an individual experience-driven in part by personal values and what is important in a job, the solution has to be personalized. Along with this, the employee also gets feedback on the individual level of what drives disengagement in this approach (McPolin 2017). With the awareness in the individual’s engagement levels, it opens the door for change to managers(Bakker 2017). The way of addressing and detecting the individual engagement levels is through data-driven surveys and frameworks which are proven effective. In a nutshell, the bottom-up approach relates to engagement within the team, gaining momentum to re-engage employees and reflect their contribution to the team along with the decrease in managerial efforts to coordinate engagement. (McPolin 2017)

Implementing Organisational Transparency:

Organisational transparency is communication of information to employees,keeping employees in the loop , as they foster the organisation. Proponents of organisational transparency say it can lead to improvements, innovation and can foster a deeper sense of trust with employees and shareholders. Transparent organizational communication includes three elements: participation, accountability, and substantial information. Participation refers to involving stakeholders in identifying the information needed to make accurate decisions. Transparency cannot satisfy the stakeholders’ needs unless an organization understands their information needs. Accountability holds organizations accountable for their behaviors and words. Substantial information involves providing truthful, substantial, and useful information to the relevant parties. (Jiang. & Luo 2018). Organizational transparency would lead to a decrease in mistrust among employees, increased collaboration, and fosters innovation. A strong managerial leadership is required to indulge transparency, as there are some drawbacks of organisational transparency which can backfire for an organisation. The implementation requires alignment of employee-goals with organisational goals and values, which results in higher engagement among individuals to organisation. High levels of engagement and organizational transparency foster increased psychological safety and help generate a safe environment to produce maximum results beneficial for an organisation. (Finnegan 2017, p10)

Conclusion

The given report analyses the managerial behaviors that impact employee engagement in organizations. The analysis is done and the problems are identified as a part of the managerial practices and behaviors. Managers are considered as drivers of employee engagement in an organisation, and the analysis done covers the dimensions required for a manager to detect and increase workplace engagement. The use of various frameworks and methods is done for workplace engagement and the relevant solutions and recommendations are formulated based on it.

Abstract

In our modern day and age everyone has heard of employee engagement in one way or another. As a HR professional I have been bombarded with numerous employee engagement platforms, survey providers and consultants. However up until recently there have been very minimal empirical studies that looked objectively at the possible connection between employee engagement and an organisation’s performance. In this literature review first, I looked at the brief history of engagement research. In the second part of this literature review focused on empirical studies that looked into the links between employee engagement and intention to turnover. The reviewed literature indicates that there is a strong connection between these to dimensions.

Brief History of Employee Engagement Research

There are studies that indicate that due to disengaged employees US businesses lose USD300 billion in a year (Ram & Prabhakar, 2011). As a Human Resources professional employee engagement is a fascinating and fundamentally important topic. The topic of employee engagement caught the attention of practitioners and academics likewise (Truss, Delbridge, Alfes, Shantz, & Soane, 2014).

The original reason why the topic of engagement became so fascinating within the academic and practitioner circles are not quite clear, but it is speculated that a number of changes that were taking place in the working culture had important roles, especially the “post liberalisation, privatisation, globalisation era” (Sahoo & Sahu, 2009).

Schaufeli reasons, that these changes required significant psychological capabilities, such as adaptation, assertiveness etc. This motion resulted in what was called ‘psychologization’ which means that employees in our day and age have to bring “their entire person to the workplace” (Schaufeli W. B., 2014). Based on the above, work engagement fits in well with positive psychology – “the scientific study of positive human functioning and flourishing on multiple levels that include the biological, personal, relational, institutional, cultural, and global dimensions of life’ (Seligman & Csikszentmihaly, 2000).

In academia, the topic of employee engagement was first studied by Khan in 1990 when he published his paper “Psychological conditions of personal engagement and disengagement at work” (Bach and Edwards, 2013, p336). Khan conducted a research whereby he sought to understand the “self-in-role” process or in other words the degree of physical, cognitive and emotional investment of the individuals who perform their role (Khan, 1990). He claims that physical involvement, cognitive awareness and emotional connections are the means of showing one’s self.

Since Khan’s first publication, academia has been looking at the topic from different points of view, which can mainly can be grouped into 1) cause and 2) effect (Holbeche & Matthews, 2012). Due to this, many different definitions emerged in recent decades.

According to Shaufeli and Bakker (2010) the everyday meaning of engagement constitutes of “involvement, commitment, passion, enthusiasm, absorption, focused effort, and energy.” (Shaufeli, Schaufeli, & Bakker, 2010, p. 11). Even though there isn’t a clear consensus of the definition of engagement, in their literature review they summarise the ways engagement is conceptualised. They say it is made up of 1) organisational commitment or emotional attachment to the organisation and the desire to stay with the organisation; and 2) extra role behaviour (Shaufeli, Schaufeli, & Bakker, 2010, p. 11).

On the other hand, the term itself was generally first credited to the Gallup Organisation in the 1990’s, an organisation that developed the Q12 Gallup’s engagement questionnaire (Truss, Delbridge, Alfes, Shantz, & Soane, 2014, p. 16). According to the Gallup’s ‘State of Global Workforce’ report they define engagement as “employees are highly involved in and enthusiastic about their work and workplace. They are psychological “owners,” drive performance and innovation, and move the organization forward.” (Gallup Inc., 2017, p. 41).

In this paper I will discuss the fundamental ideas of all three of these dimensions, however the manner in which I will review the subject will focus on employee engagement as a whole, or as Baumgardner and Myers defined employee engagement: “the extent to which an employee feels so connected to the work and to the organization that he or she is willing to give discretionary effort to the work at hand. Everyday terms that describe engagement including passion, enthusiasm, connection, flow, and focused effort.” (Baumgardner & Myers, 2012, p. 202).

Performance

There are a number of studies that focus on the links between employee engagement and overall business unit performance. One of these studies was conducted by Blizzard’s in 2005 looking into the relationship between nurse engagement and medical errors (Blizzard, 2005). In the research the standardized mortality and complication indexes were used and in the context of more than 200 hospitals including nurse engagement. In their regression analysis, they identified the nurse engagement as a key factor (Blizzard, 2005) and data showed “ nurse engagement was the number one predictor of mortality variations across hospitals” (Blizzard, 2005). They also found that engagement was a factor in preventing complications.

Arakawa and Greenberg in 2007 studied the relationship between manager optimism, employee engagement and team performance. To conduct this study, they used the Gallup Organisation Q12. They used nine attributes to measure project performance. They included attributes such as whether the requirements were effectively managed, whether they managed to stay within budget, accuracy and quality in project performance, client satisfaction etc. (Arakawa & Greenberg, 2007). Although this was one study, they ran the set of inter-correlations twice, first in 2005 and in 2006. In 2005, retrospective data was made up of 86 employees and 17 managers. They found that employee engagement significantly correlates with project performance. In their 2006 prospective data they reviewed 39 employees and 14 managers, a “subset of the original data with different alignment” (Arakawa & Greenberg, 2007, p. 84). In this second prospective review again employee engagement and project performance correlated (Arakawa & Greenberg, 2007).

