A corporate organization’s success relies on the quality of its deliverables and the overall attitude of its employees. Understanding the types of employee engagement is important, as employees who are positively engaged in working towards an organization’s business goals directly impact their organization’s success, further fuelling their career growth.
Therefore, employee engagement initiatives are a mandatory exercise that every organization must undertake regularly. While employees put their blood and sweat into delivering high-quality solutions, the organization must be diligent in ensuring a holistic employee work experience.
Engagement can be a challenge considering the nature of each employee, their interest levels, and areas of improvement.
So, how can a company come up with a comprehensive engagement strategy to cover different kinds of employees? Let us learn more about the different types of employee engagement and the levels of engagement that employees can exhibit.
What is Employee Engagement?
Engagement refers to how connected employees are to the company and how committed they are to their work. Of course, everyone gets paid for their work. However, their level of engagement and commitment affects their recognition, promotions, career growth, etc.
Similarly, employees who have a positive engagement with their company have proven to improve the overall success of an organization in terms of better returns, deliverables, and more.
A survey by Gallup shows the following results when organizations take employee engagement seriously -
- 18% higher productivity
- 23% higher profitability
- 78% lower absenteeism
- 21% lower turnover in an otherwise high employee turnover organization
Implementing employee engagement at an organizational level involves several complexities. First, it is important to understand how existing employees are engaged with their work and committed to the organization’s goals.
To understand more, let us see the different levels of employee engagement that an employee can exhibit.
The Three Core Types of Employee Engagement
Every employee works towards completing their tasks. However, employees in the same organization can differ in their attitude towards their work and the general work culture.
A mixture of personal and professional reasons can determine whether an employee is actively engaged or completely disengaged with their work.
Actively Engaged Employees
Employees who show a positive attitude toward their work and the organization are actively engaged in the overall success of their careers and the organization.
- Such employees are highly motivated and are ready to take up challenging tasks passionately.
- Such employees are crucial for leadership roles because they can keep an entire team motivated. Nevertheless, active engagement from the grassroots level can positively impact a team’s performance.
- Such employees come up with new ideas, share knowledge, and handle adversities patiently.
Active engagement does not mean the company does only the bare minimum or nothing to motivate such employees. The company must constantly strive to retain its engagement levels through sufficient recognition, proper compensation, benefits, and more.
Not Engaged Employees
Every company has employees who do the bare minimum with a neutral attitude. They do what is required to meet expectations. In most cases, their motive would be to solely work for their paychecks without any enthusiasm.
In some cases, an actively engaged employee can suddenly reduce their engagement levels. This reduction can happen when there is a lack of open communication, not getting expected recognition and remunerations, etc.
Creating this group of employees for improving engagement can be a challenge for the engagement team. The organization can find the right reasons and work better on actively engaging such employees by connecting with their team leaders for a comprehensive evaluation.
Actively Disengaged Employees
Such employees have a negative association with the work they do, their team, and the organization as a whole. Disengagement can also affect the harmony of their entire team, and their leads can have a tough time getting work done from them.
There can be many personal or professional reasons for an active or neutrally engaged employee to suddenly become disengaged. However, such an attitude can directly impact their deliverables, which sends ripples and affects the quality of the end product or service.
Such employees may also look for ways to refuse work assigned, look for other opportunities, or affect the team’s productive time with distractions. It can be challenging for a company to understand and satisfy such employees’ needs and engage them actively.
The Three Dimensions of Employee Engagement
One of the crucial factors for improving employee engagement is ensuring employees work in areas where they can wield their core skillsets. Hence, it is important to take the most ideal candidates for job roles, with crisp communication on their roles and responsibilities.
While we classified employees based on their engagement levels, the engagement factor in itself is a combination of 3 parameters. Employees must feel fulfilled in 3 types of employee engagement metrics to be successful in their careers and contribute to the company’s growth.
The following dimensions of engagement show what is necessary for an employee to remain motivated consistently and prolong in an organization.
Emotional Engagement
You may have come across some social media posts stating not to be emotionally attached to your workplace, that your job role can be replaced, but your role in your family cannot, etc. Most definitely, yes!
But let us not blindly believe this. Humans are emotionally intelligent beings, which is why we are still hired for jobs that have robotic or AI-based replacements. A survey of leaders showed that 10% of the most inspiring ones were those who are emotionally engaged with their teams and higher leaders.
Emotional engagement measures how passionate an employee is about the work, team, and company as a whole. An emotionally engaged employee devotes quality time to productive tasks while having clear boundaries on time management.
- An emotionally engaged employee invests their time and energy in going the extra mile to improve themselves and their work goals.
- Emotionally engaged leaders are seen as magnets of positivity who motivate their teams to progress.
