In his book entitled “Employee Engagement for Everyone”, Kevin Kruse defines employee engagement as “the emotional commitment the employee has to the organization and its goals (2013). He makes a few important points about employee engagement, the first being that engaged doesn’t mean happy, and satisfied doesn’t mean engaged. An employee can be satisfied at work but still only do the bare minimum and on the other hand an employee can be happy with their job but not focused and working hard. Previously, employers were only measuring employee satisfaction so knowing that satisfaction doesn’t mean engagement is big when trying to keep your employees engaged and loyal to the organization.
The next important point made by Kruse is that “it takes both the employee and the manager to create a thriving culture that fosters feelings of full engagement (2013).” While we would like to believe that it is a 50/50 partnership when it comes to engagement research shows that it is actually 57% extrinsic factors and 43% intrinsic factors meaning that 43% of engagement is on the employee themselves and 57% is a result of management and other outside factors (Kruse, 2013). There is even a theory about employee engagement that can be transferred into the employees’ personal life that managers can use to make their argument in favor of high employee engagement. Your emotions at work spill over into your personal life and can ultimately spill over into others around you.
Lastly, Engaged employees lead to higher service, quality, and productivity, leading to higher levels of customer satisfaction, leading to increased sales (repeat business and referrals), leading to higher profit which leads to higher shareholder returns. “Engaged companies have 5x higher total shareholder returns and 6% higher net profit margins than do “non-engaged” companies” (Kruse, 2013). There are primarily four drivers of engagement that leaders must focus on with employees. Communication; frequent and consistent two-way communication, Growth and development; providing a learning environment and room for advancement, Recognition and appreciation; showing appreciation for the effort shown, and trust and confidence; being trustworthy leaders and providing an outlook for the company that the employee can have confidence in.
There are two key performance indicators (KPIs) that will help managers measure and address employee engagement issues; employee satisfaction index, and employee engagement level. Employee satisfaction index measures to what extent employees are happy in their jobs, it is one of the oldest and most established non-financial indicators (Marr, 2012). To measure employee satisfaction a survey is given to employees that usually includes the areas of leadership, communication, management, work environment, and development opportunities and measured on a scale of 1-5 strongly disagree to strongly agree. Employee engagement measures the extent the employees are committed to delivering to the vision and mission of the organization (Marr, 2012). The most commonly used employee engagement survey is one created by the Gallup Organization and is usually done online, questions are kept short and focused on understanding what drives performance and measures commitment, loyalty, trust and those behavioral traits that inspire employees to perform to their ultimate capacity (Marr, 2012).
A basic human resource strategy goes hand in hand with developing an engagement strategy. Basic human resource principles include build and implement an HR strategy, hire the right people, keep them, invest in them, empower them, and promote diversity. Keeping, investing in and empowering employees are all apart of keeping employees engaged. In order to keep employees you must protect their jobs, reward them well and promote from within or give them room for advancement (Bolman and Deal, 2013). Progressive organizations give power to employees as well as invest in their development. Empowerment includes keeping employees informed…but it also involves encouraging autonomy, and participation, redesigning work, fostering teams, promoting egalitarianism, and infusing work with meaning (Bolman and Deal, 2013).
Employee engagement is a term that was coined in the 1990s to describe the degree of an employee’s commitment to his or her work. For many years, companies had seen job satisfaction as the most important indicator of employees’ attitudes… assuming that if workers were content with their wages, benefits, working conditions, and the like, then all would be well (Savitz, 2013). Now it is well known that an employee could be content with their job but not putting forth a great deal of effort. Engaged employees feel connected to and involved with the company to the degree that they are willing to work harder and longer than they would need to do just to get their paycheck (Savitz, 2013). Majority of employee engagement surveys aim to guage the level of employee engagement according to 6 factors; confidence in the company’s future, confidence in the company’s leadership, access to the tools, knowledge and other resources necessary to do the job, total rewards, career development, and strength of an employee’s relationships with others in the company. Business units that measure in the top quartile on engagement outperform the quartile by 12% on customer metrics, 18% on productivity, 16% on profitability, 37% on absenteeism, 25-49% on turnover, 27% on honesty, 49% on safety, and 60% on product quality (Savitz, 2013).