In 2009 Xanthopoulou et all. conducted a research in a fast food company, where they examined the reasons behind the variations in work and personal resources are related to daily job engagement and financial performance (Xanthopoulou, Bakker, Demerouti, & Schaufeli, 2009). In their theoretical model they took Bakker and Demerouti’s job demands-resources model (Bakker & Demerouti, 2007). In this model “work engagement is perceived as stable, positive, affective-cognitive psychological state” (Peccei, 2013, p. 339). Their empirical study was based on forty-two employees working across three branches completed a questionnaire and a diary booklet over five consecutive days (Xanthopoulou, Bakker, Demerouti, & Schaufeli, 2009). The data was collected over one month to minimise the shared observation on financial performance. In this study they measured the general work engagement using the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (Schaufeli & Bakker, 2004), which focuses on three dimensions of work engagement: “vigour (e.g. ‘At my work, I feel bursting with energy’); dedication (e.g. ‘I am enthusiastic about my job’); and absorption (e.g. ‘I get carried away when I am working’)” (Xanthopoulou, Bakker, Demerouti, & Schaufeli, 2009, p. 7). The outcome of the study showed that employees, who were generally engaged were more likely to be engaged in their work tasks. On the other hand, the study also revealed a significant negative correlation between work engagement and day-level financial returns, but the authors believe this was due to the fact that engagement acted as a suppressor variable.

Zelles conducted a research to define the impact of employees on the firm’s financial profitability in the knowledge worker age (Zelles, 2015). The author also analysed “the relationship between employee engagement and profitability and other specific intangible indicators such as job satisfaction, employee happiness, absenteeism, inspiration and proudness.” (Zelles, 2015, p. 63). Zeller conducted a survey at information technology firms, funded by owners in the 20’s and 30’s within 10 years of conducting the research. Zelles used the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (Schaufeli & Bakker, 2004), which consisted of 16 statements to assess how employees felt about their work and their work environment (Zelles, 2015) on a 1-6 scale. The higher the score was the higher the work engagement was. The outcome of the research proved the relationship between engagement and traditional measures of profitability, however there wasn’t direct correlation between employee engagement and net profit due to other factors such as product that is being sold, company debt, profit margin, demand etc. (Zelles, 2015).

In a 2017 study Rhaman et al. researched the connections between work engagement, psychological contract and contextualised performance (Rahman, Rehman, Imran, & Aslam, 2017). The author’s hypothesis was based on Khan’s original, 1990 paper and they speculated that ‘there is a positive impact of work engagement on employee’s contextual performance” (Rahman, Rehman, Imran, & Aslam, 2017, p. 1104). They obtained data from ten Pakistani financial sector organisations and by applying simple random sampling they selected 450 respondents. The research used the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (Schaufeli & Bakker, 2004). The result of their study showed that there was a significant correlation between work engagement and contextualised performance. They argued that when employee engagement is present employees tend to participate in decision making and therefore help the organisation to perform to their best potential (Rahman, Rehman, Imran, & Aslam, 2017).

A recent study from 2018 looked at the relationship between key performance indicators, job satisfaction and work engagement (Lepold, Tanzer, & Jimenez, 2018). The authors built their hypothesis around findings that support the belief that employees working in a responsive environment, for example having influence on their KPIs, have high engagement. They surveyed 136 employees of a bank and work engagement was assessed using the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (Schaufeli & Bakker, 2004) that included 9 items. “Results showed that 18% of the variance in work engagement can be explained by professional self-efficacy, influence expectations on economic KPIs, and influence expectations of the branch manager.” (Lepold, Tanzer, & Jimenez, 2018, p. 13).

Turnover Intention

Turnover intention refers to employees’ thoughts of quitting their present job, when employees may choose to withdraw either physically or psychologically (Ram & Prabhakar, 2011). Turnover is strongly linked to “low cost of replacement, possible loss or shortage of explicit tacit knowledge, skills and ability possessed by incumbent employees” (Kim & Hyun, 2017, p. 709). According to Harter et all. (2002), a series of research was based on the above mentioned “positive psychology” movement. A meta-analysis was conducted on data from more than 7,939 business units in 36 companies. It looked at the relationship at the business-unit level between employee engagement and the business unit results of organisation performance, throughout of the dimensions of customer satisfaction, productivity, profit, employee turnover and accidents. Their hypotheses were that employee engagement would have a positive correlation with business-unit results on the above-mentioned attributes and that it will be correlated across the whole business. In terms of methodology, the research used the Gallup Workplace Audit which included an overall satisfaction question and the Q12 questions. They defined employee engagement as “the individual’s involvement and satisfaction with as well as enthusiasm for work” (Harter, Schmidt, & Hayes, 2002). In the analysis they looked at customer satisfaction-loyalty, profitability, turnover, safety and composite performance. Latter is the overall business performance measure. In this study they concluded that employee engagement and satisfaction are related to organisational performance.

In 2010 Shuck conducted a non-experimental, correlation study (Shuck, 2010). The author examined the relationship between employee engagement and intention to turnover. Using the Colarelli’s Intention to Turnover Scale he reported that there was a clear link between employee engagement and intention to turnover. He argued that employees, who feel like their work is meaningful, and are provided with resources to succeed in their roles would less like to resign (Shuck, 2010).

Another research on this topic examined the relationship between employee engagement and employee retention (Ram & Prabhakar, 2011). The authors took a snowball sample of 310 respondents from the hotel industry in Jordan (Ram & Prabhakar, 2011). One of their hypotheses was that employee engagement would positively correlate with, inter alia, organisation citizenship behaviour and negatively with retention. They concluded that “the level of engagement determines whether people are productive and stay with the organization—or quit and perhaps join the competitors” (Ram & Prabhakar, 2011, p. 59).

Bothma and Roodt (2012) conducted a research to investigate the relationship between work engagement and intention to turnover (Botham & Roodt, 2012). The research was based on a sample of 2429 employees, and they used the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale and Turnover Intention Scale (Botham & Roodt, 2012). They found that work-based identity and work engagement are similar predictors of intention of turnover.

Kim and Hyun examined the intermediating effects of work engagement, personal resources and turnover intention within a Korean firm (Kim & Hyun, 2017). Their research was based on Hobfoll’s conversation of resources model from 1989 (Kim & Hyun, 2017) (Kim & Hyun, 2017)n which led them to believe that personal resources and employee engagement feed off of each other, engaged employees use their resources better hence they can stay more positive (Kim & Hyun, 2017). They used 571 validated responses in their study, work engagement was measured by UWES-9 and turnover intention was studied by a three-item measurement by Colaerlli (Kim & Hyun, 2017). The result of the research proved that personal resources (e.g. self-efficacy, organization-based self-esteem and optimism) have a positive effect on work engagement which in turn have a negative effect on turnover.

A recent Taiwanese study explored the links between resilience, abusive supervision, intention to leave and work engagement (Dai, Zhuang, & Huan, 2019). Dai et all. hypothesised that employee resilience has a positive effect on work engagement and it negatively correlates with intention to quit (Dai, Zhuang, & Huan, 2019). They found that higher resilience does indeed have a positive effect on both of these dimension.

