High Levels Of Employee Engagement Research Articles

Not by money alone: the emotional wallet and talent management

PurposeThe conventional talent management approach views human relationships as transactional, akin to the commodities that traverse through the supply chain maze. In short, there is a quid pro quo relationship between wage and services, depriving any role for other non‐monetary influences on this relationship. This naïve view of human behavior has distracted the fundamental purpose of talent management – to unlock the value of talent to organizations. Two fundamental drivers that have challenged this transactional view espoused by HR include technology and advances in neuroscience. The technological advancements have created a demand for highly skilled professionals who value autonomy and meaningful engagement. This has brought employee engagement within the focus of managers – a topic that had less significance in earlier decades. The transactional view of workplace relationships has been challenged by discoveries of human behavior by neuroscience. Human beings are wired to have emotions and perceptions, and a workplace is no exception. Reframing the issue through a simple‐yet‐powerful framework, fundamentals of talent management can be restored, paving the way for a meaningful design of organizations. This paper seeks to address these issues.Design/methodology/approachUsing rigorous in‐depth secondary research about current talent practices, the report offers a novel framework to unlock the drivers of employee's motivation and performance. The framework serves as a diagnostic leadership tool to identify breakdowns and foster a meaningful conversation to restore the organization back to equilibrium. A holistic alternative that is agnostic to the rank of the employee, job role, and geography offers promise over the current practice of dealing with employee issues in fragmented manner.FindingsThe proposed framework helps identify the sweet‐spot that lies at the intersection of three fundamental drivers; employee's preferences on the type of work, employee's core competency and activities that are value‐adding to the organization. The sweet‐spot is the employee's emotional wallet that the organizations must proactively capture to unlock the true drivers of motivation and performance. The proposed framework serves as a diagnostic tool to meaningfully tackle breakdowns and restore organizations to equilibrium. The sweet‐spot provides the clue to design an effective organizational structure, identify the enablers and catalyst that can unlock employee motivation and performance.Practical implicationsThere is a compelling need for today's organizations to refocus their energies to unlock the value of their talent to drive higher performance and motivation. Deploying the proposed framework will empower organizations to capture the “share of emotional wallet” that is critical to drive higher levels of employee engagement and motivation. Smarter organizational structures and job role can be meaningfully designed.Social implicationsThe proposed framework challenges conventional talent management views of human relationships as transactional akin to the commodities that traverse through the supply chain maze. This blind spot has deprived the organizations in unlocking the drivers of employee motivation and performance. Overcoming this blind spot empowers talent management to capture the emotional share of wallet instead of trying to perfect the delivery supply chain.Originality/valueDespite new organizational complexities, the fundamental focus for talent management is to unlock the value of its resource. Despite the pristine appeal of this fundamental tenet of talent management, it is ironic that HR has drifted its focus from its core. Reframing the issue through a simple‐yet‐powerful framework, fundamentals of talent management can be restored, paving the way for a meaningful design of organizations. This is a paradigm shift for talent management to get back to basics of what really matters to the organizations.

Neopost culture delivers enthusiastic and engaged employees

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to describe the human‐resource management policies that have helped to deliver enthusiastic and engaged employees at Neopost, a global supplier of mailing solutions.Design/methodology/approachThe paper explains the background to the various policies and the results they are achieving.FindingsThe paper details the company's approach to recruitment, training, internal communications, appraisals, recognition, rewards, benefits and community involvement.Practical implicationsThe paper reveals that the culture at Neopost has contributed to high levels of employee engagement. The latest engagement survey reveals that 54 percent of employees class themselves as engaged with company – up from 47 percent two years ago. The survey results identified improvements in employee‐satisfaction levels in all areas of the company, from learning, training and development to leadership.Social implicationsThe paper highlights the ways in which Neopost engages with its local communities, including links with local schools and charitable work by employees.Originality/valueThe paper describes the wide range of HR policies at Neopost and how they have been received by the workforce.

