Employee Engagement's importance in a retail business

 

Employee Engagement 

Employee engagement is a workplace approach resulting in the right conditions for all members of an organization to give of their best each day, committed to their organization’s goals and values, motivated to contribute to organizational success, with an enhanced sense of their own well-being.

According to David MacLeod “This is about how we create the conditions in which employees offer more of their capability and potential”.

According to Kevin Kruse  Employee engagement is “The emotional commitment the employee has to the organization and its goals. ”Kevin Kruse,

In our words Employee engagement is based on trust, integrity, two way commitment and communication between an organization and its members. It is an approach that increases the chances of business success, contributing to organizational and individual performance, productivity and well-being. It can be measured. It varies from poor to great. It can be nurtured and dramatically increased; it can be lost and thrown away.

Example : 

Employee engagement is getting up in the morning thinking, “Great, I’m going to work. I know what I’m going to do today. I have got some great ideas about how to do it really well. I’m looking forward to seeing the team and helping them work well today”.

Some retail business organizations defined employee engagement's as follow. 

Dell - Engaged as giving time and talent to team building activities. 

Vodaphone - Employee engagement as an outcome "measured or seen as a result of people of being  committed to something or someone in the business - Very best effort that is willingly given"

Outcomes of Engagement 

1. Organizational Outcomes 

• Customer loyalty - Happy employees more likely to create more loyalty customers
• Employee retention - Happy employees more likely to stay in the organization
• Employee productivity - Engaged employees work harder are more loyal and more likely work extra mile for the corporation.
• Advocacy of the organization - Engaged employees are more likely to advocate the organization as a place to work and actively promote its products and services.
• Manager self-efficacy - Engaged employees respond positively to their managers, demonstrate good performance and achieve success. 
• Organizational  performance 
• Bottom line profit
• Successful organizational change 

    2.  Employee outcomes 

• Clarifying expectations 
• Health and well-being - Engagement may result in positive health effects and positive feelings towards work and the organisation. 

Engagement drivers

Barriers to engagement 

Speaking at the Employees engagement summit in 2009, John purcell, strategic academic advisor at acas National, suggested six Key factors that limit or damage engagement. 

• Job Insecurity - Fear of job loss is particularly likely during a recession
• Unfairness, particularly in reward and pay systems. 
• Jobs with no space - Repetitive work with short cycle times such as call centre work with very short call times in retail business. 
• Highly stressful jobs with very little flexibility or autonomy 
• poor line management behavior and bullying 
• Working for long periods of time without a break. 

Conclusion 

In the retail business context Employee engagement is now top management's hot topic and which has quickly absorbed into HR agenda. It is key challenge which is capturing the attention of executives and HR professionals. Therefore the following areas to be considered increasing employee engagement process. 

• Good quality line management.
• Two-way communication 
• Effective internal co-orporation
• a focus on development 
• Commitment to employee well -being

References. 

Dell (2008),Community and employee engagement, www.dell.om/content/topics/global.aspx/about_dell/values/community_outreach/connected_emp~ck=in&c=us&l=en&inki=0&s=corp

 "Employee Engagement". Emptrust. Retrieved 11 August 2017

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kevinkruse/2012/06/22/employee-engagement-what-and-why/?sh=37b002d17f37

https://www.tlnt.com/heres-the-best-definition-of-employee-engagement-youll-ever-see-anywhere/