Conclusion

Having researched this topic I believe that there is be a positive link between employee engagement and organisational performance since most research point to the same direction and when it comes to everyday practice. Employees who have a meaningful connection with the organisation will have more input and will contribute more to the company’s succession therefor will have an effect on performance.

Having said that it’s important to emphasise that as of yet there isn’t a consistent, proved concept towards employee engagement (Peccei, 2013) and hence the above studies have potentially answered their questions from very different perspectives.

Turnover is an important factor of organisational performance because it can be very costly to replace incumbents and sometimes the knowledge that leaves the business can be even more difficult to develop. There are a number of studies that focused on the specific connection between employee engagement however these studies only focused on specific companies or sector which means findings cannot be perceived as general consensus and employee engagement hasn’t been pinned down as a main predictor of intention to turnover.

For future research it would be interesting to study whether employee engagement has the strongest effect on intention to turnover or are there other dimensions that would worth to focus on.

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ABSTRACT

Employees who are engaged to their job and committed to their firm gives a better competitive advantages to the firm as well as higher productivity so it has become essential for the firm to retain their highly skilled employees. This research, study the practices followed in the firm to engage employees. The objective of the study was to find the factors of engagement, level of satisfaction, organizational inputs and to identify measures for the enhancement of employee engagement. A structured questionnaire was constructed based on the objectives of the study to collect the required data.

Descriptive research design was adopted for the study. Convenience sampling technique has been deployed. The findings of the study shows the factors under employee engagement such as working condition, superior support, organizational support, co-workers support, rewards and recognition and career growth. Some of the main findings include identifying the satisfaction level of employees which leads to employee retention. Further to this, recommendations have also been given by the researcher based on the main findings including how to motivate and retain employees etc. The researcher hopes that the recommendations would help the IT firms to make their employees fully engaged and committed to their firm.

INTRODUCTION

The challenge today for top management in IT industry is not just retaining skilled people, but fully engaging them, and making them committed to the firm at each phase of their work life. Employee engagement has became a critical driver of business success in today’s competitive market place. Engagement not only have the potential to affect employee retention, productivity and loyalty, but it is also a key factor to customer satisfaction and company reputation. The connection between an employee’s work and organizational goals, including understanding the importance of the work to the firm’s success, is the most important driver of employee engagement. Job satisfaction is a term used alternatively with employee engagement and is defined as how an employee feels about his or her job, work environment, pay, benefits, etc. The most common way of measuring the engagement level is the use of rating scales where employees report their reactions to their jobs.

Employee Engagement is a approach resulting in the right conditions for all employees of a firm to give their best each day. It is based on trust, integrity, a two-way commitment and communication between the firm and its employees. It is an approach that increases the chances of success in the business, as a contribution for organizational and individual performance and productivity. Engaged employees will form a part of a firm’s brand and an engaged happy workplace can have a effect on customer retention, hiring of key talent and the ability to attract new customers where a company’s values are crucial to the consumers.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Employee commitment is evidenced by better reward programs, and approaches that will show interest in employee career development. Organizations also need to create ways of recognition of contribution by employees that would help defining what determines employee engagement in order to impove commitment levels ( Sivasubramanian And Rupa, 2017).

The demographic profile of employees has an influence on employees engagement. and organizational inputs and support has an impact on engagement and that committed makes employees more engaged (Gantasala V. Prabhakar and Swetha Reddy, 2016).

Two way communication and transparency across all levels of management are the ways to promote the trust and determine the degree of discretionary effort that comes with a higher level of engagement ( Manjunath.S and Chandni M.C, 2018). (Preeti Thakur, 2014) identified that among the former work motivation could be improved through increased job authority and accountability and at the clerical level, rewards and recognitions are significantly associated with job involvement.

The organizational success depends on employee’s productivity which will be accelerated through employee’s commitment towards his organisation (Dr. Pratimasarangi and Dr. Bhagirathi Nayak, 2016). (Arti Chandani and Vashwee Khokhar, 2016) identified variations in factors may arise due to differences in individual, job characteristics and gender diversity..

SUGGESTIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

• From the findings it is identified that rewards and recognition will motivates the employees for better performance and to keep them engaged.
• The organization can even further align the employees with the organization’s by providing them employee counselling, which will help employees to overcome the emotional stress or any other problems, so that they can get back to the main track of performance.
• The Organization can be more supportive to maintain balance between the work and professional life of the employees.
• The organization can promote good communication which helps to foster a good working relationship between the employer and the employees.

CONCLUSION

Every business is made up of people that is human resources. An organization is nothing without human resources. The effective management of human resources will have a major impact on how successful the business becomes. It is universally agreed that the quality of human resources is the major factor in maintaining the competitiveness and profitability of the today’s business. So, the survival and success of the organizations is with the management of its human resources.

From this research it is identified that some of the factors of engagement are working condition, superior support, co worker support, career growth, organizational support and rewards and recognitions. And some of the measures for the enhancement of employee engagement are providing promotional opportunities for employees and by giving them some visibility on their career development will make them satisfied and also leads to retention of highly skilled employees.

REFERENCES

1. Gantasala V. Prabhakar,& Swetha Reddy. (2016). Employee Engagement in the IT Industry – Evidence from India .Strategic Management Quarterly, Vol. 4(1), 61-86.
2. Sivasubramanian.,& Rupa.(2017). An Empirical Study on Employee Engagement with Reference to it Sector in Chennai. Journal of Management (JOM),1(4),18–28.
3. Manjunath.S.,& Chandni M.C.(2018).Winning effective employee engagement at IT sector:An analysis on emerging trends and challenges. ISBR Management Journal,2(3),1-16.
4. T.Suhasini.,& K.Kalpana.(2018). A Study on Factors Affecting Employee Engagement in Indian IT Industry. International Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics,24(118),1-13.
5. Preeti Thakur.(2014). A Research Paper on the Effect of Employee Engagement on Job Satisfaction in IT Sector.Journal of Business Management & Social Sciences Research,5(3),31-39.
6. Dr. PratimaSarangi & Dr. Bhagirathi Nayak.(2016). Employee Engagement and Its Impact on Organizational Success – A Study in Manufacturing Company, India. Journal of Business and Management,4(18), 52-57.
7. Arti Chandani ,Mita Mehta, Akanksha Mall & Vashwee Khokhar.(2016). Employee Engagement: A Review Paper on Factors Affecting Employee Engagement. Indian Journal of Science and Technology, 9(15), 1-7.

Money is considered to be a universal commodity that can be used as means of exchange for goods and services. It is a fact no one wants to work for free. Employees want to earn reasonable remuneration and rewards. Similarly, organizations wish their employees feel the value for money. This therefore, makes money to be among the most motivating factors to all. It is a part of the total incentive package of an organization. Salary is thought to be one of the key factors influencing career choices Lai (2009). One employee in RRA described salary as, ‘the salary paid to me is what the organization thinks of me.” Another one said, “even if I am offered additional 20% on my current pay, I would not leave the organization”. This tells us that people are unique and have different preferences and can be influenced by different factors. ‘’The lower salary, the less appreciated” Bokorney (2007). The meta-analytic research by Condly et al. (2003) argued that properly selected and administered tangible incentives (cash and awards) can dramatically increase work performance and when carefully selected, implemented and monitored can increase work performance to an average of 22%.

