Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to offer innovative tools and techniques to ensure employee engagement. Design/methodology/approach – The paper outlines the reasons for employee disengagement and enlightens the advantages of employee engagement for both employees and organizations. It unfolds several research findings on employee engagement and illustrates with the examples of global companies including Cummins, DHL Express, Southwest Airlines, Google, and Virgin. Findings – It concludes that employee engagement is a two-way street. Practical implications – The tools and techniques adopted by leaders can be applied in any industry and in any size of organization. Social implications – The social implications of this research suggest that leaders can ensure employee engagement by following these innovative tools and techniques. Originality/value – It implores both employers and employees to take ownership of their roles and responsibilities to achieve organizational excellence and effectiveness.

Keywords Leadership development, Employee engagement, Organizational development, Engaged leadership

Paper type Research paper

Introduction

Connect the dots between individual roles and the goals of the organization. When people see that connection, they get a lot of energy out of work. They feel the importance, dignity, and meaning in their job (Ken Blanchard).

Employee engagement has become a major challenge globally. Research shows strange findings. Gallup Management Journal’s Semiannual Employee Engagement Index shows that only 29 percent of employees are actively engaged in their jobs, while 54 percent are not engaged and 17 percent are actively disengaged. Right Management found similar results with only 34 percent of employees fully engaged, while 50 percent are completely disengaged.

What is employee engagement?

Employee engagement is about connecting the hands, heads, and hearts of the employees with the vision and mission of their organizations. Andrew Carnegie once remarked, “Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision, the ability to direct individual accomplishments toward organizational objectives. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results.” Development Dimensions International defines engagement as “the extent to which people enjoy and believe in what they do and feel valued for doing it.” The other definitions of employee engagement are as follows:

■ “The extent to which employees commit to something or someone in the organization, and how long they stay as a result of that commitment.”

■ “Loyal employees (versus satisfied employees) stay because they want to. They go above and beyond the call of duty to further their company’s interests.”

M.S. Rao is based at MSR Leadership Consultants India, New Delhi, India.

DOI 10.1108/ICT-06-2016-0037 VOL. 49 NO. 3 2017, pp. 127-131, © Emerald Publishing Limited, ISSN 0019-7858 j INDUSTRIAL AND COMMERCIAL TRAINING j PAGE 127

■ “Engagement is the state in which individuals are emotionally and intellectually committed to the organization as measured by three primary behaviors: Say, Stay and Strive.”

■ “The extent to which employees put discretionary effort into their work in the form of brainpower, extra time, and energy.”

Tim Rutledge, author of Getting Engaged: The New Workplace Loyalty, describes an engaged employee as one who is committed to, fascinated by, and attracted to the work. When employees are engaged they care about the company’s future and are willing to go beyond the call of duty in order to help their organization exceed. Both practitioners and academics agree that engaged employees are cognitively vigilant and connected to the organization. David Zinger, says in Let’s Co-Create an Employee Engagement Charter, The Employee Engagement Network, “Employee engagement is the art and science of engaging people in authentic and recognized connections to strategy, roles, performance, organization, community, relationship, customers, development, energy, and happiness to leverage, sustain, and transform work into results.” It is very challenging to engage employees as they have different expectations and aspirations. Additionally, cultural and generational factors matters a lot to engage them effectively. In fact, engaged employees are effective and are passionate about adding value to all stakeholders especially customers.

Employee engagement is intangible. It can be felt when employees enjoy returning to organizations to contribute their best to improve organizational bottom lines. It can be felt when companies are chosen as the best places to work, and are branded successfully.

Causes of employee disengagement

Frances Hesselbein quoted, “Dispirited, unmotivated, unappreciated workers cannot compete in a highly competitive world.” There are many reasons for employee disengagement. Here are some of the reasons — the toxic organizational environment, lack of value system within the organization, lack of inspired leadership, bad bosses, organizational politics, and huge gap between the expectations and realities. To ensure employee engagement, leaders must create value system, bridge the gap between the expectations and realities, and eliminate organizational politics.

