20150225 Employee Engagement Final Complete

CIPD L5 in HR Management (5EEG)

Employee Engagement Assignment

25 Feb 2015

Duncan Mclea

21414569

Introduction:
The following document will outline the definition of Employee Engagement and endeavour to explain how this term may differ to such terms as organisational commitment (loyalty), employer involvement and job satisfaction.
It will outline key findings in recent studies on employee engagement which will include to what extent gender, demographic and other specific factors influence levels of engagement. This will then answer the question as to why employee engagement is currently a “Hot Topic” for organisations.
Continuing by discussing the benefits of having an engaged workforce and what steps an organisation can take to create a culture of employee engagement utilising such things as job design, discretional and role autonomy to name just a selection. It will form the basis of an online encyclopaedic entry aimed at HR Professionals and practicing managers.

Definition of Employee Engagement
There are many different theories behind Employee Engagement which can alter the overall definition. Different theories will be discussed as part of this section but a broad definition of employee engagement would be:
“Employee engagement is a workplace approach designed to ensure that employees are committed to their organisation 's goals and values, motivated to contribute to organisational success, and are able at the same time to enhance their own sense of well-being” (www.engageforsuccess.org)
“This is about how we create the conditions in which employees offer more of their capability and potential.” – David Macleod
The above definition sets out the broad scope of employee engagement. By engaging the employees, however this is achieved will in essence provide the organisation with an employee that is more likely to work towards and achieve the organisational goals while being provided with the tools required to fulfil their potential and better themselves. This can be intellectually or of a work/life balance nature.
Frameworks for Employee Engagement:
In defining the framework for employee engagement CIPD have bought together work from Ulrich involving Vigour, Dedication and Absorptions with Kingston Business School to define three dimensions to employee engagement.
Intellectual engagement – Thinking hard about the job and how to do it better
Affective engagement – feeling positive about doing the job
Social engagement – actively taking opportunities to discuss work related improvements with others at work. (www.CIPD.co.uk)
In 2009 Macleod produced four enablers that should be fundamental to achieving the CIPD dimensions above:
Leadership – must give a strong message about where the organisation has come from and where it is going.
Empowering line managers to then empower their employees by support and motivation.
Involve employees in decision making empowering them to constructively challenge and reinforce the current practices.
Integrity of the organisation and their values are stated and upheld. (www.CIPD.co.uk).
Crawford et al in 2013 summarised that specific drivers enable employee engagement.
Job Challenge – when jobs are broad and work load, responsibility is high it creates potential for personnel growth and high engagement.
Autonomy – the freedom for employees to structure, schedule and determine the procedures to complete their work. This gives ownership and control over work.
Variety – Allowing individuals to perform many different tasks utilises and promotes many different skills.
Feedback – Direct, clear information on employee performance.
Fit – Direct correlation between employee and workplace, organisation allowing employee to behave and see themselves as they wish.
Opportunities for development – Making work meaningful as they allow employees to grow.
Rewards and recognition – they represent both direct and indirect returns on investment of employee’s time and commitment. (Armstrong 2015)
By looking at the CIPD and MA cloud’s models and using Armstrong’s drivers a relationship can be created between the engagement of an employee and the performance of an organisation. Employers inevitably want to improve organisational performance but studies have shown that happy, healthy and fulfilled employees will consistently deliver and perform, improving an organisation. Research has demonstrated that there is a correlation between how people are managed and their performance. An engaged employee will also display a high level of discretionary effort, “go the extra mile”, and complete additional tasks outside of the physical contract for the good of the organisation but only If they feel valued by their management, have a high level of job satisfaction and feel involved in the strategic focus of the organisation. Positive relationships are evidenced with profit, revenue growth, customer satisfaction, productivity, innovation, staff retention, efficiency and health and safety performance. Organisations are increasingly focusing on their brand and image especially in today’s global market where instant interchangeable information is readily available online. Having a highly engaged workforce will mitigate the risks associated with damaging brand and image as engaged employees are more likely to stand up for an organisation.(CIPD.co.uk).
Organisations can drive employee engagement in simple terms by participation in simple employee programmes. They could have an emotional attachment that would translate into better customer services and job productivity or the organisation could provide something good that provides a platform for MA cloud’s enablers above.
Employee engagement involves promotion and maintenance of emotional and environmental factors such as organisational commitment, employer involvement and job satisfaction.
The following section describes these three factors and will demonstrate how they differ to employee engagement.

