Process and outcomes of employee engagement

This is the hardcore fact that the future business performance and revenues and profitability of an organisation no longer depends upon traditional capital management and investment and portfolio management. But the success of any organisation in this constantly changing world of work depends upon human capital management. The companies who understood this fact long before are the most successful and highly productive organisations of the currents times. Those who have just realised it are still struggling to establish a reputation in the industry.

Since the mantra of success of any organisation is the higher involvement, engagement and dedication of employees towards their jobs and their continuous performance to attain more, it is necessary to keep their spirits high, motivate them to perform their best always and generate a breed of satisfied and dedicated employees. Employee Engagement is not a onetime process that can quickly bring results; rather it is an ending process that will go on till the existence of an organisation.

As it is an established fact that there is a clear link between organisational performance and employee engagement, every organisation seeking sustenance and growth in the ever changing world of work quickly respond to the needs of employees along with designing and implementing a customised process to increase the levels of employee engagement. The following are a few basic steps in this process based on the best industry practices.

Prepare and Design: The first step in the process is about discovering the specific requirements of your organisation and deciding the priorities. After that a customised design of carrying the whole process can be designed. It is recommended to seek advice of expert management consultant in order to increase the chances of getting it done right at the first attempt.
Employee Engagement Survey: Design the questions of the employee engagement survey and deploy it with the help of an appropriate media. It can be either in printed form or set online depending upon the comfort level of the employees and your questionnaire evaluation process.
Result Analysis: It is the most important step in the entire process. It is time when reports are to be analysed to find out what exactly motivates employees to perform their best and what actually disengages them and finally compels them to leave the organisation. The results and information can then be delivered through presentations.
Action Planning: ‘How to turn the results of the survey in to an action’ is a challenging question that organisations need to deal with the utmost care. Coaching of line managers as well as HR professionals is very important in order to tell them how to take appropriate actions to engage employees. They should also be told about do’s and don’ts so that they can successfully implement the changes.
Action Follow-up: Action follow up is necessary in order to find out if the action has been taken in the right direction or not and if it is producing the desired results.

Cost of Disengaged Workforce

The findings of the Gallup Study of 2008 show that while the engaged employees believe they can contribute to company’s growth, the disengaged employee believes otherwise, i.e. his job does not contribute to the organization. This belief of the disengaged employee creates a negative spiral that affects his work, co-workers, customers, productivity, and eventually both happiness of employee and company performance. Some effects are illustrated below:

Effect on Work: The disengaged employee tries to evade work, struggles to meet deadlines and is reluctant to accept additional responsibility.
Effect on Co-Workers: The negativity of a disengaged employee, demonstrated either through raves and rants or complete withdrawal from participation, affects the team morale. After all who has not heard of the proverb – one bad apple can spoil the whole bunch.
Effect on Customers: Every employee, whether an organization likes it or not, becomes its ambassador. And a disengaged employee either by actively de-selling the organization, or by complete apathy towards their work, product, process, organization help create disengaged customers.
Effects on Productivity: Disengaged employees seldom push themselves to meet organizational goals let alone contribute to innovative practices at workplace. Since, they do not believe that their work contributes to the organization; they evade completing tasks thereby affecting team productivity.
Effect on Company Performance: In the corporate world, time is money and organizations must innovate to stay relevant. A disengaged workforce by virtue of delayed completion of tasks and inability to improvise and innovate cost the company dollars which ultimately affects bottom line. This has been validated by a Gallup Study whose research showed that costs of disengaged workforce in the United States was upwards of $300bn annually.
Effect on Personal Life of Employee: A disengaged employee is seldom able to shake off the lethargy and perform in the current organization or land a job of preference. This leads to pent up frustration which may ultimately affect his personal and family life.