Enhancing Employee Engagement

Employee engagement is under sharp observation of organizational stakeholders due to its ultimate significance. In order to improve employee engagement different psychological conditions are used to serve personal engagements: Psychological meaningfulness, psychological safety, and psychological availability.

Psychological meaningfulness reflect the practical value of the role for individuals’ aptitude as employees feel the role matters a great deal for individual’s personal development. The Psychological meaningfulness as affected by task characteristics as well as by work interactions. Psychological safety pertains to individuals’ sense of security as they fear the roles’ characteristics influencing their personal characteristics and values. It is of view that such security concerns are relevant to interpersonal relationships, group dynamics, management patterns, and more.

Psychological availability is related to individual’s own self perceptions. Employees’ perceptions need to be in line and conducive to the roles they are required to obtain and such capacity come from all physical, cognitive and emotional domains. The few distractions influence psychological availability of employees in a negative manner such as lack of physical and emotional energy, and insecurity. Management scholars and researchers have advocated the Kahn’s framework as predecessor of employee engagement evolution. As far as meaningfulness of work is concerned, job enrichment and job fit predicted positive behavior while rewarding is sure recipe of safety for employees. The psychological availability dimension gets ample support from resources physically available to the employees.

Few current practices used in industry to promote employee engagement at workplaces include surveys and benchmarking. Different organizations have been using employee surveys and benchmarking to gauge numerous conditions available in work environment since all of the conditions might be related to engagement in any way. The results out of such initiatives are used conclude as to how engagement should go about taking the center stage in employee relations. Popularity of surveys in employee relations can be witnessed by the fact that consulting firms along with popular press have been reporting the engagement levels in organizations and those too against other organizational performance indications. The use of surveys to benchmark employee engagement levels, however, is rife with limitations.

Keywords: Employee Engagement, Organizational Performance

Motivation to Harness Positive Employee Relations

Motivation in general has been the most elusive concept in human relations and relevant transactional matters. It is as crucial to employee relations in organizations as it is for the relationships maintained outside organizations but its importance is most of the times overridden in the wake of conflicting opinions of stakeholders. Employee Relations is an aspect of business that plays a crucial role in the success of overall enterprise in both the short and the long runs.

The topic in itself is protean as the domain engulfs various pressing issues that gnaw at the very stakeholders who happen to be at the helm of affairs. The issues which both motivation and employee relations deal with can be enumerated as rewards and recognition, performance management, succession planning and the likes. With respect to motivation at work, it is all about activating and directing human behaviour towards achievement of goals which ultimately are relevant to both employees’ personal and organizational goals. 

Organizations initiate, develop and maintain certain processes legitimized by upper echelons in order to vitalize and make employee achieve organization’s larger goals in the long run. Motivation is more than energizing employees to achieve the tasks at hand and it is sufficed by the statement: “Motivation is concerned with how behaviour gets started, is energized, is sustained, is directed, is stopped and what kind of subjective reaction is present in the organization while all this is going on.”

Here is the subjective side of motivation to delve deeper into with employee relations in perspective. Motivation in organizations can easily be considered tantamount to a scientific discipline unearthing and establishing ways in which employees can be motivated or repelled from organizations’ desired roles and behaviors. It is a popular view that modern corporate mechanism treats competitiveness as fodder to gorge upon and is also fed with concerns of external competition. Such rigor in corporate modus operandi asks for ultimate satisfaction of talent at work. Retaining employees who matter the most is one of the foremost aspect that higher management of organizations are worried about in present years. Human Resource Management has reared its head as the most reliable business support function as the discipline is a popular management paradigm in contemporary managerial scenario. 

Satisfied and motivated workforce definitely affords organizations with a hard-to-imitate competitive advantage. Human Resource Management is therefore considered part and parcel of modern strategic management. HRM predicates its operations on two basic tenets. There’s a hard version which posits that resources such as workforce should be controlled tightly enough so that their economic outcomes could be manipulated as well for the larger good of organizations. On the other hand the soft version states that there’s human side to winning commitments from employees as they need to be nurtured so as to contribute to the fullest to organizational goals. The dichotomy of focus of HRM approach is ascribed to the McGregor’s theory X and Y which is considered another milestone in the work accomplished with respect to work motivation. 

Employee relations have also been an integral part of what Human Resource Management does along with the crucial indulgence of upper echelons of organizations. There has been somewhat confusion among usage of the relevant terms such as labor relations, industrial relations, employment relationship and employee relations but there are minor differences among all. Industrial relations have got employment relationships under its aegis but that industrial relations have intrinsically assumed the role of employment relationships in present scenario. The focus of this research is solely on employee relations and this discipline is considered in the realm of non-industrial employment relationships. 

In a conventional stream, the subject of industrial or employee relations revolves around mere trade unionism, collective bargaining, national labour policy and labour law which are considered a part of the whole not otherwise. Employee relations strategy, pertain to the liaison between employer and employee with respect to multiple issues that emerge in day to day proceedings. The issues have potential to affect employee performance along with rendering him or her delinquent in the duties assigned. Addressing the grievances and relevant procedures are crucial to employee relations strategies in present corporate era.

There’s need for employee relations in formal organizational structure because relationship between employers and employees can be ameliorated by having support of overall strategic mission and vision. Employee relations are always dictated by views differentiated from the perspectives of employers and employees. It is of viewpoint of employers the employee relations go awry when employees exhibit non-compliance and be based performance with absenteeism as well as high turnover rate. From employees’ angle, employee relations take a wrong turn in the wake of serious issues such as discriminations, disagreements, hygiene and safety problems, conflicts on policies and terms, pay deductions and dismissal etc.

Keywords: Motivation, Employee Relation, Employee Motivation

Insight to Performance Management and Employee Engagement

Performance management is considered a crucial aspect of modern business mechanism and has been instrumental to organizational effectiveness. Concept of performance management is deep rooted in an organizational culture that promotes continuous improvement in individual skills, behaviours and all business processes. Managing human capital with utmost possible accuracy has been foremost concern for organizations in the backdrop of highly competitive industrial scenario.

Unfortunately there are only about one third of employers globally who consider performance management process credible for maintaining employee well-being and satisfaction levels. The need of today’s competitive organizations is to refocus their efforts on performance management in all of its essence. The concept behind improving employee performance most of the times trace back to the modus operandi with which employees are treated and gauged against the predetermined set of organizational tenets. Due to such connections with employee behaviour and their performances, focus should be directed towards enhancing the performance via employee engagement in the long run.

      Most of the times the aspect of performance management is mistaken with mere performance evaluation but in reality the former is a broad and profound phenomenon engulfing plethora of factors such as organizational policies and practices. It also traces back the performance of employees to design features which actually produce the performance. The integration of different areas hints towards a strategic approach of the discipline under aegis of human resources management.

     Whereas employee engagement has gathered a great deal of limelight as far as previous years of corporate mayhem are concerned. There have been many disturbing concerns upsetting the organizational scenario. The issues include high turnover rate, increasing absenteeism and growing dissatisfaction among stakeholders, in the backdrop of which industry experts have sought the solutions beyond conventional thoughts. Employee engagement has often been hailed as a reason behind firms’ competitiveness and strength. The Plethora of academicians and industry erudite scholars has regarded employee engagement as key driver of attitudes and behaviours that enhance individuals’ performances. Thus employee engagement can be seen behind success of organizations which have been able to promote productivity, retention and financial well-being of its employees. 

Keywords: Performance Management, Employee Engagement, Employee Performance