Organisational commitment. - Is defined as the strength of feeling the employee has towards the organisation. The psychological bond that the employee has with the organisation plays a large role in affecting the employee loyalty to the organisation. A committed loyal employee will identify with the goals and values of the organisation and will have a strong desire to belong to the organisation.
A committed employee will work towards the goals of the company within the confines of their contract. All though the emotional bond is there between the employee and the organisation it may not make them any more committed or productive. This can be seen as part of employee engagement but is different as a fully engaged employee will utilise discretionary effort to achieve the goals of the organisation. They may work late to finish a particular project or aid a colleague in their work for the benefit of the organisation. (www.researchgate.com).

Job Involvement – This refers to the psychological and emotional extent to which employees feel that they participate in their work and organisation. Employees are encouraged to directly impact the decisions in their workplace to be involved. An employee with high job involvement can be encouraged to take on additional work or duties for the benefit of the organisation. A fully engaged worker with high job involvement will automatically volunteer for additional tasks to benefit the organisation. Employers throughout the world are regularly monitoring and promoting employee involvement by utilising an annual employee engagement survey.(www.workforce.com)

Job Satisfaction – This is the level of contentment an employee feels about their job. This is a very subjective and fluent feeling based on an individual’s perception of satisfaction. Affective job satisfaction is a person’s emotional feelings about a job as a whole. Cognitive job satisfaction is how people feel about specific sections of their work. This could be how satisfied they are with their pay, holiday allowance or work life balance. Job satisfaction plays a key role in employee engagement but a satisfied worker alone may not be engaged. It is possible for a worker to maintain their physical contractual terms and have a high satisfaction within their organisation without engaging at all. The employee is happy and satisfied with the work they are doing but it is not to the standard that the organisation expects (www.boundless.com)

Employee Engagement Today.
The latest CIPD Employee Outlook Survey conducted in autumn 2014 demonstrated that engagement and job satisfaction amongst its surveyed employees had grown from 35% to 38% from the previous survey. In line with the growth in employee engagement job satisfaction was also up. Their survey also showed that there was a substantial rise in job satisfaction in the older employees. In 2006 The Conference Board (a non-profit organisation) gathered evidence from all the major surveys of the time and concluded that one of its key findings was that age plays a greater part in employee engagement than was thought. Under 44 years of age ranked "challenging environment/career growth opportunities" much higher than older employees, who value "recognition and reward for their contributions" higher. But of all studies, all locations and all ages agreed that the strongest driver of employee engagement is the direct relationship with one 's manager.
Fraser Marlow, VP Research, at BlessingWhite conducted a survey in 2012 which showed that in Europe the gap between male and female engagement has lessened to about 3% and is no longer considered a gender issue. This is generally due to legislation and reforms ingrained in western culture. In India the engaged gap remains high between men and women which could be a result of Indian cultures outside the control of the workplace. India faces a large educational gap between males and females. Males in India have a 225% higher rate of literacy than females. These factors however should give organisations operating in India an opportunity to build a truly inclusive organisation. An example of this is BAXTER an Asian Pacific company that has promoted the engaged gender gap and now has a 50/50 split of males and females in leadership roles and 75% of their Asian Pacific board are now females. (Fraser Marlow, VP Research, BlessingWhite 2012)
Marstons a major pub operator and brewer with a workforce of 13000 of which 11500 work in their pubs contracted People Sight to conduct a survey for them to see how engaged their staff were after a period of change and new acquisitions. As a direct result of the survey a reward schemes were enacted that encompassed more of its employees. As 50% of Marstons workforce is under 25 and transient “not going to be there for the gold watch”. The survey showed that the majority of this demographic was disengaged. The reward scheme focused especially on rewards early on in the employment so that the younger employees could benefit and would then be more likely to stay on and be engaged with the ethos of the company for a longer time. They also adopted a training plan for their managers where they used workshops initially to broaden the knowledge of implementing employee engagement. They then developed the specific strong aspects of each individual manager so they had the knowledge and tools to push forward employee engagement. Marstons admitted prior to the survey that they did not have a dedicated communications channel for all employees. They had a focused it system to inform managers but that was all. Post the survey a company wide website with company wide information including results of surveys was implemented. There is now a real sense that the surveys that the employees take part in really do drive change within Marstons. They have developed a real appetite to see the results of each survey. Completing the process of evaluating employee engagement has shown Marstons that they needed to be seen by potential employees as a decent employer not seeing employees as lucky to work for them. (People Insight 2013)
“We have significantly improved our engagement scores between year one and year two, showing that we haven’t just surveyed our employees and done nothing with the data – we’ve acted and implemented change as a direct result.” (Ralph Findlay CEO Marstons PLC 2014)
Factors such as age, demographics and gender can have a major impact on employee engagement. A good starting point for organisations is an engagement survey to gage where they should focus their energy in improving engagement. It is important that surveys are transparent and results are not only communicated to the work force but also acted upon and these actions communicated to the workforce. Marstons proved that looking after their demographic enabled them to retain some if not all of their transient workforce. A happy employee makes a happy customer.