Engagement is the product of different psychological states; meaningfulness, availability, and safety. Leadership is the most influential factor in employee engagement and there is a much greater need for companies to lead rather than simply manage. Employees are more inclined to respond positively when leaders are consistent in the following behaviors. “Leaders who motivate their charges by transforming them to embrace a clear positive vision of the future; inspire through their communications which are appropriate to the requirements and situations of individual workers; demonstrate concern for individual needs and well-being; clearly communicate procedures and objectives; stimulate employees intellectually by including them in problem-solving activities; recognize effort and reward achievement; explain decisions in an honest, transparent and timely manner; and adhere to principles of fairness (Strategic Direction, 2015). A supportive management style provides the area for mutual trust and respect to emerge. Design interventions that specifically focus on raising engagement and commitment levels, communicate and actively demonstrate that the company appreciates and cares for the welfare of employees.
A study by Jessica M. Tullar, Benjamin C. Amick, Shelley Brewer, Pamela M. Diamond, Steven H, Kelder, and Osama Mikhail, addressing turnover rates in hospitals and the effects employee engagement has on turnover was conducted to test whether or not participants in an employee engagement program were less likely to leave their job than nonparticipants. Patient care techs and certified nursing assistants were recruited to participate in an engagement program that helps employees find meaning and connection in their work. The findings were that participants were less likely to leave the hospital than nonparticipating employees. Employee engagement has been suggested as one possible solution to reduce turnover across multiple settings and sectors and has been described as the antidote to employee burnout (Tullar et al. 2016).
Organizational commitment describes the attitudes, obligatory feeling and/or devotion to one’s organization. Many benefits have been attributed to commitment such as job satisfaction and performance. Affective commitment exhumes satisfaction in employees in respect to the colleagues and work environment (Radda, A. A., Majidadi, M. A., & Akanno, S. N., 2015). Affective commitment is the closest to engagement and is often referred to as engagement because it goes with employment of discretionary effort in job roles. There are eight drivers of engagement; trust and integrity, person-job fit, synchronization of individual and organization’s performance, career growth opportunities, pride about company, coworkers, employee development, and line manager relationship. Frequently mentioned outcomes of engagement; it directly impacts positive customer-related expectations such as customer loyalty, customer service and customer satisfaction, it aids in change management in that for example evolving a more customer focused culture, establishing a feeling of belonging to the organization, growth is sustained, staff turnover would be low and staff motivation is attained (Radda et al. 2015).
In an article on measuring employee engagement V. Kumar & A. Pansari have detailed an engagement scorecard that is composed of a number of items used to measure the individual employee engagement components (based on a 1 to 5 scale, with 1 being lowest and 5 being highest), that allows managers to identify the areas in need of development. The five components are employee performance, employee loyalty, employee commitment, employee identification and employee satisfaction and the minimum score is 20 while the maximum score is 100 based on the items used to measure the concept. “Since the employee engagement scorecard is made up of the individual scores for the employee engagement components, managers have the ability to identify the areas of employee development that require their immediate attention. By analyzing and using this scorecard, organizations can allocate their resources to the specific things employees need (Kumar, V., & Pansari, A. (2015).
In a 2014 study on the impact of traditional management basics on employee engagement by B. Medlin and Kenneth W. Green, Jr the management principles and processes were hypothesized to have a positive impact on employee engagement. Ultimately, both management principles and the management process have a positive and direct impact on employee engagement. Engaged employees are both efficient and effective in the operation of organizational processes that produce product and services that meet customer demands (Medlin, B., & Green, Kenneth W,Jr. (2014). The management process being the functions of management (planning, organizing, commanding, coordinating, and controlling). “Managers who embrace and adhere to the principles of management create an organizational environment that is free of roadblocks to and conducive to the individual success of each employee… this clarity leads to employees who are fully aware and focused on desired organizational outcomes” (Medlin, B., & Green, Kenneth W,Jr. (2014).
