Maximizing Performance Through Employee Engagement

An employee’s workplace behaviors and actions rarely occur in a vacuum; they are routinely shaped by - and routinely shape - an array of organizational factors. Strong employee engagement is crucial to high-performing individuals and teams, especially if desirable behavior is recognized and rewarded and cascades throughout an organization.

Highly engaged individuals are enthusiastic, fervent, and energetic, and one way their positivity manifests is through a dedicated focus on accomplishing work-related objectives at personal, team, and organizational levels. Indeed, a core characteristic of employee engagement is a proactive attitude toward work responsibilities, many times going above and beyond the requirements of the role.

Boosting Engagement

Engaged employees tend to identify closely with their company. Aligning with company values, identifying with the mission/vision, feeling secure and safe, and opportunities to develop skills and abilities contribute to developing a sense of pride in working at the company, creating a psychological bond that combines an employee’s passions with obligations to themselves, their team, and the company.

Culture (values and practices)

A culture wherein respect is valued results in better-engaged employees. A manager’s attitude of respect towards an employee, like making the employee feel seen and heard by listening to ideas and suggestions, treating them fairly, communicating with them effectively, etc., is tremendously important, as a “higher commitment to supervisor” was found to be a predictor of engagement. Employee engagement tends to be higher when employees are provided equal opportunities to advancement and growth. Fair and equal due process also impact engagement levels: One study suggested that employees with a greater sense of procedural justice (fairness in the processes that resolve disputes and allocate resources) have greater probability of reciprocating it with higher levels of organizational engagement. Additionally, if employees witnessed informational justice (focusing on explanations provided to people that convey information about why procedures were used in certain ways or why outcomes were distributed in certain fashions) as part of performance conversations they exhibited a sense of better wellbeing and greater engagement. Greater amounts of informational justice lead to more behavioral and cognitive engagement, resulting in greater commitment, motivation, pride, and excitement for work. (An unbiased and transparent performance appraisal framework, including clear communication between manager and employee about performance expectations, tends to result in higher engagement.)

Perhaps unsurprisingly, a study on the perceptions of politics on employee outcomes showed that the perception of politics in a company has a negative impact on employee engagement. A perception of politics can result in strong negative emotions that potentially hinder growth and organizational commitment, leading to poor outcomes and higher attrition. It’s important for leaders to be aware of the perception that politicking can create in the workforce.

Finally, a highly-engaged workplace is one that is challenging and trusting, where employees are encouraged to disagree with prevailing orthodoxies and innovate to spur growth. This practice alone can help develop psychological safety.

Personal and professional development

Organizations with highly engaged employees provide ample opportunities to learn skills, develop abilities, acquire knowledge, and reach personal and professional goals and potentials. Employees tend to invest in companies that invest in them, and effective talent management strategies that include career planning, support, and incentives can result in high engagement and reduced attrition. This starts with leadership; a company needn’t have a full-fledged career development strategy for leaders to engage in dialog with their direct reports and show interest and commitment in their personal and professional goals.

Influential leadership traits

As I mentioned in my video on feedback, it’s important to show appreciation regularly, and employees show more engagement toward the organization when they see themselves getting praised by their manager or have leadership’s attention (e.g., via a skip-level one-on-one). These are not only opportunities to show thanks, but opportunities to develop high quality relationships. Besides showing appreciation, one-on-ones are a good time to develop a mentoring relationship and articulate a personal, team, or company vision, which are found to be highly influential in fostering employee engagement.

A note on pay

Money is a motivator for many, and a pay structure attached to a performance management framework that clearly and transparently outlines strategies, programs, and systems in place for compensation lead to greater levels of employee engagement. Taking a job based on financial security is a responsible choice, but interestingly, the data indicate that incentives, intangible rewards, and quality of leadership have a stronger correlation with a company’s ability to produce engaged employees than base pay and benefits.

Final thoughts

The data is clear that a positive relationship exists between engaged employees and productivity, including organizational citizenship behavior, or voluntary commitments by employees that are not part of their normal responsibilities (going above and beyond). In fact, organizational citizenship behavior also positively impacts employee engagement, so an engaged employee’s impact can be amplified by virtue of their own engagement! (Conversely, less engaged employees aren’t just less productive, they tend to be counterproductive.) Higher employee engagement is also linked with higher levels of customer engagement, so it behooves a company to create highly engaged employees to impact the bottom line. This post is not an exhaustive list of methods to enhance engagement, but should be a good starting point for understanding what factors contribute to high engagement and how to start applying them in practice.

References

Uddin, M.A., Mahmood, M., and Fan, L. (2019). “Why individual employee engagement matters for team performance?: Mediating effects of employee commitment and organizational citizenship behaviour”, Team Performance Management: An International Journal, Vol. 25 Nos 1/2, pp. 47-68, ISSN 1352-7592, doi 10.1108/TPM-12-2017-0078.

Chandani, A., Mehta, M., Akanksha, M., and Khokhar, V. (2016). “Employee engagment: A review paper on factors affecting employee engagement", Indian Journal of Science and Technology, Vol 9(15), ISSN 0974-5645, doi 10.17485/ijst/2016/v9i15/92145.

Alfes, Kerstin & Bailey, Catherine & Soane, Emma & Rees, Chris & Gatenby, Mark. (2010). Creating an Engaged Workforce (CIPD Research Report).

Colquitt, J. A., Conlon, D. E., Wesson, M. J., Porter, C. O. L. H., & Ng, K. Y. (2001). Justice at the millenium: A meta-analytic review of 25 years of organizational justice research. Journal of Applied Psychology, 86, 425-445.

Osman KM. (2013). “Perceptions of organizational politics and hotel employee outcomes The mediating role of work engagement.” International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality, Management. 2013; 25(1):82–104.