Employee Engagement

What is employee engagement?

Robinson et al. (2004) define employee engagement as a positive attitude held by the
employee towards the organization and its value. Employee engagement as a concept has
become increasingly mainstream in management thinking over the last decade. It proposes a
mutual gains employment relationship, creating a win-win for employees and their
employers. Its usually seen as an internal state of being, both physical, mental and emotional,
but many also view it as encompassing behaviour and in particular work effort. Typical
phrases used in employee engagement writing include discretionary effort, going the extra
mile, feeling valued and passion for work.
This measures work engagement, which has three elements:
-

vigour (energy, resilience and effort)

dedication (for example, enthusiasm, inspiration and pride)
absorption (concentration and being engrossed in ones work).

The strength of this is its focus on a specific physical and psychological state of being,
meaning that it can be reliably measured and acted upon. However, it misses another aspect,
awareness of business context, thats often seen as central to employee engagement and
understanding the line of sight between ones job role and the purpose and objectives of the
organisation.
Employee engagement is also define as being positively present during the performance of
work by willingly contributing intellectual effort, experiencing positive emotions and
meaningful connections to other (CIPD, 2015).

How does it benefit employees and organisation?

Employers want engaged employees because, as well as being happier, healthier and more
fulfilled, they deliver improved business performance. Research has repeatedly pointed to a
relationship between how people are managed, their attitudes and behaviour, and business
performance. There are nuances in the drivers and outcomes of employee engagement, but
this basic link holds true across different sectors and job roles. Positive relationships are

evidenced with profit, revenue growth, customer satisfaction, productivity, innovation, staff
retention, efficiency and health and safety performance.
Another area of potential benefit relates to organisational brand and reputation. Engaged
employees will be stronger advocates of their organisations and help protect the employer
from the reputational risks associated with poor service levels or product quality. An engaged
employee is aware of business context, and works with colleagues to improve performance
within the job for the benefit of the organization. (CIPD, 2015).
Organizations with a high level of engagement will have higher productivity. In addition,
strong employee engagement promotes a variety of outcomes that are good for employees
and customers. For instance, highly engaged organizations have double the rate of success of
lower engaged organizations. Comparing top-quartile companies to bottom-quartile
companies, the engagement factor becomes very noticeable. For example, top-quartile firms
have lower absenteeism and turnover. Engagement also improves quality of work and health
(Baldoni, 2013).
Engaged employees are more attentive and vigilant. They look out for the needs of their coworkers and the overall enterprise, because they personally own the result of their work and
that of the organization. (Baldoni, 2013).
Engaged employees continuously recreate jobs so that each person has a chance to do what
they do best. Engaged employees listen to the opinions of people close to the action (close
to actual safety issues and quality or defect issues), and help people see the connection
between their everyday work and the larger purpose or mission of the organization. When
engaged employee do this they create a virtuous circle where communication and
collaboration nurture engagement and vice versa (Baldoni, 2013).
Employee engagement is interwoven significantly with important business outcomes. Studies
have found positive relationship between employee engagement and organizational
performance outcomes: employee retention, productivity, profitability, customer loyalty and
safety. Researches also indicate that the more engaged employees are, the more likely their
employer is to exceed the industry average in its revenue growth. Employee engagement is
found to be higher in double-digit growth companies. Research also indicates that
engagement is positively related to customer satisfaction (Coffman, 2000).

Engaged employee consistently demonstrates three general behaviours which improve

organizational performance:
-

Say-the employee advocates for the organization to co-workers, and refers potential

employees and customers

Stay-the employee has an intense desire to be a member of the organization despite

opportunities to work elsewhere

Strive-the employee exerts extra time, effort and initiative to contribute to the success
of the business (Baumruk and Gorman, 2006).

Organisational Outcomes
Employee productivity
Engagement affects employee performance (Kahn, 1990). Engaged employees work harder,
are more loyal and are more likely to go the extra mile for the corporation (Lockwood,
2007). Wellins and Concelman (2005) suggest that engagement is an illusive force that
motivates an individual to achieve higher levels of performance. High levels of engagement
at work support employees in taking initiative and pursuing learning goals.
Advocacy of the organisation
Engaged employees are more likely to advocate the organisation as a place to work and
actively promote its products and services (Scottish Executive Social Research, 2007).
Organisational Performance
The best (performers) tended to be those with the highest engagement scores (Robinson et
al., 2007). Harter (2002) stated that there is a relationship between employee engagement,
customer satisfaction, productivity, profit and employee turnover.

Increasing employee

engagement and building an environment to support can significantly increase the likelihood
of business success.
Successful organisational change
Employee engagement play a key role in aiding the successful implementation of
organisational change (Graen, 2008) and may be particularly important to enabling
organisational agility in companies forced to adapt to the changing market. For instance,
Cambridgeshire County Council (2007) found that their engagement improvement initiatives

had led to time savings when introducing new policies and implementing change. Graen
(2008) proposes that engagement may protect an organisations bottom-line profit when the
local or global economy is in the midst of a recession.