Advantages of employee engagement

Employees who believe that management is concerned about them as a whole person – not just an employee – are more productive, more satisfied, more fulfilled. Satisfied employees mean satisfied customers, which leads to profitability (Anne M. Mulcahy).

There are innumerable advantages with employee engagement. It increases employee retention and loyalty. It improves performance and productivity to give competitive edge over others. It minimizes employee turnover and maximizes their morale. It provides customer satisfaction and improves the organizational bottom lines. It ultimately improves shareholders value. Hence, senior leaders and CEOs must follow the slogan of “employee first, customer second and shareholder third.”

Jim Harter[1], a Chief Scientist at Gallup outlines the advantages of employee engagement as follows: engaged employees are more attentive and vigilant; they look out for the needs of their coworkers and the overall enterprise; they personally “own” the result of their work and that of the organization; they re-create jobs so that each person has a chance to do what they do best; and they help people see the connection between their everyday work and the larger purpose or mission of the organization.

According to the Towers Watson 2012 Global Workforce Study[2], companies with an engaged workforce experience: 6.5 fewer days absent, 41 percent lower retention risk, and 3 × higher operating margins.

A study[3] of 64 organizations revealed that organizations with highly engaged employees achieve twice the annual net income of organizations whose employees lag behind on engagement.

PAGE 128 j INDUSTRIAL AND COMMERCIAL TRAINING j VOL. 49 NO. 3 2017

Tools and techniques to engage employees effectively

There are some global companies that have actively engaged their employees including Cummins, DHL Express, Southwest Airlines, Zappos.com, Google, and Virgin because they emphasized the theme of “employees first, customers second.” Here are some tools and techniques to engage your employees effectively:

■ Build trust: according to Joe Mechlinski[4], the CEO of Entrequest and the author of Grow Regardless, “When employees lack engagement, deadlines start getting missed. Meetings start or end late. People start throwing out ‘The T Word,’ trust.” You might hear an employee say they do not trust that their colleague will deliver as promised. They might not trust that the company will live up to the customer’s expectation. Once trust goes away, not much else matters. Without trust, employees focus on assigning blame, instead of delivering results. Hence, lead by example and be transparent to build trust.

■ Ensure that employees feel positive at work and that they can clearly see how their work can contribute directly to the organization’s goals and vision.

■ Listen from all sources to get ideas and insights to engage your employees effectively. Sam Walton, Founder of Wal-Mart rightly remarked, “The key to success is to get out into the store and listen to what the associates have to say. Our best ideas come from clerks and stock-boys. It’s terribly important for everyone to get involved.”

■ Find out the aspirations and expectations of your employees and assign them tasks accordingly. Identifying whether they are attracted by financial or non-financial motivational incentives helps ensure effective employee engagement.

■ Allocate roles and responsibilities based on their strengths. Give them challenging tasks to enable them to come out of their comfort zones to execute their tasks effectively.

■ Emphasize stretch goals. When employees stretch, they unlock their hidden potential. For instance, Jack Welch emphasized stretch goals and succeeded in GE.

■ Encourage job rotation. Job rotation helps employees learn something of everything about other areas to make them more competent and grow as leaders. Job rotation is divided into vertical and horizontal where vertical job rotation helps grow higher level within the organization while the horizontal job rotation helps understand the functions of other areas at the same level.

■ Improve employees’ attitude as it helps improve their behavior and performance to deliver goods effectively. It ultimately boils down to serving customers and clients proactively resulting in increased shareholder value.

■ Create healthy organizational culture and climate for employees to contribute their best. Ensure that the organizational culture is free from organizational politics.

■ Ensure that every employee feels heard, valued, and appreciated for their achievements.

■ Empower your employees. Give them freedom to make decisions. Respect their failures. Let them learn lessons from their failures to grow as successful leaders.

■ Ensure that employees have enough time to interact with one another to enable them to draw ideas and learn from each other.

■ Encourage creativity. When employees come to you with their innovative ideas, listen to them attentively and provide your wholehearted support irrespective of the outcome.