In a survey conducted in RRA (2016) on staff motivation, the level of employee motivation was found to be at 73% with salary and wages among the most motivating factors. Out of 281 respondents, 142 (50.5 %) acknowledged salary dissatisfaction as compared to their responsibilities and education levels. This, evidenced that money is one of the key motivating factor in RRA which, justifies the periodic organizational reforms undertaken in RRA since (2005), (2013), (2017) and now (2019/20) on the pipeline as a continuous effort to improve key specific mix of financial and non-financial factors influencing employee engagement – such as, remuneration, communication, supervision, employee-manager relationship, employees’ voice, well-being, processes and systems and any other factor which make employees feel valued, more committed and engaged for the optimal success of the organization.

It must be noted that though RRA has continuously tried to adjust salaries to stimulate employee engagement it has at the same time created other windows for the same reason as included in its Statute (2011) as:

• (a) Performance bonus based on achievement of individual objectives,
• (b) Performance bonus based on surpass of organizational target (% share is attached to individual performance) and
• (c) Loyalty bonus based on the number of years one has been in the organization being rated above 80% on performance annually,
• (d) Reward and Recognition – appreciation, shopping vouchers, Laptop and money cheques for (best employees), and improved employee well-being, just to mention a few.

All these focuses on the creation of a comprehensive strategy to facilitate employees to see direct correlation between performance and financial rewards and of course make them feel appreciated, valued and more engaged. Research has shown that majority of employees believe their work merits reward especially (pecuniary rewards) and when they miss it, they feel demotivated, Purcell et al (2007).

My perception though, is that money is not the only factor which makes one to be motivated or engaged because different personalities have different factors which influence their motivation, commitment, involvement, loyalty, satisfaction and engagement such as, opportunities for learning and development, career development, job enrichment , recognition and appreciation for well-done job just to mention a few.

However, it is my belief that rewards, such as performance bonuses can be discriminatory, and therefore demotivate some employees especially if the rating system is inefficient and can easily be manipulated and misused by the user (supervisor). A case in point is a situation whereby a group of employees may be working on an assignment and when it comes to individual rating, the supervisor using his/her own discretion rates them and therefore rewards them differently and yet they were working on the same assignment.

Project Management Book of Knowledge (PMBOK 5th Edition) defines a project as “a temporary endeavour undertaken to create a unique product or service” (Project Management Institute, 2008). Alternatively, a project can be thought of as a well-defined set of tasks that must all be completed in order to meet the project’s goals (Klastorin 2004)

Mining companies face many challenges when it comes to defining project success criteria and project management practices. The project manager in the mining industry should have the knowledge, experience, and competence to understand and define the interrelationships among the project management components. Understanding the evolving contractual and human interdependencies in executing, along with team building and stakeholder engagement are significant skills that address the expectations and needs of each stakeholder.

Lack of planning, poor preparation, poor communication, and teamwork skills, and weak contract administration are leading causes of problems on a mining project. When coupled with the speed with the communication happens and decision is made, a project complexity of high complexity and demand is created.

Employee engagement plays an important role in mining project success as workers form the backbone of this industry. They represent a separate stakeholder and it is important to manage them in project management. There is a significant amount of emphasis on stakeholder engagement and communication which we will see in the upcoming review.A success or a failure of a mining project can be attributed to the non-compliance to more than one individual project management components. Several components come to play when making a project success. Alternatively, a project’s failure can be attributed to the failure of implementation/compliance with more than one project management component.

A mining project is said to be successful if achieves the scope completion on (or less than) the planned time and within (or less than) the allocated budget assigned to it keeping the Health, Safety and Environmental compliance into account.

These days when projects are becoming more complex, it is imperative to follow the standard practices set by the Project Management Institute coupled with the mindset of the agile project management methodology. Agile project management was popularized by the Agile Manifesto (agilemanifesto.org, 2001). Agile principles include minimal planning and documentation, the submission of deliverables in small increments to obtain user feedback, and quick response. Agile project management has so far been influential mainly for the knowledge work in which the output is not visible. However, in the mining industry where there are daily communication challenges, project feedback on daily basis, feedback from stakeholders and their constant engagement, the agile way of executing a project makes more sense than ever. However, implementing scaled agile for large projects outside the software development domain poses a challenge to project success. BELOW ARE THE FACTORS WHICH DEFINES A MINING PROJECT SUCCESS

ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE

In the context of mining projects, most owners (including owner support organizations such as project management consultants or insurers) work in matrix or composite structure, with designated project manager roles and team for mining projects. Team sizes and team members’ exclusive dedication to a project is dependent on project’s size and complexity and strategic importance to the owner. Both owner and contractor organizations may include Project Management Offices (PMOs). While the former tends to have a directive or controlling PMOs, the latter have strong matrix or fully projectized structure. Figure 2-1 (provided by PMBOK 5th edition) provides illustrated the correlation between type of organizational structure and type of PMO to help organizational environment in which the mining projects are executed. In the planning or bidding phase, the contractor will benefit from studying the owner’s organization. Contractors should study the organization and design a project organization breakdown structure that matches the owner’s breakdown structure for the project. The owner’s structure usually reflects project management and execution strategy, so by matching it, the contractor may have easier time aligning with the owner’s strategy. This may improve communications because any role in a given structure should have a matching peer. This is critical for the project’s success as a communication standard is set.

ENTERPRISE ENVIRONMENTAL FACTORS

Mining projects allows us to take an entirely different perspective to project management. The first identified success factor is the Enterprise Environmental factor in the mining industry which includes the following.

1. Economic factors – Mining projects involve exploration of mining sites using technology (drones, satellite data) extraction of raw materials using manpower and automated machines (hand driller, remote-controlled drilling machines), transportation of raw materials through transport vehicles (transport trucks). Costs of these types of machinery and manpower (specifically their occupational hazard compensation) depend on the global/national/local economy. Fluctuating raw material prices which are being extracted (for example, gold, silver, oil, etc.) may positively or negatively impact the benefit to cost ratios of the project. Ina fixed price contract mining project, inflation may also decide the project’s success. Missing inflation in the project contract would have disastrous effect on the project’s success.
2. Site Location Factors – A major impact on a mining project success would be where the mining will be done. The project location plays an important role in the project’s budget and the level of complexity. For example, offshore mining of oil is costlier, more complex and riskier compared to mining on land. The types of terrain, proximity to fault lines and rock formation would also impact the project’s risks and budget allocation. The labor availability and their level of qualification on a site would also impact the project costs.

