What Is Employee Engagement?
Employee engagement is a human resources (HR) concept that describes the level of enthusiasm and dedication a worker feels toward their job. Engaged employees care about their work and about the performance of the company, and feel that their efforts make a difference. An engaged employee is in it for more than a paycheck and may consider their well-being linked to their performance, and thus instrumental to their company's success.
Key Takeaways
- Employee engagement describes the level of enthusiasm and dedication a worker feels toward their job.
- Employee engagement can be critical to a company's success, given its links to job satisfaction and employee morale.
- Engaged employees are more likely to be productive and higher performing.
- Employers can foster employee engagement through effective communication, offering rewards, and discussing career advancement.
Understanding Employee Engagement
Employee engagement can be critical to a company's success, given its clear links to job satisfaction and employee morale. Communication is a critical part of creating and maintaining employee engagement. Engaged employees are more likely to be productive and higher performing. They also often display a greater commitment to a company's values and goals.
Employers can encourage employee engagement in many ways, including communicating expectations clearly, offering rewards and promotions for excellent work, keeping employees informed about the company's performance, and providing regular feedback. Other strategies include making efforts to make employees feel valued and respected, and feeling that their ideas are being heard and understood. Engaged employees believe that their work is meaningful, believe that they are appreciated and backed by their supervisors and that they have been entrusted with the success of their company.
Employee engagement has been a considered part of management theory since the 1990s and became widely adopted in the 2000s. While it has its detractors, mostly based on how difficult it can be to measure, employee engagement has been found to have direct links to a company's profitability and financial health.
Employers could build an employee engagement strategy around American psychologist Abraham Maslow’s three-tiered hierarchy of needs pyramid, which includes: basic needs of survival and safety, psychological needs, and self-fulfillment.
Engaged employees often develop an emotional connection to their job and company, and will be focused on working toward their organization's goals. While companies may define employee engagement according to their own needs, the basic characteristics of an engaged employee are:
- They know what their role is, what their job entails, and they want to do it.
- They are loyal to their employer and productive.
- They are motivated to work toward the success of their organization and know what success looks like (and how to work toward it).
- They are connected rationally and emotionally connected to their organization and motivated to perform at a high level.
- They are intellectually andemotionally connected to their organization, as measured by three primary behaviors according to outsourcing company Aon Hewitt: Say (an employee consistently speaks positively about their employer to co-workers, customers, and job candidates); Stay (an employee has a strong desire to remain with an organization despite having other opportunities); Strive (when an employee makes an extra effort to contribute to their organization's success).
Example of Employee Engagement
Tesla, Inc. (TSLA), alarmed by the high number of injuries at its Fremont car assembly plant, used more transparent communication as an employee engagement strategy to improve safety. To do this, the electric car maker’s co-founder and CEO Elon Musk, told employees that he wanted every injury reported to him, without exception, so he could understand what was needed to prevent similar accidents from reoccurring in the future.
Musk even performs the same task on the production line with workers who have been injured to see where safety improvements can be made. As a result of this employee engagement initiative, the number of incidents that harmed workers reduced by more than 50% in 2019 compared to 2018, according to a company blog post.
FAQs
Employee engagement is a human resources (HR) concept that describes the level of enthusiasm and dedication a worker feels toward their job. Engaged employees care about their work and about the performance of the company, and feel that their efforts make a difference.
What is the best definition of employee engagement? ›
A definition of employee engagement is how much an employee is committed to helping their organization achieve its goals. It's demonstrated by how employees think, feel, and act, as well as the emotional connection employees, feel towards their organization, their work, and their team.
What are the 5 C's of employee engagement? ›
To foster employee engagement, many experts suggest following the 5 Cs strategy: Care, Connect, Coach, Contribute, and Congratulate.
What are the 5 strategies for building a culture of employee engagement? ›
Let's explore five strategies for building a strong company culture and enhancing employee engagement.
- Rewards For Achievements And Top Performers. ...
- Company Outings And Events. ...
- Evaluating And Improving Your Onboarding Process. ...
- Professional Development Opportunities. ...
- Work Schedule Flexibility.
A customer engagement strategy is a plan for creating an ongoing positive experience that keeps customers coming back to your product or service. Your plan will include the actions you'll take, and the resources needed to implement them.
What are the 4 methods of engagement? ›
Four popular community engagement methods are community meetings, focus groups, surveys and online engagement – and there are pros and cons to using each one.
What are the three types of employee engagement? ›
There are three types of employee engagement: cognitive, emotional, and physical. When employees are cognitively engaged, they're committed to their job, when they're physically engaged, they're invested in their work, and when they're emotionally engaged, they have an emotional connection to their work.
What are the 4 E's of employee engagement? ›
According to Gallup, just 33% of employees can be considered “engaged.” That's why it's important that organizations understand and embrace the four “Es” – the cornerstones that drive employee engagement: enablement, energy, empowerment, and encouragement.
What are the 4 P's of engagement? ›
Partnerships, perspective, presence and persistence – the Four P's – can provide simple and useful guidelines, and introduce key concepts and action steps for engagement.
What are the 4 levels of employee engagement? ›
The 4 E's of employee engagement are Emotional Engagement, Cognitive Engagement, Behavioral Engagement, and Social Engagement. Each represents a different aspect of how employees connect with their work and organization.
Summary. Effective employee performance management requires the application of the 3 Ps principle, with a focus on purpose, people, and process.
What is a good employee engagement strategy? ›
Encourage transparency: Be open and transparent with employees about company goals, plans, and challenges. This can help build trust and foster a sense of collaboration and teamwork. Provide opportunities for feedback: Regularly solicit feedback from employees and actively listen to their ideas and concerns.
What is an employee engagement model? ›
From the name, an employee engagement model is a framework outlining how a company can keep its employees engaged. The point is to make them feel happy, satisfied, and valued. Such engagement models treat employees as human beings who have lives outside the work environment.
What are 3 specific things a company could do to increase employee engagement? ›
Employee Engagement Tips
- Model your core values and mission.
- Ask for and learn from feedback.
- Make sure your managers are engaged.
- Set up volunteer activities.
- Support employees' physical and mental health.
- Recognize and reward top performers.
- Send frequent employee engagement surveys.
- Plan company outings.
enablement, energy, empowerment, and encouragement.
They believe that to create a workplace of truly engaged employees, each of these four elements must be alive and thriving in an organization.
What are the 5 E's of employee engagement? ›
I believe that the job of the leadership/executive team of any company or organization is to create an environment where the employees feel Empowered, Enabled, Engaged, Enthused and Encouraged every single day.
What are the 6 C's of employee engagement? ›
The 6 C's are: Compliance, Clarification, Confidence, Connection, Culture, and Checkback.
