5 Tips to Increase Employee Engagement
By Chenxi Jiang — Elin Research Intern
Are your employees engaged at work?
According to Kahn (1990), employee engagement is the state of being “fully physically, cognitively, and emotionally connected with one’s working roles.” Surprisingly, in the recent 2018 Gallup Employee Engagement Survey, only 34% of employees in the U.S. reported that they were engaged at work. This percentage is even lower for employees worldwide. Gallup describes this phenomenon as the “employee engagement crisis.”
On the other hand, decades of research have shown a positive correlation between high levels of employee engagement and high rates of profitability growth (Kumar & Pansari 2015). The more engaged employees are at work, the more efficiently they can complete their tasks and the better the corporate performance will be. To resolve the employee engagement crisis and pursue better organizational performance, below are 5 tips on how to increase employee engagement in your corporation:
1. Set Clear Goals for Your Organization
Setting clear goals has always been the foundation for organizational success. A clear understanding of the corporate goals among employees creates organizational alignment, which has a strong positive impact on employee engagement (Alagaraja & Shuck 2015). With a thorough understanding of the common goals, employees know what to expect from each other, which tasks should be prioritized, and what the next steps are towards the goals, which all contribute to a higher level of engagement at work.
2. Create the Psychological Experience of Meaningfulness
Employees work not only for the salary, but also for the sense of meaningfulness and self-fulfillment they experience while working. This feeling of meaningfulness is further linked to greater organizational commitment and job engagement, according to the study by Milliman et al. (2003). To increase employee engagement, corporations should create an environment for employees to derive meaning from their task completion and to feel rewarded for their investment of self to work.
One piece of actionable advice is to give recognition to employees’ contributions. A short yet sincere email will do the job, as well as monetary or gift-based appreciation. Note that the most effective recognition is always detailed and specific. For example, instead of simply saying “thank you” to employees, adding a phrase to highlight the excellent work they’ve done — such as “thank you for creating these stunning graphs in our presentation” — will make the expression much more powerful in satisfying their needs for meaningfulness and fostering employee engagement.
Another piece of advice on creating meaningfulness is to ensure that employees have the opportunity to voice their opinions and that these opinions are fairly discussed in the team. The action of making suggestions shows employees’ willingness to add more value to the organization in addition to their regular work. Reciprocally, they expect supervisors to take their suggestions into consideration, even if these suggestions are not accepted in the end. From the employees’ perspective, the more attention supervisors give to their suggestions, the more valuable they feel in contributing to the company. Therefore, regardless of whether the suggestions will be taken eventually, it is recommended for supervisors to respond to employees’ ideas, preferably with detailed comments.
3. Provide Feedback in Time
Feedback from supervisors is an important indicator to help employees clearly understand their work performance. With empirical evidence, Menguc et al. (2013) found a positive correlation between supervisory feedback and employee engagement, which further fully mediates the positive correlation between supervisory feedback and employee performance. This pattern is consistent with the real-life experience: when the feedback is provided in time, employees can readily understand the expectations of their supervisors and focus their time and energy on the areas of improvement, which increases their engagement at work.
4. Offer Abundant Resources and Learning Opportunities
Working is not merely a process of producing — employees also seek opportunities for learning and self-improvement. According to Mahon et al. (2014), perceived organizational support (employees’ belief that their contribution and development are valued by their corporation) has a direct, positive correlation with employee engagement. For this reason, corporations can offer tutorials, workshops, and other learning opportunities to show their devotion to employee’s personal development and increase the perceived organizational support, which further boosts employee engagement.
5. Create a Happy Workplace
In the more recent definitions of employee engagement, keywords such as satisfaction and affect appear more and more frequently, demonstrating the growing importance of mood as an indispensable part of employee engagement. Research findings further confirm this trend: numerous studies have shown a positive correlation between mood and engagement (Bailey et al. 2017; Milliman et al. 2003). Costa et al. (2014) further emphasize the role of emotional contagion in spreading positive affect at the workplace and increasing team work engagement. Given the positive relationship between mood and engagement, happiness-boosting behaviors such as expressing gratitude and sharing the good news should be encouraged in the workplace.
Increasing employee engagement is a challenging yet rewarding process. Following the tips above with continuous efforts, you will find the most efficient way to build an engaged, high-performing work team in your corporation.
References:
Gallup daily: U.S. employee engagement. Gallup News.
Kahn, W. A. (1990). Psychological conditions of personal engagement and disengagement at work. Academy of management journal, 33(4), 692–724.
Kumar, V., & Pansari, A. (2015). Measuring the benefits of employee engagement. MIT Sloan Management Review, 56(4), 67.
Alagaraja, M., & Shuck, B. (2015). Exploring organizational alignment-employee engagement linkages and impact on individual performance: A conceptual model. Human Resource Development Review, 14(1), 17–37.
Milliman, J., Czaplewski, A. J., & Ferguson, J. (2003). Workplace spirituality and employee work attitudes: An exploratory empirical assessment. Journal of organizational change management, 16(4), 426–447.
Menguc, B., Auh, S., Fisher, M., & Haddad, A. (2013). To be engaged or not to be engaged: The antecedents and consequences of service employee engagement. Journal of business research, 66(11), 2163–2170.
Mahon, E. G., Taylor, S. N., & Boyatzis, R. E. (2014). Antecedents of organizational engagement: exploring vision, mood and perceived organizational support with emotional intelligence as a moderator. Frontiers in psychology, 5, 1322.
Bailey, C., Madden, A., Alfes, K., & Fletcher, L. (2017). The meaning, antecedents and outcomes of employee engagement: A narrative synthesis. International Journal of Management Reviews, 19(1), 31–53.
Costa, P., Passos, A. M., & Bakker, A. (2014). Empirical validation of the team work engagement construct. Journal of Personnel Psychology.