HEALTH, SAFETY, SECURITY, AND ENVIRONMENTAL FACTORS

This is perhaps the most important factor in determining the mining project success. Employee health and wellness are introduced for mining jobs personnel as these directly affect the project risk and safety. Trends include virtual technology, safety regulations, incentives, and environmental certifications. It is common for project sponsors or owners to invoke extra measures of safety where general measures may be considered as insufficient to provide assurance and control required. Health safety, security, and environment pertaining to construction are described as follows:

• Health – Employee health programs are becoming increasingly important in the corporate environment and directly influence risk and safety factors. Health and wellness programs can address not only physical health factors for working in the mining industry but also wellness programs that assist in establishing a work-life balance and assist with other stress-inducing issues that affect mental stability and focus. Mining sites offer unexplored/unfamiliar work location, changing environment, job stress and risk of accidents which makes health programs critical for project success. Some methods for maintaining a healthy site include:

1. a. Dust & Noise control measures
2. b. Onsite medical facilities
3. c. Fatigue mitigation plans
4. d. Work hour limitations
5. e. Regular health check-ups and hygienic working conditions
6. f. Provision of trained first aid personnel

• Safety – The safety of mining crew and project teams is a top challenge on mining projects and should be a priority in all levels of the organization. Safety behavior, ownership and incident reduction is closely monitored and controlled throughout the project. Non-compliance safety standards may lead to extra fines being imposed to the owner and contractors alike which may lead project spiraling to ultimate failure. Some of the methods of effective safe work practices and procedures are:

1. a. Verification and validation that personnel equipment (PPE) is appropriate and in good condition for the required activity
2. b. Pre-site preparation (hazard analysis, permits, site familiarization, etc.)
3. c. Ongoing training
4. d. Traffic Management
5. e. Periodic checking of tools and equipment
6. f. Safety and Environmental Zoning Signage
7. g. Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs)
8. h. Risk identification and assessment

• Security – Controlled site access is an important consideration for mitigating unauthorized entry, theft, and vandalism. A secure job site allows only access to authorized access to construction zones and maintains security of the facility and grounds when no activities are underway. Some options for securing a work area are:
• a. Badge/smartcard-controlled areas
• b. Security gates and fencing
• c. Traffic barriers
• d. Security guards
• e. Remote security (cameras, sensors, etc.)
• f. Site lighting both inside and outside of the mine
• Environmental – Impact of the project on the environment must be studied before commencing any operation. It should be done at the planning stage itself and mitigation and control plans should be put in place before the project begins. Several aspects of the environment should be considered, including:

1. a. Recycling/waste management
2. b. Hazardous waste handling
3. c. Environmental clean-up
4. d. Noise monitoring
5. e. Acoustic control
6. f. Site drainage
7. g. Dust Control
8. h. Government permitting requirements

Cost of environmental or safety non-compliance can be detrimental to a project if litigation, fines or a job shutdown occurs. Compliance is mandatory and its cost is determined by a form of cost-benefit analysis that incorporates the potential impacts of non-compliance on the project.

PROJECT MANAGEMENT COMPONENTS CONTROL

Other factors such as

• Integration Management
• Cost control
• Sequencing and Schedule management
• Stakeholder Management
• Quality Assurance and Quality Control
• Risk Management
• Contract control throughout the project is critical for project success. All the above factors are defined and explained in detail along with the tools used to implement them by the Project Management Book of Knowledge (PMBOK). The project managers must handle these factors throughout the project.

IMPACT OF EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT IN PROJECT SUCCESS

Woods, J. M. (2015), introduces us to the fact that every organization wants a high-performing team which makes a direct impact on the project success and helps in achieving organizational objectives. A project manager’s job is to align the project team to achieve high performance and foster employee engagement.

Woods, J. M. (2015) also states that employee engagement is a state of mind which is assimilated by employees and is characterized by active involvement in project work activities, commitment to project success and the team, and an ability to stay focused on work throughout the tenure of the project (Costa, 2014). Human Resource professionals have understood the idea of employee engagement at work, and hence, such programs are increasing in many workplaces. However, many of these “employee engagement programs” are not nearly producing the desired results because an attitude of engagement cannot be forced/trainted to individuals; rather, engagement is internal to individuals (Matuson, 2015).

Increasing engagement of employees should be paramount of project managers and organization leaders. Employee engagement can increase the project performance and the project manager plays an important role in it says Woods, J. M. (2015). For example, research has shown that engagement increases task performance, attitudes toward customers, and the level of efficacy held by a team (Torrente, Salanova, Llorens, & Schaufeli, 2012). Research has also shown that engaged employees display higher levels of job satisfaction, more commitment to the organization, and a less intention to leave the organization (Saks, 2006)

It is also discovered that there are different types of engagements levels in an organization. Personal engagement is seen when individuals are cognitively, emotionally, and physically participating in their role at work (Kahn, 1990). Engagement at work is a state of mind expressed in specific behaviors that are influenced by an individual’s personality and outlook on life (Macey & Schneider, 2008). The engagement was first articulated in the 1990s as an extension of job attachment theory to include the relationship between an individual’s perception of themselves and their job (Kahn, 1990). More recent conceptualizations of engagement attempt to separate components of engagement into an individual psychological state, observable performance-related behaviors, a combination of these factors (Macey & Schneider, 2008), and to distinguish work engagement from the similar construct of burnout (Schaufeli, Martínez, Pinto, Salanova, & Bakker, 2002; Schaufeli, Taris, & van Rhenen, 2008).

Employee engagement is a state of mind held by team members that include thinking about the work and being absorbed in the work being done (Saks, 2006). Engagement in this context has been characterized by an individual’s level of vigor, dedication, and absorption (Schaufeli et al., 2002).

Engagement is also an opposite to burnout in employees (Maslach & Goldberg, 1998; Schaufeli et al., 2002). Burnout is a phenomenon at work where individuals are exhausted, cynical of their workplace, and ineffective at work (Maslach, Schaufeli, & Leiter, 2001). When individuals feel burnout, development of interpersonal conflicts and stress is only natural which causes both job performance and health to be affected negatively. Exhaustion is represented by lack of energy, the opposite of vigor; cynicism negates dedication to one’s work, and ineffectiveness does not allow an individual to become absorbed in their work. Schaufeli et al. (2008) suggest that burnout and engagement are distinct and opposite aspects of overall employee well-being at work, with exhaustion in contrast to vigor and cynicism in contrast to dedication. Thus, when a project manager or leader supports employee engagement, she is also decreasing the chances of employee burnout.

The engagement has also been defined as a team-level construct (Costa, 2014; Fearon, McLaughlin, & Morris, 2013). At the team level, work-related well-being is shared among team members and develops over time with repeated interactions among team members (Costa, 2014). Teamwork engagement is built from a sense of collective efficacy, arising from a shared belief in the team’s value to the organization and capability to perform effectively (Fearon et al., 2013). Teamwork engagement also influences individual work engagement (Tims et al., 2013), thus a manager who focuses on building team collective efficacy and engagement will also influence the work engagement of individual team members.

At the team level, high levels of teamwork engagement lead to high levels of team performance (Tims et al., 2013; Torrente et al., 2012). When teams held a high level of engagement (vigor, dedication, and absorption) in their work, this led to higher levels of both task-related and relationship-oriented performance (Torrente et al., 2012).

