EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT AND JOB SATISFACTION

 


Employee Engagement & Job Satisfaction
Employee engagement and satisfaction are two major aspects in relation with employee’s performance (Armstrong, 2012). Job satisfaction often relates to factors which organization has control on it, such as, employee salary, incentive, and job security, whereas engagement has direct influence by the manager such as, job tasks, recognition, loyal and communication (Armstrong, 2012). Armstrong (2014), described that, the term job satisfaction, motivation, and commitment generally being replaced with the name “Engagement”, as it seems to have more descriptive power and value. Employee engagement is an individual purpose which focuses on personal initiative, adaptability, effort, and persistence directed towards achieving organizational goals (Walker, 2017).  

Job satisfaction known as the extent to which employees like their job role (Barden, 2017). Job satisfaction is based on perceptions of an employee which is developed through positive or negative attitude towards their job and environment (Gordon, 2011). Good working environment at the workplace fulfills employee’s needs, values, and personal characteristics to the greater degree of job satisfaction (Barden, 2017).

Video-01: explains the significant difference between Employee engagement and Employee satisfaction in contemporary world on how engaged employees are important to organization success and sustainability. 

Video-01 : Differences between Employee satisfaction and Employee engagement.

 Source: (Decision wise, 2016)


1.      Employee Engagement and Job Satisfaction: Best practices
Employee engagement is crucial to the success of any organization which provides clear links to job satisfaction and employee morale (Armstrong, 2014).  

2.1 Empowering employees

Empowering employees defined as giving team members authority to take decisions and actions with the trust and understanding in place to ensure that the job responsibilities were effectively done in line with achieving company goals (Osborne, 2017). Empowering employees will be able to use of an individual skill which allow him/her to work at high levels in attaining certain task with confident in themselves (Osborne, 2017).

According to Kumar et.al (2017) the following are the benefits of empowering employees to increase work engagement.

·      Empowerment increases the leadership capabilities of an individual, as well as employee understand his / her job responsibility and helps their subordinates along the way to do their best work.

·      Employees allowed to think and collaborate across with team members to generate more novel ideas in terms of product development, brand revamp, technology advancement, strategy implementation and increasing customer awareness.  

·   Empowering employees will have less impact on employee turnover, absenteeism, miscommunication between top level management, conflict with team members and poor performance in achieving monthly targets. 


1.2  Rewards & Recognition

Organization implements good reward and recognition programs to engage employees in way that directly affect employee’s performance with a powerful feedback to attain company objectives (Osborne, 2017). Employees will show more commitment and involvement when they have been appreciated, and treated well when performing daily tasks (Osborne, 2017). Rewarding systems such as, incentives for sales target achievement, promotion, free vacation, yearly award programs, and off-site events will boost employee engagement and competency by having good organizational culture (Osborne, 2017). 

2.3 Building effective communication.
Every organizations top level management have an influential role in improving employee engagement by demonstrating clear values and encouraging positive teamwork in an agreeable manner to maintain strong relationship with employees who exhibit enthusiasm in completing their work duties (Osborne, 2017). Strong relationship and communication between management and employees fosters a healthy team environment and working culture which enables to discuss and review employees’ challenges and performance at the workplace (Sarangi, 2016). Positive working environment and less fear in communication will increase employee individual performance which positively impact overall performance and productivity of the organization (Sarangi, 2016).  

2.4 Training and Development

Jain (2017) argued that, Training and Development has vital place in the current dynamic business world to keep employee engage towards achieving the competitive advantage and growth of the business through employee knowledge, skill, and competency. Investing in training and development program give better results include higher productivity, increase efficiency and more innovation to accomplish final goal of an organization (Jain, 2017).

The travel agency company which I work for is practicing effective methods to keep staff members engaged. The company’s sincere intention is to foster and provide inclusive working environment for employees by giving them more confidence to realize their full potential both professionally and personally. The company provide employees with yearend bonus, incentive for every six months considering the achievement of sales target, further the company arrange foreign tour experience for every staff member with the aim of giving an opportunity to explore new things as well as to encourage employee’s commitment towards company during the employment.  The company arrange Global Distribution System training for ticketing staff which enable them to acquire more in-depth knowledge when issuing air tickets, tours department given training on excursion to facilitate the requirement when arranging a tour to within Sri Lanka.
Due to the recent COVID-19 pandemic the company has faced many obstacles and challenges to do the business operation and paying employees salary. Hence the company empowered employees in a better way to engage them to provide ideas to find business opportunities during the period, which positively resulted company to invest in new business ventures such as property development, management, and pharmaceuticals. 



List of references

·         Armstrong, M (2012). Armstrong’s handbook of management and leadership: Developing effective people skills for leadership and management. 03rd ed. London: Kogan page, Limited. (P.142-144).

·    Armstrong, M and Taylor, S. (2014). Armstrong’s handbook of human resource management practice. 13th ed. London: Kogan page Limited. (P.193-201).

·        Barden, L. C., (2017). "The Correlation Between Employee Engagement and Job Satisfaction in the Social Security Administration" (2017). All Capstone Projects. 365. https://opus.govst.edu/capstones/365.