HR practices are viewed as the means through which employee perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors are shaped. Investment in employee development is believed to facilitate greater obligation by employees towards the organization and therefore increase employees; motivation to work hard to support organizational effectiveness (Geetha, 2012). HRM practices can affect discretionary effort through their influence over employee skills and motivation and through organizational structures that provide employees with the ability to control how their roles are performed. An engaged employee is the one who is optimistic, highly focused on his work, enthusiastic and willing to go an extra mile to contribute to sustainable organizational success on a long-term basis (Geetha, 2012).
By following basic HRM principles and processes it is possible to use these principles and processes to encourage and influence employee engagement. Through measuring KPIs, using engagement and satisfaction surveys along with the engagement scorecard managers and leaders can determine current levels of engagement and find areas that may need development. After these results have been analyzed leaders can then make the proper adjustments needed to increase employee engagement and then begin to develop and implement them to meet the strategic goals and objectives of the organization. In the case of the organization for this project turnover and employee retention is the main problem that can be addressed through engagement. The organization that I chose for this project is in the service industry, in particular it is in the haircare industry. The organization, which we will call Hair Clips, has had a lot of issues with retention and the turnover rate is relatively high, this is due in part to the lack of engagement from their employees. So knowing that engagement is a major problem it is only right that we create an engagement plan that will identify engagement problems, create a solution to remedy the problem, implement it and create a way to measure the effectiveness.
Employee engagement is a workplace approach resulting in the right conditions for all members of an organization to give of their best each day, be committed to their organization’s goals and values, be motivated to contribute to organizational success, with an enhanced sense of their own well-being. Employee engagement is based on trust, integrity, two way commitment and communication between an organization and its members. It is an approach that increases the chances of business success, contributing to organizational and individual performance, productivity and well-being. Organizations with high levels of employee engagement are often more efficient and effective. Engaged employees are more focused on the customer and actually care about meeting the organizational goals and objectives that the company has set. They are proud of and loyal to the organization as well.
Technology can be used in various parts of employment, recruiting, onboarding, and training, distributing surveys, collecting and analyzing data as well as measuring the effectiveness of the engagement plan. Engagement starts from the beginning with hiring the best and brightest candidates, once you get the employees the next step is retaining them and keeping them engaged with their work so that the organization can continue to prosper and be successful. This means staying abreast of your workforce’s needs, what keeps them engaged, what parts of the job and organization do they like, and what areas do they feel need improvement and any ideas they have to make things better. Technology can help make these things a lot easier and help keep things organized. In the recruitment and hiring process, technology can be used to advertise job openings and with certain systems and software it allows recruiters and HR managers to access applicants’ information and keep in contact with them on the go. Currently, the organization already has online job postings and applicants can apply for any job openings online. “By investing in technologies that streamline the recruiting process, companies can help ensure they’re welcoming employees that are excited to be part of the team and eager to contribute from the start” (Paychex, 2016). Additionally, the organization should use technology to add an employee portal to their website which would include, onboarding, engagement surveys, access to benefits, ways to communicate with management and corporate leaders and also with fellow coworkers, and employee recognition. Employees that feel recognized and appreciated for their efforts often times experience higher levels of engagement. There are internal social networks where employees and managers alike can share feedback and recognition there are also platforms that allow managers to recognize staff performance. Implementing one or both of these types of platforms will allow employees to feel recognized and appreciated as well as have access to other beneficial information through the employee portal. An HR Dashboard is also very beneficial for an organization to measure the success of an engagement plan. An HR dashboard collects the most relevant information – the reports and KPIs you actually care about – and organizes it on one screen. This information is visualized through charts, graphs, and meters. Presenting the data graphically helps you monitor everything at a glance, and gauge company progress towards goals. Often interactive, you can usually narrow down your results or create specific visuals for whatever particular metric you want to measure and view at that moment. The best HRIS dashboard software for this organization is Officevibe. Officevibe specializes in technology that regularly measures employee engagement and satisfaction in order to promote better employee morale, increase productivity, and reduce turnover. The best part about Officevibe is that you can set it up to send out weekly survey questions to your employees and then the results are accessible to the manager as soon as the results are collected. Not only that, the dashboard can also be accessed on mobile devices and smartphones so that it is easily accessible. By using this software it cuts out the need for quarterly or yearly satisfaction/engagement surveys which I would normally recommend to get to the bottom of the engagement issues. Through surveys we can gain the knowledge of why employees are disengaged and also use them afterwards to see if employees are satisfied with the changes we have implemented to increase and foster engagement.