Importance of Employee Engagement
Employee engagement has been around for some time in various forms and the notion that a happy, satisfied, committed and informed work force is a more productive workforce is not a new concept. Employers are paying more and more attention to the levels of employee engagement as research has consistently demonstrated that there is a correlation between how people are managed, employee attitudes and business performance. “Look after your people and they will look after you”. This is true throughout the business community as positive relationships have been shown to directly impact:
Profit
revenue growth customer satisfaction productivity innovation staff retention efficiency health and safety (CIPD.co.uk)
Organisations are also increasingly recognising that they have an identity to protect and engaged employees will uphold and defend that brand identity and protect against poor customer service and poor outputs (CIPD.co.uk).
Employee engagement is important to organisations as it can bring with it massive benefits and is a good vehicle to drive forward cultural change. It benefits both the employee and the employer, some argue that it also benefits the wider economic structure of nations. However it is also seen as hard work and not a quick fix as sustained effort is required to get it right and benefit from the rewards of employee engagement. (David Smith 2014). It can however be rewarding for large and small companies. No matter how difficult it is perceived to implement even the smallest of changes to job design, rewards or autonomy can reap massive rewards in real terms for the organisation or in psychological terms for the employees. It has become increasing a ‘Hot Topic” for organisations because of globalisation and the speed of communication. Companies are realising that employees are no longer “lucky to work for them” but they now need to be attractive to work for. Poor performance, scandal and differing morals are now communicated at speed around the world which can effect employee engagement and company outputs. Glassdoor.co.uk is a classic example of how media is driving companies to engage with its employees to project a better image. Glassdoor gives the opportunity for potential employees, current employees and employers to openly comment on all aspects of the organisation from recruitment – retirement. It gives instant feedback that anyone can view.
It can at times be difficult to quantify the impact of employee engagement as most companies want hard financial facts before investing in programmes to engage employees. As stated previously surveys are a good start and even implementation of small rewards, below, can have a massive impact on the workforce engagement. Examples of low cost simple effective ways to boost employee engagement through reward.
Employee of the month certificate.
Free lunch for the top performer each month.
An extra half a day’s holiday for attaining goals. A lot of surveys have what are sometime seen as soft questions like “Do you have a best friend at work”. It has been proven that employees with a best friend at work feel better at work and are generally more engaged. (www.peoplehr.com)

