The Building Blocks of Employee Engagement

Employee engagement is defined as the extent to which employees feel passionate about their jobs, have loyalty to and are committed to a company and are willing to put discretionary effort into their work.

Employees have little control over engagement quality and how it impacts their work and personal lives but are key stakeholders in its delivery and success. Engagement is primarily driven by a company and its leadership/management team.

Engagement Drivers for a Company

Measures how employees relate to and connect with the company.

Topics include confidence in company leadership, mutual trust, culture, fairness, values, and respect, for example, how people like to be treated by others when at work and outside of work.

Measures how leaders/managers demonstrate the essential skills and behaviours needed to be effective when engaging with employees.

Topics include feeling valued, being treated fairly, doing meaningful work, receiving feedback and direction, and having a strong working relationship, for example, employee and leader/manager mutual respect.

Global Engagement Statistics.

Employee engagement can be a silent and deceptive cost or can create opportunities to generate savings and improve profitability.

If the statistical level of the engagement illustrated is the same or similar for your business, the following situation may apply;

• 27% of employees are driving results.
• 59% of employees do the minimum work required, miss work often and would leave the company without much regret.
• 14% are unwilling to do what is required and are unhappy when at work. They are likely to demonstrate negativity to colleagues and customers.

Satisfaction versus Engagement

Employee satisfaction is defined as the extent to which employees consider salary, work-life balance, benefits, working conditions and business processes as the most important factors of their work.

It is important not to confuse employee satisfaction with engagement.

As an example, it’s possible that the majority of people included in the statistics would express the same or similar views in an employee satisfaction survey. However, within the same statistical group, there are likely to be many variances in an employee engagement survey.

• Satisfaction equals practical and content.
• Engagement equals happy, motivated emotional and passionate.

Engagement – Work – Value.

Work is defined as a sustained physical or mental effort in order to overcome obstacles and achieve an objective or result. Merriman Webster Dictionary.

Value is defined as a high regard for something and its intrinsic importance, monetary worth, or usefulness. Collins English Dictionary.

When these definitions are connected to the definition of engagement, it is easy to see how engaged employees enjoy work and always add value.

The 27% who are engaged add value all the time.

When employees are only satisfied and not fully engaged work is not enjoyable and value is not always added.

The 73% not fully engaged / actively dis-engaged do not always add value.

Key Question: how much productivity and value is lost and what is the impact of engagement or the lack of it, on the bottom line.

Engagement Cost / Benefit Analysis.

There are three cost/benefit factors:

1) Staff turn-over costs.

2) Performance characteristics of engaged employees.

3) The same for those not engaged.

Employee Turnover Costs.

Recent statistics from the 2019 HR Barometer published by Adare Human Resource Management show the cost of replacing staff and the rate of employee turnover are both rising as Ireland nears full employment.

The report found that staff turnover averaged 14% in 2018, up 4%s from 2017. The cost of recruiting a replacement averaged €14,450. An increase of 10.3%.Nearly 50% of those surveyed said it was taking longer to fill posts.

It is reasonable to project that a percentage of employee turnover can be linked to a lack of engagement.

Performance Characteristics of Non – Engagement.

Employees who are not fully engaged or actively dis- engaged are typically low performers who struggle to complete meaningful work and add intrinsic or monetary value. They cling to the status quo, resist change and inhibit business success and growth.

When nobody is giving out everybody should be able to strongly recommend the company they work for to their friends and families.