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) will also be used to measure the effectiveness of the plan down the line. The first KPI that will be measured will be absenteeism/employee turnover rate because we know that because employees are not engaged in their jobs the turnover rate is climbing. The next KPI would be productivity which we can measure the overall production of the organization and also do a breakdown of productivity by employee as well. Measuring this would let the organization know how productivity is affected by engagement and which employees to keep an eye on and focus on getting their engagement levels up. The last one would be engagement and satisfaction which would be measured through the use of surveys as mentioned previously.
The mission of the organization is to provide quality haircuts to customers in a timely and cost efficient manner. Analyzing employee engagement, implementing changes and measuring the effects of those changes will ensure that stylists are engaged and working to their greatest potential. We know that an engaged workforce leads to a successful organization as well as a lower turnover rate and higher retention which seems to be a problem here. The ethical and legal responsibilities that the organization has to society and the organization are to always mostly to maintain the integrity of the organization. Any changes that may be made within the organization must always be legal and in this particular instance we shouldn’t have any problems with that. The only changes that may cause concern are if we find that it is necessary to make changes to benefits or wages.
Recruitment and workforce management is a fluid process that has no definitive beginning or end. Recruitment shouldn’t start when a position comes open and should not end with candidate placement. It is an ongoing process that includes, recruitment, hiring, onboarding, retention and succession. Engagement often begins with recruiting the best candidates for the open positions that your organization has. Linking your engagement and recruitment strategies will help ensure that your organization recruits and retains the best candidates for your organization.
Talent management can be described as a process that ensures organizations have the quantity and quality of people in place to meet their current and future business priorities and covers all aspects of an employee’s “life cycle” with an organization; selection, development, succession and performance management. It has been proven that there is a relationship between talent and organizational success which has caused a surge in emphasis on talent management, HRM strategy and overall organizational strategy. Organizations are looking at their talent to help create a competitive advantage as we know human capital can, as a matter of fact, the Brookings Institution found that in 2003, 80 percent of organizational value was attributable to intangible assets (patents, intellectual property and employees) and 20 percent to tangible assets (equipment and facilities). There are numerous HRM practices that can help manage talent and ultimately lead to the overall success of the organization. The first being to link and align the talent and recruitment strategy with the overall business strategy. “Effective talent management requires that your business goals and strategies drive the quality and quantity of the talent you need” (Wellens, Smith & Erker). It is also important to be proactive when linking the talent and business strategies. Another practice that goes hand in hand with this is HR not just having a seat at the strategic table but setting the table. Many departments have a seat at the table when it comes to discussing business and leadership strategies it is important for HR leaders to take initiative and prove to the other leaders that they bring value to the table and explain how important HR and specifically talent management can be to the overall strategy. Leaders are beginning to see how their workforce can add a competitive advantage to the organization so it is up to HR leaders to create a strategy that will utilize the workforce in a way that increases the competitive advantage. As far as workforce management, HR managers should aim to customize their benefits and practices to what appeals to their workforce. Susan Cantrell and David Smith (2010) list four approaches to customizing a workforce; segment the workforce, offer modular choices, define broad and simple rules, and foster employee-defined personalization. Segment the workforce is where the organization groups their employees based on shared preferences and needs such as the value that they bring to the organization and tailoring the practices accordingly. Offering modular choices would be offering employees a list of options for them to customize their own work experience to fit their individual needs and work tasks. As an alternative, the organization can also create broad rules that are flexible in meaning and interpretation. Lastly, fostering employee-defined personalization would mean organizations deliberately deciding which practices to foster, monitor and support via processes, technology and incentives. Overall, HR managers need to take their workforce into consideration when developing policy, creating a good workplace environment and align the recruitment/talent management strategy to the overall business strategy.
