Description: PROJECT ON EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT

Employee engagement is associated with many desirable outcomes, such as job satisfaction, intention to stay and job performance. Companies with a greater number of engaged employees typically have lower operating costs, higher customer satisfaction and higher profits. There is a tangible monetary benefit to companies investing time and resources in fostering higher engagement within their employees. The task of precisely defining employee engagement is still ongoing, but it is most often defined in terms of behaviours exhibited in the workplace.

Engaged employees are prepared to go the extra mile in pursuit of workplace excellence. They are ambassadors for their organisations, who will speak highly of the company and its people, even when they are not in a work setting. An engaged employee is identifiable by workplace behaviours such as losing track of time as they are so absorbed in the task at hand. This is distinct from excessive overtime in order to give the impression of ‘hard work.’ Both look the same, but one is productive for the employer- employee relationship and one is not!

Academics would say that not enough is understood about what drives employee engagement as most research in the area has tended to focus on business outcomes without investigating underlying causes. As the impact of engagement on business has been positive and has been linked with higher profitability, practice has raced ahead of the underpinning research in pursuit of creating a more engaged and hence profitable workforce.

I undertook research to aid understanding of the area by investigating the relationship between employee engagement and the retention level.

At the same time I looked at the interplay between individual differences and engagement levels of the organization. I hoped to discover best practices of the organizations and the individual’s expectations from such strategies.