Why is Employee Engagement Important?

Who do you think is responsible for employee engagement? Employers or employee?

Employee engagement is a state of operation in an organization, in which employees in a respective company is motivated to contribute to the success of the company.

Employee engagement is a base level investment and motivation that acts as a driving factor that drives the employees daily. Employee engagement stands a higher chance of being successful if it had a team effort between the employee and employer in order to be effective. Employees are responsible for their personal actions and attitudes, while employers play a huge role in nurturing a pleasant and warm environment in the workplace.

The benefits of employee engagement can be manifested in a number of ways. While there are many different benefits of employee engagement, here we highlight 4 primary benefits of employee engagement.

Build Trust

A long term benefit employees engagement is it cultivates an environment that build trust in the workspace. Engaged employees are said to be emotionally attached to the organization. This is the most important component of building trust. Appreciation, autonomy, decentralized power distribution are some of the ways an organization could work on earning the trust of employees (Dyer, 2019).

Recognition

Employee engagement plays a vital role in the performance of an employee. Employees who are engaged have higher tendency of working harder, have more trust and they would invest extra efforts for the organization. As a method of engagement it is crucial to acknowledge their efforts by providing recognition. Experts suggest that engagement is an illusive force that motivates an individual to achieve higher levels of performance and recognition is the key to sustaining the positive outcome.

Sense of Safety

Sense of safety is an umbrella term that describes varying forms of emotions individuals’ experiences when it comes to safety. We would like to highlight the psychological safety as a route to employee engagement. Psychological safety is all about having the ability to recognize that higher level of performance requires openness, flexibility, and interdependence; to which it can be attained only in a psychologically safe environment (Choi, 2020). In a psychologically safe environment, employees feel able to make mistakes, able to admit failure, and able to learn from failure. Everyone openly shares ideas without fear of criticism, and this leads to better innovation and decision-making.

Optimistic about the future

Engaged employees often possess an optimistic character. They display high levels of energy, readiness to capitalize in their work and persistence to see their work to completion. Engaged employees are commonly very likely to have higher levels of concentration, self-motivated and are less likely to be stressed. An organization that encourages employee engagement produces individuals who are proactive that are good at goal setting as they are optimistic about their future and where they want to be.

We will look further into the benefits of employee engagement, how to measure it, and how you can start engaging your employees in the right away in our next piece!

References

• Dyer, C. (2019). Why building trust can improve employee engagement. Retrieved from

https://www.hrzone.com/engage/employees/why-building-trust-can-improve-employee-engagement.

• Choi, S. (2020). Optimism: The Top Employee Trait of 2020. Future of Work. Retrieved from

https://fowmedia.com/optimistic-employees-the-top-employee-trait-of-2020/