Corporate Practices in Employee Engagement

Abstract

Highly engaged employees are committed to their organisation and invested in its success. They are proactive in sharing their ideas, in promoting their company and organisation inside and out, and they exert discretionary effort - above and beyond what is required just to earn their salary and stay employed. Based on the review and analysis of the recent studies by major research firms around the world on employee engagement, there is clear, compelling and mounting evidence that employee engagement is strongly correlated to individual, group and corporate performance outcomes including recruiting, retention, turnover, individual performance and productivity, service and customer loyalty as well as to bottom-line results such as growth in operating margins, increased profitability and revenue growth rates. Employee performance indicates the financial and non-financial outcome of the employee that has a direct link with the performance of the organisation and its success. A number of studies show that an important way to enhance employee performance is to focus on fostering employee engagement. The presence of high levels of employee engagement enhances job performance, task performance and organisational citizenship behaviour, productivity, discretionary effort, affective commitment, continuance commitment, levels of psychological climate and customer service. This article intends to study the key drivers of employee engagement, highlighting some of the engagement models, and projects the employee engagement strategies in some of the leading Indian companies.