Employee outcomes
Clarifying expectations
Cartwright and Holmes (2006) suggest that the rapidly changing environments in todays
workplaces have brought with them a more transactional approach to the relationship
between employer and employee. Where once an employee expected a job for life and
promotion in exchange for their loyalty and commitment, employers now tend to offer higher
salaries and increased employability in exchange for employees efforts, and even greater
efforts are now expected than 20 years ago. They suggest that this shift in expectations has
frustrated many employees, and many are now questioning the meaning of work and seeking
greater fulfilment from their employment. Engagement, then, could offer a solution for the
individual, providing them with the opportunity to invest themselves in their work. The
combination of employing and expressing a persons preferred self-yields behaviours that
bring alive the relation of self to role (Kahn, 1990). Indeed, an increase in an employees
sense of self efficacy has also been suggested to be an outcome of employee engagement
(Seijts and Crim, 2006).
Health and well-being
Employee engagement could result in positive health effects and positive feelings towards
work and the organisation (Rothbard, 2001). Gallup (Crabtree, 2005, cited in Lockwood,
2007) Engaged employees are more likely to view the organisation and job as a healthy
environment and therefore more likely to support the organisation (Lockwood, 2007).
Engagement and investment of the self into ones work may lead to mindfulness, intrinsic
motivation, creativity, authenticity, non-defensive communication, playfulness, ethical
behaviour, increased effort and involvement and overall a more productive and happy
employee (Kahn, 1990).

How to build an engaged workforce

Understanding some fundamentals:
A great deal can be learnt from existing research on what drives employee engagement.
MacLeod and Clarke (2009) summarised four enablers that should be fundamentals of any
employee engagement strategy:
-

Leadership that gives a strong strategic narrative about the organisation, where its

come from and where its going.

Line managers who motivate, empower and support their employees.
Employee voice throughout the organisation, to challenge or reinforce the status quo

and involve employees in decision making.

Organisational integrity: stated values are embedded into organisational culture;
what we say is what we do.

The last of these, integrity, closely relates to the sense of fairness and trust in the organisation
and the psychological contract, which depend on employers delivering on their commitments
and fulfilling employees expectations (Guest and Conway, 2004).
Its worth taking care to distinguish between drivers and enablers of employee engagement.
Employers should not assume that employees are naturally demotivated and the solution is
for managers to inspire and lead them in an engaging way. It can equally be the case that
employees are inherently highly motivated and only demotivated by organisational barriers
such as a lack of support or resources or poor line management (CIPD, 2015).

Globalisation
Globalization is a process that encompasses the causes, course, and consequences of
transnational and transcultural integration of human and non-human activities (Al-Rodhan,
2006).
Globalization is not a single concept that can be defined and encompassed within a set time
frame, nor is it a process that can be defined clearly with a beginning and an end.
Furthermore, it cannot be expounded upon with certainty and be applicable to all people and
in all situations. Globalization involves economic integration; the transfer of policies across
borders; the transmission of knowledge; cultural stability; the reproduction, relations, and
discourses of power; it is a global process, a concept, a revolution, and an establishment of
the global market free from socio-political control (Nikitin and Elliott, 2000).
Globalisation refers to trend of world economic and social integration, including the process
of formation of common markets and game rules, and integration of cultures. In that process,
all parties take various economic, political and cultural measures to compete globally for
grabbing resources, interests and for gaining their say. In addition to impacts from global
economic factors, labour markets are also subject to interference of political factors, where
the outcomes hence become complex. As newcomers in the markets, young graduates faced
with ever-increasing employment vulnerability in the context of increased labour market
variables as a result of globalisation (Zhang, 2006).

Challenges of young graduates during Globalisation

Globalization Pressure on Developing Countries
Globalization has caused further deterioration of the youth employment problem in addition
to the limitations from the domestic economic and social environments. Developed countries
depending on their solid financial strengths pursue adjustments of their domestic economies
by means of globalization and through controlling the economies of developing nations, and
they will even not hesitate to take political measures for that purpose. In the context of
globalization, a globally unified market has come into being, the inequalities or market

segmentations between developed and developing nations have limited job opportunities to
young graduates in the latter. Therefore, global effort is required to solve the employment
problem of youth (Zhang, 2006).
Unemployment, underemployment and inactivity issues becoming more serious
In the context of globalization, bad labour market conditions have severely affected youths
behaviour there. Some good students will extend their school years for higher education, but
doing so will only defer their entry into labour markets and will not ease the employment
pressure, and they will even be faced with a higher unemployment rate than those young
people with lower education after their graduation and entry into the markets.
Most of young people enter labour markets after finishing secondary education. They are
particularly difficult to find jobs and see the highest unemployment rate as they are not
qualified for higher posts but unwilling to accept lower ones. On the other hand, they also
involve underemployment reflected by insufficient income and their overtime percent is
above the average.
Young people of poor educational level have no choice and will feel satisfied as long as they
can find jobs, so their unemployment rate is the lowest.
In summary, in the context of globalization, employment pressure will exist for a long period
in the youth labour market. There will be more young people falling in the state of
underemployment reflected as insufficient working time or income, or in unemployment, and
temporarily exit labour markets with the hope of returning there some day, the problems of
unemployment, underemployment and inactivity have become worse, and young human
resources have been wasted seriously (Zhang, 2006).
Globalization has led to faster changes of technologies and ways of production, to which
youth are difficult to adapt due to quality limitations.
In general, general educational level of youth is ever improving as result of better economic
growth and education quality, continuous enrolment rates of schools at all levels and constant
expansion of higher education, most of them have received junior high school education.
However, some of the youth are disadvantageous in terms of educational level in the context
of globalization.

