Employee Engagement In Business

Introduction

According to Cook (2008) employee engagement is personified by an employee’s passion and energy towards customer service, which arises from their willingness and ability to give sustained discretionary effort to help their organization succeed. It is characterized by employees’ commitment towards an organization, their conviction in what it stands for and their preparedness to go an extra mile to deliver outstanding services to customers. As such, it is more of a psychological contract than a physical one. Engaged employees derive inspiration from their work. Moreover, they are customer oriented and care about the future of the company and are prepared to work tirelessly towards the achievement of its overall goals and objectives.

As a result of the increasingly high competition and technological advancement in the global business environment, customers now have a much greater choice of where to do business. While customers have more discretionary power than ever before, the modern society lays more emphasis on the value of time as opposed to the value of money. In light of this, high levels of engagement within an organization not only promote retention of talent, but also foster customer loyalty and enhance organizational performance, which in turn promotes shareholder value (Lockwood, 2007). Employee engagement is therefore critical for business

2.3 Actively Disengaged

Actively disengaged employees are not only unhappy at work, but also exhibit signs of their unhappiness at the workplace. This group of employees can be very detrimental to the overall performance of the organization because they undermine what other engaged employees accomplish.

Apart from the above classification, employee engagement can also be perceived as cognitive, emotional or behavioral. Cognitive engagement entails employees’ beliefs about an organization's leadership and workplace culture. The emotional aspect entails, how employees feel about the company, its leaders and other members of the workforce. Finally, the behavioral aspect entails the value based component exhibited by the amount of effort employees put towards achieving organizational goals. Lockwood (2007) argues that employees who are highly involved in their work processes are more engaged compared to those who do not play an active role in their work processes. As such, the link between work practices that require high involvement and positive beliefs and attitudes is a key driver for organizational