Engaged employees have better performance and as a matter of fact the two go hand in hand. Total reward systems can be used to foster engagement so in turn total rewards systems can help with performance management and specifically retention. Total Rewards systems consists of not only compensation, but also recognition, benefits, work/life balance, and development. Compensation, which is base pay and also incentive pay are one of the more important factors that applicants consider when accepting a job offer. Compensation not only attracts candidates but it can aid in retention engagement and performance management when incentive pay is involved. Pay for performance rewards employees for meeting certain organizational and/or performance goals that are set for them. Recognition also encourages employees to meet the expectations set before them. Create a recognition culture where management provides specific, genuine and timely feedback and recognition for meeting specific goals; employees need to feel that their hard work is appreciated and this is the way to do so. Benefits are important to a total rewards system but not as much to performance management, on the other hand work/life balance and professional development are. Help employees create a manageable workflow and a healthy balance between the demands of work and personal responsibilities; overworked employees’ performance often suffers. Lack of opportunities for advancement and development is the number one reason employees leave their jobs and a big deciding factor when choosing between job offers as well. Offering development opportunities aides in recruitment, retention and also performance if the employee is given the opportunity to learn more about their field through training it can then be used to increase their performance. By focusing on the components above you can motivate, engage and retain employees and also increase performance.
For Hair Clips, the organization struggles with engagement, turnover and retention. It is hard for an organization to truly be profitable when they have to spend so much time trying to resolve the problem of their revolving door of employees. The organizational mission is to provide a quality service in a timely manner and for them it is all about the bottom line. To improve their talent and workforce management, first and foremost the leaders need to follow through on the promises that they make during hiring. Employees join the organization because of promises of opportunities for advancement and ongoing training and development that often times the employees never see. Opportunities for advancement show the employees that their performance and hard work is not going unnoticed and offering training and development shows the employees that you believe in them and their future which is important to most employees. I would recommend that the organization consider incentive pay as well because after talking to a few employees that have left this organization compensation is one of the main reasons they chose to find employment elsewhere. Currently, the only incentive pay is an end of the year bonus and receiving a percentage of any product sales. Productivity is measured daily in the salon for each stylist as well as the salon, to help with retention and turnover the organization should start offering incentive pay to those stylists that meet or exceed a set productivity goal. Not only would that foster productivity, it will also encourage engagement and help with recruitment and retention. However, with offering incentive pay for productivity we must ensure that quality does not suffer as that is the ethical and legal responsibility we owe to the organization as well as the clients. So that would mean when calculating productivity that we consider quality and redo’s which are also recorded in our system so it should not be too hard to factor in.
A great strategy is no guarantee of long-term business success. Many other factors impact organizational performance. One such factor is corporate culture which helps an organization create a high performance environment which supports business strategy implementation. Because culture is so important to the success of a firm, human resource professionals need to increase their proficiency at impacting culture. Change management is first and foremost about people and their capacity to adapt to change. Since, the HR department is all about recruiting, training and monitoring employee performance; it has a key role to play in any change management program. There are different aspects in which HR can play a significant role, the HR department has to ensure that employees are motivated to undertake the change and participate in the change management program. For this to happen, they need to recruit the right people who can think out of the box and can bring a fresh perspective to the table.