Professional setbacks, like a bad team member, missed recognitions, micro-management within the team, etc., can lead to an employee becoming emotionally disengaged. Personal setbacks, like the death of a loved one, separation, etc., can also lower an employee's emotional stability. An organization must help employees find channels to vent their feelings.
Tie-ups with therapists and mental health professionals for periodic wellness checks can help assess an employee’s emotional engagement levels.
Cognitive Engagement
Previously, we saw how an employee must have a certain emotional attachment to their work. That does not mean they devote all their time and energy to the company. Employees must be clear and focused on their work goals and their contributions. This level of focus and work clarity is termed cognitive engagement.
- Employees with good cognitive engagement have clear goals for their role, the team, and the company as a whole.
- They plan their work according to the organization’s core policies.
This type of engagement is crucial as we learn how well an employee understands the company’s mission and vision. One’s cognitive engagement levels can clearly show whether an employee is actively engaged, neutral, or disengaged with the company’s growth.
Every company must conduct periodic workshops or seminars to inform employees about its policies, growth statistics, competitor analysis, etc. Such activities can also happen at the team or part level to reflect on past success, future challenges, activity roadmaps, and more.
Organizations must recognize employee performances at different levels to show that their work makes a difference. Such activities improve cognitive engagement levels.
Physical Engagement
Today workplaces are becoming more hybrid to accommodate the needs of employees. Whether an employee is physically present in a workplace or not, physical engagement refers to how actively they participate in various tasks and roles in the company.
- The physical energy employees dedicate to their roles makes a huge impact on the performance of their team and their company.
- Those who are proactive in problem-solving and preventing professional mishaps are valuable resources for a company.
An employee representing their organization in a technical or social event is a positive sign of physical engagement, as society sees that employee as a reflection of a company’s core values.
In a survey regarding collaborating with team members, 43% of an employee’s work hours are spent on engaging with their teams. 87% of global employees prefer collaborating in person in an office environment, while 63% prefer working from home. Either way, engagement plays an important role in making the hybrid working model a success.
Companies boost physical engagement by facilitating leaders to hold meetings, seminars, workshops, etc. Occasional celebrations, informal events, talent shows, etc., help employees showcase their creative sides and earn better recognition.
Team bonding activities online or offline can be a good way to engage team members in formal or informal activities. A simple knowledge-sharing session or a daily stand-up meeting can motivate employees to motivate and prepare themselves to be on time.
Benefits of Active Employee Engagement in an Organization
An employee who is significantly engaged based on the 3 types of employee engagement metrics we have seen improves their personal productivity and contributes to the company’s growth.
Engagement is a direct response to an employee's positive work experience. A company that constantly strives to keep its employees actively engaged can see the following benefits -
Improved retention
Employee turnover has been a gripping problem, especially when a company fails to beat its competitors. History shows us that companies that value their employees’ contributions even during adverse times show higher retention rates.
When employees feel valued, they feel more engaged. Such an emotional chord can motivate employees to perform better. Every company you find under “best places to work for” would have gone through phases of attrition or turnovers. However, their overall employee engagement measures make them most preferred by the majority.
Increases revenue
Actively engaged or non-absent employees provide useful deliverables on a daily basis. The more such employees there are, the better the quality of services or products delivered at the end of the day will be. Multiply this stellar performance on a daily basis, and you will have higher revenue at the end of the financial year.
Active engagement from the grassroots level to the top level of leadership can significantly impact a company's work culture and quality of work.
Boosts morale
Where there is lots of positivity, there is a sense of purpose and value. With motivation coming from leaders at every level, employees feel their work is valued, however small it may be.
According to a survey, 57% of employees agree that their job fulfills their need for a sense of purpose and belonging. So, it is evident that most employees come to work for more than just money.
Constant evolution
When employees are actively engaged in their work, team, and the company’s goals, they are constantly evolving to perform better. Naturally, they can see their careers grow with rewards, recognition, and promotions.
With constantly evolving employees, companies need to devise new strategies to ensure employees remain engaged and loyal to their company. Hence, the company must also come up with innovative ways for employee engagement. Here, we have a win-win situation when both the company and its employees are constantly evolving.
Empower Your Workforce with Strategic Engagement
We learned that employee engagement plays a crucial role in a company's performance. The levels of engagement exhibited by employees are directly proportional to the quality of products and services delivered by the company. Employees must have a certain emotional commitment and clarity on how their work impacts the organization.
As we mentioned, implementing employee engagement strategies can be complex. One needs to consider several parameters and categories of employees depending on their engagement levels. Hence, it is important to devise a comprehensive employee engagement plan at the organizational level.
R180 provides the best team-building and employee engagement initiatives curated specifically for organizations. We offer services like analyzing existing engagement levels, employee development programs, and charting wellness initiatives, and we mainly focus on areas of improvement.
Connect with us today to learn how our AI-assisted services can bring out the best in your employees.