Mediator Analysis of Employee Engagement: Role of Perceived Organizational Support, P-O Fit, Organizational Commitment and Job Satisfaction

Given the multi-determinability of individual affect and attitudes, this paper seeks to explicate their display through some construct that captures the cognitive, emotional, and behavioural components of work-related roles. Employee engagement is found to be one such explanatory variable. This paper assesses the mediating role of employee engagement between perceived organizational support (POS) and person-organization fit (P-O fit) as the antecedents and organizational commitment and job satisfaction as the consequences. It tests the path model by using data from six Indian organizations and a sample of 246 Indian managers. The findings help find a direct effect of P-O fit and POS, which affects employee engagement and leads to variance in organizational commitment and job satisfaction. Further, the paper attempts to establish discriminant validity between employee engagement and organizational commitment. Yet, because of the similarity of wordings of the items measuring the employees� ratings of the two constructs, the authors conducted a confirmatory factor analysis leading to discriminant validity establishment to examine whether employee engagement and organizational commitment were distinct. AMOS software (version 17.0) was used to compare the fit of two nested models: (a) a one-factor model incorporating both the constructs and (b) a two-factor model distinguishing employee engagement and organizational commitment. It also provides empirical support to job satisfaction and its linkage with employee engagement. The findings suggest that when individuals perceive positive levels of organizational collaboration, they are intrinsically encouraged towards exerting considerably higher levels of effort. The notion that P-O fit deals with the congruence between employees� personal values and those of the organization makes for greater meaningfulness and psychological safety leading to higher levels of employee engagement. Furthermore, when individual values are perceived to fit organizational norms, the former are entrusted with greater responsibilities and are made to feel more empowered. A high level of employee engagement reflects a greater trust and loyal relationship between the individual and the organization. This suggests the building up of higher degree of commitment by the employee towards their employing organization. The paper contributes to theory building in the employee engagement and organizational commitment domains.

Business for Good is Good for Business: Corporate Philanthropy and Work Attitudes

Despite the prevalence of financial corporate philanthropy, relatively little is understood about how such giving influences individual employee work attitudes. Building from theories on the joy of giving and social identification with organizations that engage in such activities, we posit a positive effect of such giving on employee work attitudes. We then build on theoretical arguments from work on beneficiary contact and organizational reputation to propose three potential moderators that could dampen or enhance the influence of such giving on employee work attitudes. We test our hypotheses in a sample of all U.S. offices of a large professional services firm, with a longitudinal analysis of over 20,701 employees each year for three years from 2009-2011. We find that when offices give more in financial philanthropy they achieve higher levels of employee engagement. Further, we find support for two of our proposed moderators, showing that beneficiary contact and strategic giving positively strengthen this relationship, while employee giving of their own money has no statistically significant effect on the relationship between giving and employee work attitudes.

The dynamics of employee involvement and participation during turbulent times

Given that the global financial crisis (GFC) has impacted on patterns of human resource management, it is likely that this has also shaped employee involvement and participation (EIP). Unfortunately, very little independent and reliable data are available following the GFC; so, despite using material from company reports and a small survey conducted in the North West of the England, this paper also draws on literature and data from earlier periods of crisis and turbulence to examine how EIP can change at organisational level. The argument is developed around three quite different scenarios: theories of cycles and waves; contrasting business models and product market situations; HR architecture and sub-contracting. This shows that responses are generally uneven but a lot depends on the history of management–employee relations at the organisational level, as well as the context in which the organisation operates and the choices that senior managers make about how to respond to crisis and turbulent times. The paper concludes by suggesting that the regulatory space available in liberal market economies (LMEs) allows employers to choose from a range of options, whereas in co-ordinated market economies, where EIP is more deeply embedded into the institutional structure of the country, employers are more likely to continue involving their staff in some way to deal with crisis. In LMEs, employers aiming to differentiate themselves from the competition are more likely to seek creative responses that are based around higher levels of employee engagement.

