Employee engagement can be critical to a company's success, given its clear links to job satisfaction and employee morale. Communication is a critical part of creating and maintaining employee engagement. Engaged employees are more likely to be productive and higher performing. They also often display a greater commitment to a company's values and goals. Employers can encourage employee engagement in many ways, including communicating expectations clearly, offering rewards and promotions for excellent work, keeping employees informed about the company's performance, and providing regular feedback.
Other strategies include making efforts to make employees feel valued and respected, and feeling that their ideas are being heard and understood.
Engaged employees believe that their work is meaningful, believe that they are appreciated and backed by their supervisors and that they have been entrusted with the success of their company. Employee engagement has been a considered part of management theory since the s and became widely adopted in the s.
While it has its detractors, mostly based on how difficult it can be to measure, employee engagement has been found to have direct links to a company's profitability and financial health. Engaged employees often develop an emotional connection to their job and company, and will be focused on working toward their organization's goals. While companies may define employee engagement according to their own needs, the basic characteristics of an engaged employee are:. Tesla, Inc.
TSLA , alarmed by the high number of injuries at its Fremont car assembly plant, used more transparent communication as an employee engagement strategy to improve safety. Musk even performs the same task on the production line with workers who have been injured to see where safety improvements can be made. Aon Hewitt. Accessed Dec. Small Business. Career Advice. Wealth Management. Your Privacy Rights. To change or withdraw your consent choices for Investopedia.
At any time, you can update your settings through the "EU Privacy" link at the bottom of any page. These choices will be signaled globally to our partners and will not affect browsing data. Aaron is "actively disengaged. Aaron doesn't respond for a few days -- because the last time he took on a similar project he "didn't even get as much as a thank you.
He eventually says yes to the new project, but consistently holds everyone back and chooses to criticize what others are doing because he's not invested. When companies use Gallup's Q12 as a framework -- one that's supported by executives as a primary management strategy -- they yield clear and better results.
Gallup's most recent meta-analysis -- a study of many studies -- on team engagement and performance includes employee engagement statistics accumulated over the past three decades. Those in the top quartile on employee engagement significantly outperformed those in the bottom quartile on these crucial performance outcomes:.
A company's employee experience reflects the entire journey an employee takes with the organization. It includes prehire experiences to post-exit interactions, as well as aspects of a job related to an employee's role, workspace, wellbeing, and relationships with their manager and team. The employee life cycle is made of seven stages that capture the most significant employee-employer interactions that connect employees with the organization.
Naturally, each employee's engagement influences their employee experience during the engage stage of the employee life cycle. However, employee engagement also influences and is influenced by aspects of every other stage. Selecting employees based on fit to role increases the likelihood that they will do what they do best every day -- a key element of engagement. Laying the foundation for engagement during onboarding requires thoughtfully planned conversations about what motivates employees and what development needs they have.
Employees who strongly agree they have a clear plan for their professional development are 3. Employees who strongly agree they have had conversations with their manager in the last six months about their goals and successes are 2. Many organizations have engagement programs that are disconnected from various aspects of the employee experience.
They may see engagement purely in terms of retention, rather than as essential to a powerful recruitment strategy. Or, they may see the value in implementing an engaging onboarding process yet fail to see how a focus on engagement can transform performance conversations.
Organizations that make employee engagement a central part of their corporate strategy take a different approach. They incorporate aspects of engagement into all elements of their employee experience so that each feeds into and amplifies the other. Are we leading with communications about our mission to attract talent who finds our purpose motivating? Do we engage new hires from day one and make onboarding a long-term process that establishes clear expectations and a positive manager relationship?
Do our managers and their teams have regular discussions about the engagement of their team members and how to create an engaging culture? Managers are in charge of ensuring that employees know what work needs to be done, supporting and advocating for them when necessary, and explaining how their work connects to organizational success.
To succeed in that responsibility, managers need to be equipped to have ongoing coaching conversations with employees. Unfortunately, most managers don't know how to make frequent conversations meaningful, so their actions are more likely to be interpreted as micromanaging without providing the right tools and direction.
So, it's not enough for leaders to simply tell managers to own engagement and coach their teams. There are no quick fixes when it comes to human relationships. Simple team engagement activities or staff engagement exercises won't transform your culture. But since the value of the Q 12 items is in helping managers and teams start conversations and approach workforce engagement issues in an authentic and meaningful way, there are lots of ideas in the framework to help you build your team up.
A new manager has inherited a low-performing team with diverse ages, genders, cultures and personalities. After a few months of private conversations and tense team meetings, she can tell that a lack of cooperation and disunity are at the heart of the team's lack of collaboration and low performance outcomes. Make recognition a regular agenda item to demonstrate appreciation for individuals' different contributions to the team and organization.
Ask employees: What would make you feel like a valued member of this team? Individualize the approach to leading team members based on how they say they want to be treated.
Become an advocate for employees' ideas. Solicit them during meetings and take action on them. You can increase employee engagement and the relationships on your team simply by knowing what makes them unique.
Managers can increase engagement and performance by helping their team develop as individuals and achieve their purpose. We've studied thousands of teams from around the world, find out what we know the best do. In our studies of the world's most successful organizations, we've learned that a culture of high employee development is the most productive environment for both the business and the employees.
It also aligns with the expectations of the current workforce: The No. Gallup has partnered with 39 high-achieving organizations that have nearly doubled their percentage of engaged employees. They are committed to development-focused engagement programs -- they meet their employees' needs, as defined by the 12 engagement elements , by transforming their organizations into engines of individual development.