■ Do not micromanage. It helps them discover their hidden potential. You will be amazed to see them coming out with creative solutions. Offer them assignments and adequate time to breathe to execute their tasks. Give them freedom to work as they will surprise you with their performance.

■ Deal people differently. Apply different strokes to different people as people are different with unique egos, emotions, and feelings. Dale Carnegie rightly quoted, “When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but creatures of emotion.”

VOL. 49 NO. 3 2017 j INDUSTRIAL AND COMMERCIAL TRAINING j PAGE 129

■ Take initiative to inspire your employees as they prefer to work with good leaders than under bad bosses.

■ Provide wellness programs to your employees to ensure emotional wellbeing resulting in employee engagement.

■ Encourage your employees if they enjoy performing community service by giving them time off from work. It helps them grow holistically as persons and builds the image of your organization.

■ Provide them with feedback to enable them to assess their strengths and concerns. It helps them overcome their concerns to grow as better performers and leaders.

■ Value your employees as people, not as workers. Meghan Biro rightly remarked, “Employees engage with employers and brands when they’re treated as humans worthy of respect.” Additionally, respect them as valuable people with skills rather than people with valuable skills.

TNS Employee Insights[5] offers eight tips to engage your employees as follows: get to know your employees; provide basic training for your employees; develop your people; recognize your employees; encourage teamwork; build a customer focused team; coach your employees; and act on employee feedback.

Both disengaged and over engaged employees are liabilities as disengaged employees lose focus on organizational objectives and over engaged employees get stressed out. Hence, there is a need to strike a right balance between them to keep employees excited to contribute their best.

There are innumerable advantages for employees also to engage effectively. Paul Marciano [see footnote 2], PhD, in his book Carrots and Sticks Don’t Work writes that an engaged employee brings new ideas to work; is passionate and enthusiastic about work; takes initiative; actively seeks to improve self, others and the business; consistently exceeds goals and expectations; is curious and interested; asks questions; encourages and supports team members; is optimistic and positive; smiles; overcomes obstacles and stays focused on tasks; is persistent; and is committed to the organization.

Some employees join companies purely for monetary reasons and ultimately end up with disengagement and disenchantment. Hence, before joining any organization, the employees must understand themselves, find out the organizational culture whether it suits them to enable them to enjoy their work and deliver their goods effectively. Additionally, it is the role of leaders to connect employees emotionally with the organizational roles and responsibilities. Remember, increased employee engagement leads to increased organizational bottom lines. Hence, it is essential to emphasize on engaging employees actively into their tasks.

Conclusion

Employee engagement is an investment we make for the privilege of future proofing our organization’s productivity and performance (Ian Hutchinson).

As parents engage their children effectively in personality development, organizations must engage their employees in professional development and career advancement.

Employee engagement either makes or breaks organization. Some companies are chosen the best places to work because their employees are engaged effectively and are emotionally integrated with their organizations. Research indicates that workers have three prime needs: interesting work, recognition for doing a good job, and being let in on things that are going on in the company. To summarize, employee engagement is a two-way street. It is a win-win for both the employees and employers. Hence, both employers and employees must take ownership of their roles and responsibilities to achieve organizational excellence and effectiveness.

Notes

1. www.fastcompany.com/3014036/leadership-now/the-10-things-high-engagement-does-for-you

2. www.leadershipchallenge.com/resource/bringing-the-five-practices-to-life-feb13.aspx

PAGE 130 j INDUSTRIAL AND COMMERCIAL TRAINING j VOL. 49 NO. 3 2017

www.fastcompany.com/3014036/leadership-now/the-10-things-high-engagement-does-for-you
www.leadershipchallenge.com/resource/bringing-the-five-practices-to-life-feb13.aspx
3. www.kevinkruse.com/employee-engagement-research-master-list-of-29-studies/

4. www.forbes.com/sites/ianaltman/2015/12/08/telltale-signs-employees-are-not-engaged/# 674c8b1d29e2

5. www.qualtrics.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/TNS_2703-14_ManagerTipsBook_EMAIL.pdf

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