HR professionals have many tools at their disposal to create, sustain and change corporate culture. The hard part is deciding which of the tools and areas to focus their efforts. The tools are pay systems, performance management, recruitment, training and development, organizational design, corporate values, and physical work environment. Most commonly used by HR professionals are pay systems, performance management, recruitment and training and development. Compensation and reward systems are two of the more important tools that HR can use to motivate employees by rewarding those employees who think, act or behave the proper way. Compensation and reward systems can also be used to motivate employees to become more engaged by offering rewards for increasing sales and or productivity. The best way to approach utilizing a pay for performance system to influence culture would be to design a system that rewards for not only job outcomes but also behavioral expectations. Sometimes with pay for performance reward systems it can foster productivity and increases sales it also has the potential to decrease morale and cause unnecessary unfriendly competition and the employees lose their sense of teamwork and ignore company rules and policies. Performance management programs “greatly impact corporate culture because they clearly articulate to employees what is expected of them as well as provides a feedback mechanism to inform employees if they are being “proper” as defined by corporate culture”(2005). A good performance management system should address employee behaviors and not just work objectives so that the employees are not rewarded for their performance when they exhibit behaviors that go against the desired organizational culture. Lastly, HR leaders should focus on training and development modules that help employees to think, act and behave in the proper way. “Training programs can be designed to help employees demonstrate the behaviors desired by the corporate culture. Also, those who are successful within a culture should be given additional development opportunities so that they can assume positions of greater responsibility” (2005).
HR leaders should strive to be catalysts for change and look to recruit people who can also be catalysts for change. When recruiting HR leaders must be encouraged to look for people who can motivate other employees to participate in the change initiative which is a crucial element in the overall change management strategy. In relation to the using reward systems to create and support corporate culture reward systems can also be used to reward and recognize those employees who enthusiastically participate in change initiatives. HR as a whole needs to be seen as more than just a supporting department, they need to be seen as a department that is an integral part of the organization and specifically change management.
The current organizational culture could use some help, morale is a bit low and quite frankly no one seems to be really motivated and it is coming across in their work, clients are beginning to notice it. Morale definitely needs a boost, engagement needs improvement and production could also be higher. Improving engagement is the plan for the organization and hopefully by doing so the other areas will also improve. The strategy for working within the organizational culture and managing change starts with analyzing the current culture. As I have mentioned previously, the culture clearly needs some changes in a way it is too laid back and there is not enough structure in the day to day operations. To address engagement issues we will implement a pay for performance reward system where employees that meet a certain productivity goal will receive a bonus but only if they are exhibiting the ideal behaviors of the engaged, team culture we are trying to promote as well. If all goes well with the pay for performance reward system the results should be that engagement levels increase because employees are trying to meet productivity, they are working together and promoting a sense of community and teamwork which should boost morale because employees will see that the organization is rewarding them for their hard work. As a result of these things retention should increase and the turnover rate should decrease because I know firsthand that compensation is a major factor of why employees decide to leave the organization. Another issue is the lack of training and development within the organization, it is one of the selling points during recruitment but once hired, the opportunities are lacking, it’s almost like false advertisement. We need to hold managers accountable in this franchise for making sure that training opportunities are made available for the employees. Continuous training and development is especially important in the haircare industry as the styles and trends are always changing. More importantly we must evaluate and regroup with all of the changes made and implemented to ensure that the strategies are still working. It may get to a point where the same strategies on keeping the employees engaged are no longer working for reasons such as they money may no longer be enough or they’ve run out of opportunities for advancement and feel as though they can no longer be useful for the organization. As far as implementing the changes HR will need to be a leader in this by getting managers fully versed in the changes and the phases of the changes so they will be capable of answering any questions employees may have. In terms of recruitment HR will need to recruit and hire people who will be change agents and be willing and open to any changes the organization sees fit to make and those that will encourage others to do the same. Any strategy or changes good or otherwise will face opposition and resistance, preparing for said resistance ahead of time during planning will help the organization to cope with this. The ethical and legal responsibilities related to this plan are just to stay true to the organizations goals and values and make sure that in recruitment and compensation we follow all rules, laws and regulations as they pertain to the changes being made.