Information technology is the fundamental technology of globalization, which has not only
created new patters of production and employment, but also reformed traditional production
models. In some countries, most youth live a life on informal employment of poor technology
content due to limitations of the economic development level, and the popularity of new
production-related information technologies remains low among employed young people,
who have far less opportunities of access to new information technology-based production
patterns than their peers in developed countries. When young people in developed countries
do modelling using advanced information technologies, some of the youth of the developing
countries are still learning simple charting.
In short, due to difference in economic development level, globalization with information
technology as the feature will make it difficult for youth in developing countries to adapt to
quality requirements of the new economy and cause an ever-expanding gap between them
and other parts of the world if without artificially driven communication and transfer of
technologies and knowledge to the countries. Lack of knowledge and technologies is worse
than scarcity of materials. Further, similarly due to young labour forces quality being unable
to adapt to the requirements of globalization, and to insufficient information (Zhang, 2006).
Increasing number of young graduates
Graduates spend a lot of time looking for employment in fact, between two and five
years. Some of the countries cannot cope with the increasing number of graduates. The
efforts to create employment in the form of internships have further worsened the difficulties
of these young job seekers, who are now being exploited and in most cases are expected to
undertake unmatched jobs. Another challenge is the significant amount of work experience
that is required by some of the organizations, whereas young graduates often do not have any
work-related experience (United Nation World Youth Report, 2012).

Opportunities of young graduates during Globalisation

Policies are formulated to divert high-quality labour force to jobs in western, grassroots
and hard-condition regions
Many countries had launched files in recent three years consecutively to encourage college
and university graduates employment, which contain some policy breakthroughs for
employment through flows of the graduates, that is, a number of job opportunities are

supported and created in western, grassroots and hard-condition regions to solve the
employment problem of the graduates and meanwhile promote local economic and social
development. The policy breakthroughs mainly involve removal of permanent registered
residence restriction, future employment promises, preferred access to education, etc. In
terms of employment promotion, these measures are substitutes instead of complements
effects.
Besides, policies for promoting flows of college and university graduates for employment
also include removal of unauthorized and unreasonable administrative charges upon college
graduates taking jobs in provinces or municipalities other than their origins. Cities at and
below provincial capital level have cancelled residence registration restrictions on non-local
college graduates. Cities above provincial capital level should also loosen such restrictions
and simplify relevant procedures as needed. This policy is a genuine market-oriented action
going for the promotion of youth employment (Zhang, 2006).
Policies are formulated to encourage college graduates to carve out their own business
and self-employ
These policies primarily involve the exemption of registration and administrative charges to
college graduates in start-up stage of their own businesses, which is equal to a type of
financial subsidy used to ease employment pressure. The policies are apparently temporary
and are not intended to promote stable entrepreneurship by youth (Zhang, 2006).
Policies are formulated to encourage college graduates to work for private employers
The core of these policies is to attract college graduates to non-public employers through
improving law enforcement and services for them, enhancing employment conditions in nonpublic institutions and protecting the legal rights and interests of college graduates working
for them. Specific processes include supervising and urging the employers to sign
employment contracts, pay remunerations and cover social security for their college-graduate
employees. These measures help ease the structural employment pressure of college
graduates and improve the quality of their employment (Zhang, 2006).
Youth Vocational Internship Programme is launched for young graduates
In recent years, a vocational internship programme has been launched in some developed
regions specifically for young unemployed people, under which some technologically
advanced enterprises of better management and certain publicity in their respective industries

are selected as internship employers, where young unemployed people under the programme
work on internship at some posts of high technology content for three to six months, but in no
case for more than one year, in order to improve their competitiveness in job hunting. For the
young people working on internship, governments provide living expense allowance and
cover comprehensive insurance for the internship duration, and also certain compensation to
the employers. The programme has gained praise and appreciation from enterprises, young
unemployed people and their families. The programme can help young people acquire
professional skills, working experience, labour law and regulation knowledge and spirit of
respect to job that match developments of new industries (Zhang, 2006).
A bright future for young graduates around the globe
There will be more new opportunities for young people which do not currently exist.
However, the increased competition in this era of globalization, which makes them compete
with other youth in the world, as a challenge, but one which will ensure that young people
will therefore seek to improve their skills in order to be competitive in the job market (United
Nation World Youth Report, 2012).
A future in the green economy
As young people tend to be more interested in trying out new ideas and developing new
solutions, so they are more likely to be employed in fields connected with new, green
technologies. Furthermore, young people are, in general, more conscious of global issues like
climate change and social equity. For this reason, the promotion of green economies among
youth is a winning solution (United Nation World Youth Report, 2012).