Employee Categorisation
X-model of Employee Engagement pinpoints four distinct types – the engaged ones are the first and the most coveted group, which can again be classified into fully and almost engaged ones. These people are the drivers and contributors to the overall growth and success of any company. The almost engaged group though are part of high performers, may not be consistent with their performance.
The next best group of employees often known as “Honeymooners and Hamsters”, are highly satisfied with their job role, yet they contribute much less, as they find themselves more engaged with the other non-essential tasks around the organisation.
Crash and burners are the third type, who work hard, produce most, but usually feel exhausted. They never find any satisfaction with the load they are carrying and can be intensely vocal with the bad decisions taken by their seniors.
Lastly, there is this disengaged group who feel disconnected, underutilized, and do not get what they want from their job. They are usually sceptical and indulge themselves in contagious negativity.
Concern for the Business Owners
The success of any business depends on the goals and strategies it takes to move forward and can only be achieved by highly engaged teams to drive performance for remain competitive in the global market. Thus, it has become a major concern for any business owners to have individuals to perform at a higher level, contribute in a meaningful way to push themselves towards achieving the organisational goal.
Why a Highly Engaged Team?
High-performance teams usually have more fun at work, they support real-life problems, and are more flexible to changing times. Individuals in such a team have complementary skills and experience to bring out the excellent team effort and provide a unique social dimension to enhance the economic and administrative aspects of work.
Though fully engaged employees boost the team’s performance, disengaged employees on the other hand often engage in counter productive work and usually withdraw themselves away from the organisation. Engaged employees are more effective in their job-role performance and innovative behaviours. The level of employee engagement is positively related to job satisfaction and organisational commitment.
Ways to Boost Employee Engagement
Employee engagement has a major impact on contributing company goals, and employers need to monitor the engagement level of the employees to keep a positive outlook towards the workplace culture, only because disengaged employees may harm the overall productivity.
Improved employee engagement can be achieved by strategic planning, sharing accountability, creating awareness, and equip the employees with the information of the changes taking place in the organisation. These may be followed up with necessary training and developing skills to boost their performances and to channelize the company’s work culture with individual efforts into the overall achievement.
Flexible Work Culture
Flexibility and space give the employees the freedom to adjust their own time and work schedules. Rather than being rigid with 9-6 work schedules, employees tend to happier, productive, and more engaged in the workplace when they have the flexibility to complete their job.
Mini Social Gatherings
Holding regular social gatherings makes an employee feels engaged towards the company. Having fun together not only breaks up the routines, but also they can understand each other on a personal level, and engage themselves in collaboration and creativity.
Clarified Goals
Each team member has a set of goals and responsibilities to work on, and sometimes they may get confused with the position they hold in the company. So goals should be clarified to them clearly to get them focussed and to increase employee engagement within the organisation.
Nice Environment
A nice environment with a people-focused culture can also help to boost employee engagement in the workplace. A balanced lifestyle between work and personal life can make them feel more valued and heard.
A Manager Should be a Role Model
Being a role model to the employees can keep them engaged as they know their effort is not being unnoticed and help is always there when required.
Honest and Open
The most important factor in having a team of engaged employees to be authentic and truthful. It can develop a trustworthy environment, the workplace does not become sugar-coated and employees do not feel to be left out. Honest communication can also become the only policy to build a successful business. Employees also don’t get scared to come out with honesty as they know small issues can be solved right away before it gets out of proportion. Management must adapt to the environment where respectful and honest conversations are highly valued and employees are made to take ownership of their failures as well as successes.
Recognition and Reward
A personal ‘thank you’ to the monetary award can all lead to employee motivation and make them focussed and engaged in the job they are doing. There is a strong correlation between employee satisfaction and recognition programs. Though monetary reward can be the best stimulus, many employees also value alternatives like – in-person recognition from the manager, the boss, company-wide recognition email, a title promotion, a raise, and even extra vacation days. Here, timeliness acts as a crucial factor, and it is best to let the employees know it sooner to keep their morale high.
Concerns about the levels of employee engagement are well-founded around various sectors in an organisation to make the employees feel included, valued, and trusted. Care should be taken on behalf of the company to make their employees feel engaged and be a part of high-performance teams so they gear themselves up in fulfilling not only their individual goals but also have a part in overall organisational success.
How GBS Prepare its Budding Managers into Future Team Leaders
Future leaders must be aware of all these nitty-gritty to handle a team while bringing out best from each of the team members. Globsyn Business School endeavours to make each of its students confident and compassionate through various real-time corporate simulation courses on Management functions they learn to do planning, organising, coordinating, controlling and decision making through various team-work activities. They not only understand to overcome stress, but also do the comparative study among the teams to understand what went wrong, and what could be the best possible solution to handle a critical situation. Individual behaviour and personality is also being taken care of, so the students can face the real world adversity quite confidently, and are projected to become a high performing individual in any kind of business organisation.