Woods, J. M. (2015) concludes that Employee Engagement can occur only if there is an agreement among the team members about the team’s work and goals. Project managers can rise up and maintain a high level of team engagements in the following ways.

1. Be a role model of the work engagement by showing a high level of energy, focus, and commitment to the achievement thereby inspiring the team. Role modeling has been shown to be a crucial leader behavior to foster desired performance in individuals and teams (Cartwright & Holmes, 2006)
2. Provide social and structural resources for the team by removing obstacles to the goals and creating an environment of safety and security.
3. Provide challenging assignments to the team. People who enjoy working on challenging assignments are more likely to be engaged in a workplace that offers challenging work. Thus, as a team leader, it is important to satisfy the need for challenging work by offering opportunities for skill development and capacity strengthening.
4. Allow the team to share in the process of designing work and plans to achieve team goals. Job crafting is an important aspect of work that contributes to higher levels of work engagement and includes the individual or team’s ability to acquire and use structural job resources (autonomy), develop social job resources, increase challenging job demands, and decrease job demands that hinder the team’s performance (Tims et al., 2013). When team members get to define the work process and develop tools to complete it, they are more invested and committed to the team and its goals which lead to high focus and goals.
5. Remove obstacles that are hindering team success such as unclear requirements, clearing up dependencies on tasks.

CONCLUSION

As it is evident from the research above that there are more than one issues which pose a challenge in the mining sector. These can be summed up in the following points:

1. Challenges in working environment/hazards of Mining industry
2. Lack of Organizational Agility, and the presence of inhibiting factors such as mindset of masculinity in mining
3. Job Stress and Strain eventually leading to accidents
4. Lack/inadequacy of safety and health programs in mining work
5. Lack of employee engagement in an organization
6. Ignorance of Project managers about employee engagement and how it proves to be a catalyst in the project success.

Each of the above points is of utmost importance for the project success. Mining industry prefers a projectized organizational structure which demands the tradespeople to work in a highly adaptive and agile environment with daily challenges coming their way almost daily.

Challenges in the working environment should be dealt with complying with the latest health and safety regulations which, if not followed will lead to accidents and hefty fines severely impacting the project’s budget and reserves. The project should take advantage of the Cost analysis tools, Risk management tools, and Quality control metrics to improve the organizational agility, controlling defects and making operations more efficient.

The ultimate goal of the Mining program should be complete elimination of mining occupational disease and accident. This program should go extra lengths in interacting with numerous researchers, regulators and other stakeholders to establish successful and mutually beneficial relationships. The Mining Program should accelerate the development of engineering controls aimed at meeting MSHA personal exposure limits for mining-related hazards.

Mining companies should also make sure that they are abreast with the latest safety and technical updates to keep their organization updated with the latest safety regulations and avoid any accidents in the future. It will also enable them to implement the latest technology in their field which will enable their workers to avoid any exposure to hazardous environment.

As discussed in the last section, employee engagement is one mechanism that project managers need to leverage for greater project performance. It not only leads to higher job satisfaction but also lower levels of burnout. When team members are energetic, dedicated and absorbed in their work, they will be more productive, and their teams will be seen by the stakeholders and organization as high-performing and successful.

Administrators unequivocally concur that this century requests more effectiveness and profitability than some other occasions ever. Organizations are endeavouring to expand their presentation. Administrators have been thinking about numerous difficulties to succeed putting their organization in front of contenders. To enable directors to oversee, various researchers, specialists and experts have been contributing their part demonstrating the most ideal ways they believe are helpful to supervisors. Among those proposed systems, ideas like Total Quality Management (TQM) and Business Process Reengineering (BPR) earned acknowledgment from numerous creators in the second 50% of twentieth century and were discovered useful in expanding authoritative execution by concentrating on operational and process upgrades. They were/all the while being utilized as apparatuses for the board in their push to design, execute and control of the ideal changes in the operational quality. On account of innovation, these days business organizations are utilizing propelled procedures of activity.

As complexity of advancements keeps on developing, they present more difficulties for chiefs since associations should require progressively number of workers with expanded specialized and proficient aptitudes. These information labourers cannot be dealt with old styles of extremist administration. They anticipate operational self-rule, work fulfilment and status. It is a result of these realities that consideration of supervisors is moving towards representatives’ side of associations. Supervisors’ eye is on the best way to keep representatives occupied with their activity. Managers presently understand that by concentrating on worker commitment, they can make increasingly proficient and gainful workforce. Any activities of progress which are taken by the board cannot be productive without wilful inclusion and commitment of workers.

Employee Engagement as an idea is tremendous. This article constrains itself to talk about just the essential ideas on representative commitment dependent on on-going literary works. It has four noteworthy parts. Right off the bat, the article investigates the advancement of the idea, its definition and how it is not the same as the prior ideas, for example, Commitment, Organizational Citizenship Behaviour (OCB) and occupation fulfilment. Besides, the article talks about the variables or drivers prompting commitment. Thirdly, it subtleties the effect of representative commitment on authoritative exhibition markers or business results, for example, gainfulness, consumer loyalty, organization development, profitability and others bringing up its advantages and significance to associations. At long last, the article recommends procedures the organizations should take up to keep workers occupied with their occupations.

Literature Review

Employee engagement has created a lot of consideration among numerous human asset experts, business people and scholarly scientists over the globe (Baldev and Anupama, 2010). It has been characterized in various ways by scholarly scientists and professionals both. As the idea of worker commitment has developed in ubiquity, it has experienced huge advancements in definition, estimation and conceptualization. Is that as it may, explore in the scholarly network have falled behind (Macey and Schneider, 2008). One of the difficulties of characterizing the term commitment is the absence of an all-inclusive meaning of this idea since commitment is a generally new term. Various journalists characterize ‘worker commitment’ in various way. Kahn (1990) was the primary scholarly scientist to utilize term ‘representative commitment’ and characterize that it is level of duty and association of the workers towards their association and its worth. As per Mortimer (as referred to in CIPD, 2009) ‘representative commitment’ is a blend of pledge to the association and its qualities in addition to an eagerness to support their partners.

Swarnalatha and Sureshkrishna, (2013) state that employee engagement is the degree to which representatives think, feel and act in manners that speak to large amounts of association to their association. Connected with representatives are inspired to add as far as anyone is concerned, aptitudes and capacities to enable their association to succeed. Cattermole and Johnson, (2014) have characterized that ‘representative commitment is a work environment approach intended to guarantee that workers are focused on their association’s objectives and qualities, inspired to add to hierarchical achievement and can upgrade their own feeling of prosperity.’ According to Chandhok and Bhavet, (2014) commitment is about energy, responsibility and the eagerness to give oneself and extend one’s optional endeavors to contribute towards accomplishing the objectives and destinations of the association all in all.