As they have invested in unleashing human potential, they have seen their organizations become more productive, more competitive and more profitable. Get the workplace trends, global engagement metrics and advice on how organizations can improve the workplace in the State of the Global Workplace Report.
Notice: JavaScript is not enabled. Please Enable JavaScript Safely. What Is Employee Engagement? Why Is Employee Engagement Important? Close banner. Back to Top. So, what can companies do better to engage employees? They want to be known for what they're good at. The term employee engagement relates to the level of an employee's commitment and connection to an organization.
Employee engagement has emerged as a critical driver of business success in today's competitive marketplace. High levels of engagement promote retention of talent, foster customer loyalty and improve organizational performance and stakeholder value.
Executives from around the world say that enhancing employee engagement is one of their top five global business strategies. Not only does engagement have the potential to significantly affect employee retention, productivity and loyalty, it is also a key link to customer satisfaction, company reputation and overall stakeholder value. Increasingly, organizations are turning to HR to set the agenda for employee engagement and commitment to establish a competitive advantage.
Most executives already understand that employee engagement directly affects an organization's financial health and profitability. According to Gallup, just 33 percent of American workers are engaged by their jobs.
Fifty-two percent say they're "just showing up," and 17 percent describe themselves as "actively disengaged" 1 ; therefore, most employers have a lot of work to do to unlock the full potential of their workforce. Engagement and productivity can be affected by social cohesion, feeling supported by one's supervisor, information sharing, common goals and vision, communication, and trust.
Employees want to feel valued and respected; they want to know that their work is meaningful and their ideas are heard. Highly engaged employees are more productive and committed to the organizations in which they work.
Researchers and consulting firms have developed varied definitions of employee engagement. They have also created categories to describe and distinguish differing levels of worker engagement. Although the concepts of employee engagement and job satisfaction are somewhat interrelated, they are not synonymous.
Job satisfaction has more to do with whether the employee is personally happy than with whether the employee is actively involved in advancing organizational goals. Definitions of employee engagement range from the brief and concise to the descriptive and detailed.
Many of these definitions emphasize some aspect of an employee's commitment to the organization or the positive behaviors an engaged employee exhibits. Examples of employee engagement definitions include:. Quantum Workplace - Employee engagement is the strength of the mental and emotional connection employees feel toward their places of work. Gallup - Engaged employees as those who are involved in, enthusiastic about and committed to their work and workplace.
Willis Towers Watson — Engagement is employees' willingness and ability to contribute to company success. Aon Hewitt - Employee engagement is "the level of an employee's psychological investment in their organization. Organizations that conduct research on employee engagement categorize employees based on the employee's level of engagement, but they have used different terminology in doing so.
For example, engaged and less than fully engaged employees have been described as follows:. Disengaged workers feel no real connection to their jobs and tend to do the bare minimum. Disengagement may show itself in a number of common ways, including a sudden 9-to-5 time clock mentality, an unwillingness to participate in social events outside the office or a tendency to fox hole oneself apart from peers.
It becomes most noticeable when someone who's normally outgoing and enthusiastic seems to fall by the wayside and has nothing positive to contribute. They may resent their jobs, tend to gripe to co-workers and drag down office morale.
The terms engagement and job satisfaction are often used interchangeably. However, research has revealed that although there is some overlap in the drivers of engagement and satisfaction, there are also key differences in the components that determine each.
Some experts define engagement in terms of employees' feelings and behavior. Engaged employees might report feeling focused and intensely involved in the work they do. They are enthusiastic and have a sense of urgency.
Engaged behavior is persistent, proactive and adaptive in ways that expand the job roles as necessary. Engaged employees go beyond job descriptions in, for example, service delivery or innovation. Whereas engaged employees feel focused with a sense of urgency and concentrate on how they approach what they do, satisfied employees, in contrast, feel pleasant, content and gratified.
The level of employee job satisfaction in an organization often relates to factors over which the organization has control such as pay, benefits and job security , whereas engagement levels are largely in direct control or significantly influenced by the employee's manager through job assignments, trust, recognition, day-to-day communications, etc.
Researchers at Kenexa High Performance Institute looked at , responses on employee engagement from companies in the U. Extensive research has been conducted to determine the factors that influence employee engagement levels. The research has indicated that there are both organizational drivers and managerial drivers. In today's digital age, less person-to-person interaction and increasing on-demand technology from chats and texts to social media updates and news feeds, is eroding employee engagement.
Quantum Workplace the research firm behind the "Best Places to Work" programs in more than 47 metro areas has identified six drivers of employee engagement that have the greatest impact:. Employee engagement increases dramatically when the daily experiences of employees include positive relationships with their direct supervisors or managers.
Behaviors of an employee's direct supervisors that have been correlated with employee engagement include:. Employee engagement is influenced by many factors—from workplace culture, organizational communication and managerial styles to trust and respect, leadership, and company reputation. In combination and individually, HR professionals and managers play important roles in ensuring the success of the organization's employee engagement initiatives.
To foster a culture of engagement, HR should lead the way in the design, measurement and evaluation of proactive workplace policies and practices that help attract and retain talent with skills and competencies necessary for growth and sustainability.
Middle managers play a key role in employee engagement, creating a respectful and trusting relationship with their direct reports, communicating company values and setting expectations for the day-to-day business of any organization.
Studies show that people leave managers, not companies and ensuring managers are actively participating in and managing employee engagement is paramount. See Employee Engagement Issues? But middle managers need to be empowered by being given larger responsibilities, trained for their expanded roles and more involved in strategic decisions. If an organization's executives and HR professionals want to hold managers accountable for the engagement levels, they should:.
To increase employee engagement levels, employers should give careful thought to the design of engagement initiatives.
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