How Employee Engagement Matters for Hospital Performance

Managers increasingly understand that employee engagement is a prerequisite for high performance. This article examines how job, work environment, management and organizational factors influence levels of engagement among healthcare employees. Original data come from the Ontario Hospital Association-NRC Picker Employee Experience Survey, involving over 10,000 employees in 16 Ontario hospitals. The article provides a clear definition and measure of engagement relevant to healthcare. In addition to identifying the main drivers of engagement, findings shows that a high level of employee engagement is related to retention, patient-centred care, patient safety culture and employees' positive assessments of the quality of care or services provided by their team. Implications of these findings for healthcare leaders are briefly considered.

Getting engaged: Public-service merit and motivation revisited

Abstract: The concepts of merit and motivation are central to recruiting and retaining high-quality public servants. The meaning of merit has evolved to the more flexible interpretation contained in the 2003 federal Public Service Employment Act (PSEA), and the concept of motivation has become much more central to public management. The PSEA enshrines merit and non-partisanship as the main values to be protected in public-service appointments. It also provides a new definition of merit. Employees with a high level of public-service motivation (PSM) are predisposed to having greater job satisfaction and organizational commitment and, therefore, to performing at a higher level. The challenge is to recruit and retain employees with a high PSM level and to maintain this level while fostering high performance by other employees. This challenge is being pursued in part by fostering employee engagement in the sense of job/organization satisfaction and organizational commitment. Among the major drivers of employee engagement is fair staffing practices, including merit-based hiring. The successful pursuit of a high level of employee engagement can improve public-sector management in general and human resource management in particular. Sommaire: Les concepts de mérite et de motivation sont essentiels au recrutement et au maintien d'excellents fonctionnaires. La signification du mérite a évolué pour aboutir à une interprétation plus souple contenue dans la Loi de 2003 sur l'emploi dans la fonction publique (LEFP) du gouvernement fédéral, et le concept de motivation est devenu beaucoup plus essentiel à la gestion publique. La LEFP inscrit le mérite et l'impartialité politique comme les principales valeurs à protéger dans les nominations de fonctionnaires. Elle prévoit également une nouvelle définition du mérite. Les employés qui ont un niveau élevé de motivation pour la fonction publique (MFP) sont prédisposés à tirer une plus grande satisfaction professionnelle, à faire preuve d'un plus fort engagement envers l'organisation et, par conséquent, àêtre plus performants. Le défi consiste à recruter et retenir des employés ayant un niveau élevé de MFP et à faire en sorte qu'ils maintiennent ce niveau tout en encourageant une forte performance de la part des autres employés. Ce défi peut être en partie relevé en encourageant l'engagement des employés sur le plan de la satisfaction professionnelle et du degré d'attachement à l'organisation. Parmi les principaux catalyseurs de l'engagement des employés, on note les méthodes de dotation équitables, y compris l'embauche fondée sur le mérite. L'obtention d'un haut niveau d'engagement de la part des employés améliore la gestion du secteur public en général, et la gestion des ressources humaines en particulier.

Leadership and employee engagement: passing fad or a new way of doing business?

In 2009, the authors were commissioned by the then UK government to conduct some research to review employee engagement and to answer three questions.1. What is it?2. Is there any evidence to show that it matters?3. What is present in organisations that appear to be good at it?Although this topic will never be a science, the authors found compelling evidence that there is a correlation between better organisational outcomes and higher levels of employee engagement, and more specifically between higher levels of profitability and higher levels of employee engagement.In the ensuing report of the research (MacLeod & Clarke, 2009), the authors outline the four enablers that tend to give rise to higher levels of employee engagement, which are also a useful prism through which to focus organisational effort designed to enhance levels of employee engagement. The four enablers are briefly outlined in this article. These enablers need to be underpinned with the attitude throughout the organisation that employee engagement is about how you do what you do; it is a belief in the importance of people and what they are capable of, when managed effectively.