Rasheed, Khan, and Ramzan (2013) have featured that associations ought to give their workers increasingly fiscal and non-money related impetuses with the goal that representative commitment level turns out to be high. Thomas (2009) has clarified that inherent prizes are moderately sound and feasible wellspring of inspiration for the representatives of the association. The laborer with abnormal state of remunerations experience increasingly positive inclination and less negative ones at work and plays a successful commitment in the representative commitment. As indicated by Business to Business International there are different components which connect with the workers, for example, chance to express their perspectives, what occurs inside the association ought to be educated among the representatives. While Lupfer (2012) has talked about that commitment can shift every now and then relying on various factors, for example, representative job, association, singular fulfillment and individual bliss. Rajan (2012) has clarified that the administrators of the association assume significant job in commitment and maintenance of the workers. The propelling elements for the worker maintenance and commitment are remuneration, estimation of the representatives, positive hierarchical culture.

Need and Significance of Employee Engagement

An association’s ability to oversee worker commitment is firmly identified with its capacity to accomplish elite levels and unrivalled business results. A portion of the benefits of Engaged representatives are:

• Engaged workers will remain with the organization, be a promoter of the organization and its items and administrations, and add to primary concern business achievement. They will typically perform better and are increasingly propelled. There is a noteworthy connection between worker commitment and productivity.
• They structure a passionate association with the organization. This effects their mentality towards the organization’s customers, and in this manner improves consumer loyalty and Service levels.
• It assembles enthusiasm, duty and arrangement with the association’s procedures and objectives and Increases employees‟ trust in the organization.
• Makes a feeling of devotion in an aggressive situation to give a high-vitality working condition which Boosts business development which Makes the representatives compelling brand representatives for the organization.

A profoundly connected representative will reliably convey past expectations. Thus worker commitment is basic to any association that looks to hold esteemed representatives. The Watson Wyatt counselling organizations has been demonstrated that there is a natural connection between worker commitment, client steadfastness, and benefit capacity. As Organizations globalize and become increasingly reliant on innovation in a virtual workplace, there is a more noteworthy need to associate and draw in with representatives to furnish them with an authoritative character.

Objective of the Study

The main objective of the study understands the factors influencing employee engagement towards employee performance. Apart from the main objective the following are the objectives of the study.

• To understand and analyse the need of employee engagement.
• To study the factors affecting employee engagement.
• To identify the impact of employee engagement drivers towards employee performance

Drivers of Employee Engagement

Many researches have tried to identify factors leading to employee engagement and developed models to draw implications for managers. Their diagnosis aims to determine the drivers that will increase employee engagement level.

As indicated by Penna research report (2007) which means at work can possibly be important method for bringing managers and representatives closer together to the advantage of both where workers experience a feeling of network, the space to act naturally and the chance to make a commitment, they discover meaning. Representatives need to work in the associations in which they discover significance at work. Penna (2007) specialists have additionally thought of another model they called ‘Chain of command of commitment’ which takes after Maslow’s need pecking order model. In the reality there are essential needs of pay and advantages. When a representative fulfilled these requirements, at that point the worker looks to improvement openings, the likelihood for advancement and after that administration style will be acquainted with the blend in the model. At long last, when all the above referred to lower level goals have been fulfilled the worker looks to an arrangement of significant worth importance, which is shown by a genuine feeling of association, a typical reason and a mutual feeling of significance at work. The Blessing White (2006) contemplate has discovered that just about two thirds (60%) of the overviewed representatives need more chances to develop forward to stay fulfilled in their employments. Solid administrator worker relationship is a pivotal fixing in the representative commitment and maintenance recipe. Improvement Dimensions International (DDI, 2005) states that a chief must complete five things to make an exceedingly drew in workforce. They are:

• Align efforts with strategy
• Empower
• Promote and encourage teamwork and collaboration
• Help people grow and develop
• Provide support and recognition where appropriate

The Towers Perrin Talent Report (2003) recognizes the main ten work spot qualities which will bring about representative commitment. The main three among the ten drivers recorded by Perrin are: Senior administration’s enthusiasm for representatives’ prosperity, Challenging work and Decision making specialist.

Subsequent to studying 10,000 NHS representatives in Great Britain, Institute of Employment Studies (Robinson et al., 2004) points out that the key driver of worker commitment is a feeling of inclination esteemed and included, which has the segments, for example, association in basic leadership, the degree to which workers feel ready to voice their thoughts, the open doors representatives need to build up their occupations and the degree to which the association is worried for representatives’ wellbeing and prosperity.

CIPD (2006) based on its study of 2000 representatives from crosswise over Great Britain shows that correspondence is the top need to lead workers to commitment. The report singles out having the chance to bolster their perspectives and sentiments upwards as the most significant driver of individuals’ commitment. The report likewise recognizes the significance of being kept educated about what is happening in the association.

The most established counselling association in directing commitment review, Gallup has discovered that the chief is the way to a connected with work power. James Clifton, CEO of Gallup association shows that representatives who have dear kinships at work are increasingly drawn in laborers (Clifton, 2008). Vance (2006) clarifies the way that representative commitment is inseparably connected with boss practices. To reveal insight into the manners by which boss practices influence work execution and commitment, he displays an occupation execution model. As indicated by him, Employee commitment is the result of individual properties, for example, learning, aptitudes, capacities, demeanour, dispositions and character, authoritative setting which incorporates administration, physical setting and social setting and HR rehearses that legitimately influence the individual, procedure and setting parts of occupation execution.

Most drivers that are found to prompt representative commitment are non-budgetary in their tendency. Along these lines, any association who has submitted initiative can accomplish the ideal degree of commitment with less expense of doing it. This does not imply that administrators ought to disregard the money related part of their workers. Truth be told, execution ought to be connected with remuneration. In any case, this is just to rehash the well-known axiom of Human Relations Movement which goes ‘as social being, human asset isn’t inspired by cash alone.’ As Buckingham and Coffman (2005) stated, pay and advantages are similarly imperative to each representative, positive or negative. An organization’s compensation ought to at any rate be practically identical to the market normal. Nonetheless, putting up pay and advantages bundle up for sale to the public levels, which is a reasonable initial step, won’t take an organization exceptionally far-they resemble tickets to the ballpark, – they can get the organization into the game, however can’t resist win.

Employee Engagement Strategies

So far we have discussed the drivers to employee engagement, the factors that affect it and importance of employee engagement explaining how it is linked to business performance. Now, at this stage any inquisitive reader may ask a question: So what? Employee engagement strategies listed below answer this question. In order to have engaged employees in any organization, managers need to look at the following ten points.

