People and Organizations: Principles and Practice in Global Contexts

The benefits of employee engagement:

The term “employee engagement” has been popular considerably in recent years. An engaged employee contributes considerably to the performance of the organization & becomes an asset & not a cost for his organization.

Kahn (1990) defines employee engagement as “the harnessing of organization members’ selves to their work roles; in engagement, people employ & express themselves physically, cognitively & emotionally during role performances”. Further to Kahn (1990) employee engagement has described as the employee's present in psychologically & physically when he is performing. According to Robinson (2006), employee engagement increase within a positive & encouraged environment, which resulted to increased organizational performance as well as the staff job satisfaction with proper employee- employer relations.

Employee engagement is the level of dedication & involvement on duties of employee towards the organization & its values. If the employee is with positive emotions & motivation towards the work, he intends to manage properly his duties & try to do assigned works more personally meaningful with positive mind of future (Saks, 2006).

Benefits of Employee Engagement:

When the level of employee engagement improved the organization will get additional benefits in addition the better performance. Following are some benefits of the same.

Employee satisfaction: When the employees are not satisfied with their job, they lack with enthusiasm about the day to day duties of them.

Staff retention & low staff turnover: The recruiting process for new employees is very expensive & time-consuming for the organization.

Higher productivity: Engaged employees work faster & harder due to satisfaction & motivation. Even employee works for long hours very effectively & efficiently without claiming overtime payments.

Increased profitability: When employees feel good at work, they work harder& when they work harder they produce more quality work, which ends to a happy customer. Happy customers keep coming back & they refer other people to this company.

Less absenteeism: Engaged employees feel that they are part of the organization they work for.

Increased employee loyalty: A lot of benefits with engaged employees is that they are loyal to the company & therefore act as company ambassadors.

Personal benefits for employees: Better relationships inside & outside of work, increased happiness, less stress, better health will be added advantages.

As an example of NDB Bank, all staff are encouraged to engage with senior management through regular meetings & various staff meetings. CEO also communicates with staff through email & share all importance news, achievements & strategic changes of the Bank & management. Recreation activities of the Bank are organized by Staff Recreation Club, which organize multi - religion celebrations, annual staff trips, Kiddies party, dinner dance & Xmas party.

Conclusion:

Employee engagement is one of the important practices implemented by the HR & line management. Engaged employees can definitely help the organization to achieve its goals. There will be lot of benefits for the organization & as well as to the employee with having a proper employee engagement for the organization.

References:

Lockwood, N.R. “Leveraging Employee Engagement for Competitive Advantage: HR's Strategic Role.” HR Magazine. 52, 3 (March 2007) : 1-11.

Kahn, W.A. (1990). Psychological conditions of personal engagement and disengagement at

work, The Academy of Management Journal, 33(4).

Saks, A.M. (2006) ‘Antecedents and consequences of employee engagement’, Journal of Managerial Psychology, Vol 21, No 6, pp600-619. 
Robinson, I. (2006) Human Resource Management in Organisations. London, CIPD.