·      Decisionwise, (2016). Difference between employee satisfaction and Employee engagement. [video] Availabe at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRwTnFO43zw&t=30s [Accessed on 10 May 2021]

·  Gordon, V. (2011), Exploring the Job Satisfaction of Municipal Clerks: Review of Public PersonnelAdministration,Vol.31(2).pp.190–208,https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.940.1828&rep=rep1&type=pdf.

·  Jain, S. and Khurana, N. (2017). Enhancing Employee Engagement Through Training and Development: Asian journal of management, vol.8(1).pp.1-2. [Online]. Available at: DOI:10.5958/2321-5763.2017.00001.4.

·     Kumar, P. J., and Kumar, A. A., (2017). Employee Empowerment – An Empirical Study: Global Journal of Management and Business Research: A Administration and Management,Vol.17(4).pp.59-61.

·   Osborne, S. and Hammound, M. S. (2017). Effective Employee Engagement in the Workplace: International Journal of Applied Management and Technology. Vol.16(1).pp.50-67. [Online]. Available at: DOI:10.5590/IJAMT.2017.16.1.04.

·         Sarangi, P., and Nayak, B (2016). Employee Engagement and Its Impact on Organizational Success – A Study in Manufacturing Company, India: IOSR Journal of Business and Management.Vol.18(4).pp.52-57.

·     Walker, K. and Bayles, B (2017). Employee Engagement: Introduction and Overview, Vol.1(1).pp.1-4. [Online]. Available at: Employee+Engagement+-+Macey.pdf










Comments

  1. Harsha Wijesinghe14 May 2021 at 08:12

    I agree with your points. The company should give good wages, compensation, appreciation, career assurance and build an excellent professional background to improve worker motive and performance. Directors want to fulfill hygienics and Motive factors to motivate subordinates (Dartey-Baah and Amoako, 2011).

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. E.Sujeendran14 May 2021 at 23:09

      I Agree Harsha, Organizations value employees as an asset rather than cost, therefore organization uses best practice HR strategy to motivate employees by providing them a competitive salary, incentive scheme, safety work culture, rewards and recognition and career development opportunities to satisfy employees and increase their performance (Dessler, G., 2020).

      Delete
  2. Chamara D. Jayaweera15 May 2021 at 03:37

    Agree with you. Engaged employees are also more likely to display discretionary behaviour. Engagement has been found to be closely linked to feelings and perceptions around being valued and involved, which in turn generates the kinds of discretionary effort that lead to enhanced performance (Konrad, 2006).

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. E.Sujeendran16 May 2021 at 07:55

      Additionally, Employee engagement described as employees' purpose, focused energy, personal initiative, adaptability, effort, and determination which lead to enhance employee performance towards achieving organizational goal (Armstron, 2014).

      Delete
  3. ERANDA ELLEPOLA15 May 2021 at 04:29

    Agreed with you and and rewarding is best practice in many organization currently used.
    further that Reward management is concerned with the formulation and implementation of strategies and policies, the purposes of which are to reward people fairly, equitably and consistently in accordance with their value to the organization and thus help the organization to achieve its strategic goals. (Armstrong, 2006).

    ReplyDelete
  4. Oshadee Wanasinghe15 May 2021 at 09:58

    You have made a valid point. Kular et al (2008) assert that employees are considered as engaged if those employees have a positive attitude towards work. If an organization wants its workforce to be engaged, the job satisfaction of those employees should be enhanced first. According to Bakotić (2015), nature of work, opportunities for career development, educational support, leadership, co-workers, supervisors, salary, designation, working conditions, permanent employment and working hours will influence the work attitude of an employee.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Uddika Pathiranage15 May 2021 at 21:39

    Exactly, where a job is the most important fact of all individuals. Satisfaction is the emotion feeling after satisfying the feeling. Job satisfaction is known as comfort receive for an employee by doing a job. Positive job satisfaction will lead to increase productivity since the employee considered as a core asset of any organization while satisfying a core asset organization may earn higher productivity (Ali,2016).

    ReplyDelete
  6. Sandun Madusanka15 May 2021 at 22:48

    Agree with you,Job satisfaction is the positive feeling about the work, a person who has high level job satisfaction can positively contribute to the organization & lead with the vision to achieve organization targets (Hidayah & Tobing,2018).

    ReplyDelete
  7. Wasantha Basnayake16 May 2021 at 00:36

    Agree with your views. Employee Engagement is a workplace approach designed to ensure that
    employees are committed to their organization’s goals and values, motivated to contribute to organisational success, and are able at the same time to enhance their own sense of well-being (Vorina,A.,Simonič,M. and Vlasova,M., 2017).

    ReplyDelete
  8. gagana_amadoru17 May 2021 at 07:10

    Indeed, employee engagement reflects on job satisfaction. Maslach et al. (2001) model considers engagement as a mediating variable for the relationship between the six work conditions and work various outcomes and like burnout, should be related to outcomes such as increased withdrawal, lower performance, job satisfaction, and commitment (Maslach et al. 2001).

    ReplyDelete

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