1. Initiative: Most associations do have clear new ability securing methodologies. Be that as it may, they need representative maintenance systems. Viable enlistment and direction projects are the main structure squares to be laid on the primary day of the new representative. Supervisors ought to be cautious in pooling out the potential ability of the new representative through powerful enrollment. The recently enlisted worker ought to be given both general direction which is identified with the organization mission, vision, qualities, arrangements and methods and occupation explicit direction, for example, his/her activity obligations, and duties, objectives and current needs of the division to which the representative has a place all together with empower him/her to create practical employment desires and decrease job strife that may emerge later on. After the procuring choice is made, the administrator needs to guarantee job ability fit when setting a representative in a specific position and apply every administrative exertion expected to hold that ability in the association.
2. Top down Approach: Employee commitment requires initiative responsibility through building up clear mission, vision and qualities. Except if the general population at the top put stock in it, possess it, pass it down to chiefs and workers, and upgrade their authority, representative commitment will never be something beyond a ‘corporate craze’ or ‘another HR thing’. Worker commitment does not require lip-administration rather committed heart and activity arranged administration from top administration. It requires ‘Driving by Being model’
3. Improve worker commitment through two-way correspondence: Managers ought to advance two-way correspondence. Workers are not sets of pots to which you spill out your thoughts without allowing them to have a state on issues that issue to their activity and life. Clear and predictable correspondence of what is anticipated from them makes ready for connected workforce. Include your kin and consistently show regard to their info. Offer power with your representatives through participative basic leadership so they would feel feeling of belongingness in this way expanding their commitment in acknowledging it.
4. Give satisfactory open doors for improvement and headway: Encourage autonomous thoroughly considering giving them more occupation self-rule so workers will get an opportunity to make their very own opportunity of picking their very own most ideal method for carrying out their responsibility insofar as they are delivering the normal outcome. Oversee through outcomes instead of attempting to deal with every one of the procedures by which that outcome is accomplished.
5. Guarantee that workers have all that they have to carry out their responsibilities: Managers are relied upon to ensure that representatives have every one of the assets, for example, physical or material, budgetary and data assets so as to successfully carry out their responsibility.
6. Give workers suitable preparing: Help representatives update themselves expanding their insight and abilities through giving proper trainings. For the most part it is comprehended that when representatives become more acquainted with increasingly about their activity, their certainty increments there by having the option to work absent much supervision from their prompt directors which thusly constructs their self-viability and responsibility.
7. Have solid input framework: Companies ought to build up a presentation the executives framework which considers directors and workers responsible for the degree of commitment they have appeared. Directing ordinary review of worker commitment level helps make out variables that make representatives locked in. In the wake of concluding the overview, it is fitting to decide every one of the variables that driving commitment in the association, at that point restricted down the rundown of components to concentrate on a few zones. It is significant that associations start with a fixation on the elements that will have the most effect to the workers and put vitality around improving these territories as it might be hard to address all variables immediately. Supervisors ought to be behind such study results and create activity arranged plans that are explicit, quantifiable, and responsible and time-bound.
8. Impetuses have a section to play: Managers should work out both money related and non-budgetary advantages for representatives who show greater commitment in their employments. A few administration speculations have shown that when representatives get more pay, acknowledgment and recognition, they will in general apply more exertion into their activity. There ought to be a reasonable connection among execution and motivating forces given to the employees.
9. Building a particular corporate culture: Companies ought to advance a solid work culture in which the objectives and estimations of directors are adjusted over all work segments. Organizations that construct a culture of common regard by keeping examples of overcoming adversity alive won’t just keep their current representatives connected yet in addition they submerse the new approaching representatives with this infectious soul of work culture.
10. Concentrate on top-performing representatives: An investigation directed by Watson Wyatt Worldwide in 2004/05 on HR practices of 50 enormous USA firms demonstrates that high-performing associations are concentrating on drawing in their top-performing workers. As indicated by the finding of a similar research, what high-performing firms are doing is the thing that top-performing representatives are requesting and this lessens the turnover of high-performing workers and therefore prompts top business execution.

Employee Engagement and Employee Performance Relationship

On-going examinations over a scope of areas have discovered different execution based results of commitment. Bakker et al (2004) found that commitment was connected to both in-job and extra-job execution in a multi-area Dutch example, a finding duplicated by Schaufeli et al (2006); Halbesleben and Wheeler (2008) discovered comparable outcomes for in-job execution and turnover expectations in a multi-division US test. A meta-examination of almost 8,000 specialty units in 36 organizations found that commitment was likewise connected to specialty unit execution (Harter et al 2002), and connections have additionally been found with customer fulfilment in administration settings (Salanova et al 2005). Numerous different investigations have discovered connections among commitment and execution results; for a survey, see Bakker et al (2008). Gallup shows that more elevated amounts of commitment are firmly identified with larger amounts of development. Fifty-nine per cent of connected workers state that their activity draws out their most inventive thoughts against just three per cent of withdrew representatives. This finding was resounded in research for the Chartered Management Institute in 2007 which found noteworthy affiliation and impact between worker commitment and development. In light of review discoveries from roughly 1,500 chiefs all through the UK, where respondents recognized the predominant administration style of their association as creative, 92 per cent of supervisors felt pleased to work there.

Linkage of Employee Engagement and Employee Performance

Critical consideration has been given to linkage of worker commitment to monetary aftereffects of associations. A few examinations see that worker commitment at first outcomes in more prominent representative execution, which further prompts upgraded hierarchical execution, as far as (Tower Perrin, 2006; Gallup, 2006). An examination by Robertson-Smith and Markwick (2009) points out that commitment gives representatives a chance to put themselves in their work and furthermore makes a feeling of self-viability. Research on the outcomes of worker commitment shows that commitment may bring about positive wellbeing and positive sentiments towards work and association. Gallup (2006) announced improved wellbeing and prosperity in connected workers.

Commitment may prompt care, inborn inspiration, inventiveness, validness, non-guarded correspondence, moral conduct. Hierarchical results of commitment could be client unwaveringness, representative maintenance, worker profitability, backing of the association, business achievement (Robertson-Smith and Markwick, 2009). Harter et al (2002) in their meta investigation of 7,393 specialty units, covering 3 organizations found that there exists a connection between worker commitment, consumer loyalty, profitability, benefit and representative turnover, which at last, would prompt improved probability of business achievement.

IMPACT OF EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT ON THE PERFORMANCE OF EMPLOYEES

• Employee engagement builds enthusiasm and commitment towards organization.
• Attracts more people who are ready to work hard and show their capacity towards the success of organization.
• Creates a sense of loyalty towards the organization.
• Lowers attrition rate because of proper employee engagement,
• Increases productivity and improves morale towards the system.
• Provides a high-energy working environment to achieve the goals of the organization.
• Improves overall organizational effectiveness and improve work culture.
• Makes the employees effective brand ambassadors for the company in all means.

CONCLUSION

Organizations need to give their representatives the opportunity to make their work energizing and a situation having an en-gaged work life .With increment in duties at home and a craving to exceed expectations in their professions, workers regularly get occupied from their work which should be dealt with .Employees are the advantages of the association and on the off chance that they are not given a space whereby they can make an ideal mix of both work, fun, ideal execution from them might be troublesome. Representative commitments underline the significance of worker correspondence on the achievement of a business. An association ought to understand the significance of representatives, more than some other variable, as the most dominant supporter of an association’s aggressive position .Organizations and workers share an advantageous connection, where both are subject to one another to fulfil their needs and objective. In this manner; worker commitment ought not be an onetime exercise, however a constant procedure of learning, improvement and activity. In the long run, estimating representative commitment does not improve commitment or client reaction. It is an activity authored to distinguish representative commitment with work and trust in the organization prompting activity plans for framing a genuinely connected with workforce that makes inside worth, guarantees associations of business security and in actuality, positions associations for constant advancement and achievement. Along these lines, associations today are effectively anticipating eagerly with and continue for the benefit of their workers’ desires and performance.