Examples of How Organisations Have Benefited Through Employee Engagement
Marstons, discussed earlier, benefited immensely by the introduction of an employee engagement programme. By giving their managers training, autonomy to make decisions and by engaging with their employees they not only boosted sales but also received recognition and rewards. They won the Carters.com’s Best Employers in Hospitality Awards 2014 which is solely based on employee engagement and gave Marstons 84% on employee engagement feedback. They have also won brewer of the year 2014 and Aaron Stewart a young landlord of only 2 years’ experience won HSBC’s young franchiser of the Year award 2014. Which would not have been possible if he was not fully engaged with Marstons and if Marstons as an employer had not taken steps to improve engagement. This has shown Marstons to be ahead of it competitors and given them a positive image within the hospitality industry. (www.marstons.co.uk)
National Grid is considered a large company with over 28000 employees and has several strands to its business model. It benefited from increased discretionary behaviour within its employees and better health and safety outputs after implementing an employee engagement procedure. Concerned that KPIs had plateaued on Health and Safety Environment matters. They implemented a series of staff consultations and were surprised that the staff found the company to controlling “You’ve trained us we have the experience but you then don’t let us use our grey matter. You just don’t trust us.” To re-engage their work force they introduced a “trusted to Work” Programme at a special conference attended by 200 of the companies safety representatives. This in effect was a fundamental change to the way they conducted business giving more autonomy to managers to interpret situations and make the right decisions. Alongside changes to job design they made little changes to things like the company corporate images. Instead of staged bright images with models they replaced them with gritty images of real life employees out in all weathers doing real jobs. This was received well by the employees as it aligned the organisation with the employee. Although not an easy process the key factor was agonising over issues and open trusted discussion between managers and employees. Empowering the employees to discuss with their peer’s safety issues the trusted to work model was designed to engage national Grids workforce in what the company goals were. This in turn aligned corporate values with individual values. In doing this the company benefited by maximising their KPIs on Health Safety and Environment and the employees felt that they were in an environment that they could raise health safety and environment issues and they felt confident that they would be listened to and actioned on. This in turn delivered improved and sustainable performance (CSR case study in 2008).

How Job Design, Discretionary Behaviour and Role Autonomy Impacts on Employee Engagement.
Job Design
In a survey by Cerus Consulting 68% of employees said that the single most important factor for high levels of engagement was doing a job that is challenging and varied which makes a meaningful contribution. Job design plays a significant role in the attitudes towards employee engagement although sometimes it is overlooked. In designing a job that promotes maximum engagement Hackman and Oldham (1980) devised the following motivational job features should be observed:
Skill level – The extent a job holder is required to use a range of skills.
Identity – End to end responsibility for the whole piece of work.
Significance – the amount of impact a job has and the contribution the job makes
Autonomy – discretion that the job holder has to make key decisions
Feedback – Direct information about performance.
Organisations that design or develop jobs with high levels of these motivational factors will have high levels of employee engagement. Couple this with effective managers to increase the level of employee engagement. (Engaged for Success white paper 2013).
Discretionary Behaviour:
Applebaum in 2000 recognised that discretionary behaviour is one of the key areas of employee engagement. Managers who invest in the skills of front line workers and include the workers in decision making are more likely to see discretionary behaviour. The factors discussed under Job Design coupled with the approach utilised by managers is more likely to elicit discretionary behaviour.
Role Autonomy
Employees need to feel that their input matters to be engaged. Managers can utilise autonomy to effect employee engagement. Instead of utilising a “carrot on a stick” reward approach managers can empower their employees to be more autonomous. Even across various roles instead of micromanaging employees they can be set autonomous tasks that still have boundaries. To achieve this the end result needs to be clearly defined and the employee given space to figure out how to achieve these results. The employee will become more eager (engaged) to fulfil the commitment of the goals than if micromanaged into the end solution. The balance of autonomy against the guidance of a good leader is an ideal formula to bringing out the best in someone. Bring in recognition in its simples form of a thank you and it leads to a good mix and a sense that the employee is responsible for making decisions that affect the organisation which will drive involvement and can lead to innovation.
The three characteristics above and steps involved in promoting them to achieve maximum employee engagement is nicely summed up in a diagram formulated by Sue Hutchins et al of Bath University in her paper entitled Bringing Policies to Life: Discretionary Behaviour and the Impact on Business Performance 2012

Summary
The term Employee Engagement, although in many forms has been around for ages, aligns the psyche of the employee with the goals and ethos of the organisation. Having this alignment benefits employees, employers, organisations and society. Whatever term you use, be it happy, fulfilled, engaged or satisfied to describe the motivation of employees to go that extra mile or to perform above the standards expected, it sits alongside programmes and applications for employers to improve the potential to go the extra mile, it is now collectively called employee engagement. A whole industry has been built on helping companies and organisations achieve better profit, results and a better image by getting the best from their employees. Your organisation will be a better place to work and be better at what it does if you have an engaged workforce. It does not always have to cost a lot but can sometime take time to implement but it is clear that without it organisation ultimately struggle to keep up with competitors. Promoting employee engagement can take many forms from the most elaborate costly in-depth research into everything your organisation does to a simple thank you as recognition. Remember it cost nothing to recognise someone’s efforts with a simple thank you and this in turn can be rewarded with all that goes with better employee engagement.

Bibliography

http://www.cipd.co.uk/hr-resources/factsheets/employee-engagement.aspx http://education-portal.com/academy/lesson/organizational-commitment-definition-theory-types.html http://www.engageforsuccess.org/about/what-is-employee-engagement/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employee_engagement SCHAUFELI, W.B. and BAKKER, A.B. (2004). Job demands, job resources, and their relationship with burnout and engagement: a multi-sample study. Journal of Organizational Behavior. No 25. pp293-315.
Sarah Cook (2008) The essential Guide to Employee Engagement (better business performance through staff satisfaction., Kogan Page Ltd
Armstrong m (2014) Handbook of Human Resource Management Practice. Kogan Page Ltd 13th Edition. Page 196. http://hrpost.hellowallet.com/engagement/what-is-employee-engagement-and-how-does-it-affect-my-company/ http://education-portal.com/academy/lesson/what-is-job-involvement-definition-scale-quiz.html http://www.govexec.com/excellence/promising-practices/2013/03/whats-difference-between-employee-engagement-and-employee-satisfaction/62080/ http://www.researchgate.net/post/What_is_the_difference_between_employee_commitment_and_employee_engagement http://www.workforce.com/articles/does-employee-involvement-equate-to-engagement https://www.boundless.com/management/textbooks/boundless-management-textbook/organizational-behavior-5/drivers-of-behavior-44/defining-job-satisfaction-231-7247/ http://www.cipd.co.uk/hr-resources/nutshell/07/why-satisfaction-not-enough.aspx http://www.gallup.com/poll/180404/gallup-daily-employee-engagement.aspx http://www.right.com/thought-leadership/research/employee-engagement---maximizing-organizational-performance.pdf http://www.cipd.co.uk/binaries/the-future-of-engagement_2014-thought-piece-employee-engagement-rob-briner.pdf http://www.cipd.co.uk/binaries/the-future-of-engagement_2014-thought-piece-employee-engagement-peter-cheese.pdf http://www.talentculture.com/workplace-culture-and-innovation/employee-engagement-why-is-gender-still-a-factor/ http://www.cipd.co.uk/binaries/the-future-of-engagement_2014-thought-piece-collection.pdf http://www.cipd.co.uk/binaries/employee-outlook_2014-autumn.pdf http://www.peopleinsight.co.uk/Case-Study/marstons/ http://blessingwhite.com/article/engagement-and-the-gender-gap-2/ https://www.conference-board.org/publications/publicationlistall.cfm https://www.engagedforsuccess.org http://www.bath.ac.uk/werc/pdf/sue_et_al.pdf

Bibliography: SCHAUFELI, W.B. and BAKKER, A.B. (2004). Job demands, job resources, and their relationship with burnout and engagement: a multi-sample study. Journal of Organizational Behavior. No 25. pp293-315. Sarah Cook (2008) The essential Guide to Employee Engagement (better business performance through staff satisfaction., Kogan Page Ltd Armstrong m (2014) Handbook of Human Resource Management Practice