--By Amit Sharma

 

Imagine that you are the line manager of a very young guy in your IT department who has been repeatedly complaining of having to work even on holidays. You thought that the introduction of overtime allowance that the company introduced for the last three months will address the issues raised by the IT staff. He, however, has been very hard working. He is always interested to learn the new systems and comes forward to volunteer whenever a new technology is being tested. You consider him a very committed employee until one fine morning he submits his resignation only to tell you that he has joined a competitor who has just brought the same ‘technology’ your company had been using for the last six months. And, this guy was quite interested to learn this technology and has fairly mastered the new system. After he leaves, you don’t have an immediate replacement which will hamper your support service that you are providing to your customer. You had thought this employee was committed!

 

Then you have a branch manager at Biratnagar who is considered to be a very good sales staff. He manages a team of 10 people and most of these people are quite productive. However, one thing that really worries the management is the turnover in the branch. When you analyse the exit interview reports, you can clearly see that the branch manager is not a very good team player. His subordinates are quite dissatisfied with his behaviour. When you talk to these employees informally, they point out his weaknesses like he often scolds them in front of the customer even for small mistakes. Strangely, the branch manager used to report positive things about these employees and would come strong when recommending rewards and recognition to his subordinates. You thought his subordinates were very lucky to have a supervisor like him. You try to counsel the branch manager but things wouldn’t improve and you cannot let go the branch manager because of his high sales achievement. You had earlier assumed that the loyal staff wouldn’t leave your reputed company even if they had some ‘petty’ issues with their supervisor.

 

And, the third employee who has worked with you for last five years at your customer service department has been very vocal about how good she feels about your company. She is very good at handling customers and has been receiving very good ratings in her performance appraisals. However, one thing you don’t understand is that her co-workers have been struggling with their performance. Your rational thinking is that the other people would learn from her or even she should be aware of the lower quality of work her team members perform. You once talk to her informally on the issue and seek her advice on what can be done to improve their performance. She, however, doesn’t want to be involved in ‘improving’ their performance. She says that’s not her job. You used to think that she was quite committed to the company and would go ‘that extra mile’ to improve her co-workers. You were wrong.

 

So, what is missing in the employees you thought were committed? You realise that some visible aspects of commitment do not bind them with your company. These people were not engaged with your company!

 

From Commitment to Engagement

Employee commitment has different dimensions. Basically, it has three aspects: Emotional Commitment (Feeling), Cognitive Commitment (Thinking) and Behavioural Commitment (Doing). When we have all three dimensions of the employee commitment, we can say that the employees are engaged with the organisation. Thus, by using the term employee engagement, we will be covering the employee commitment in its holistic form.

 

As illustrated in the three staff issues in the beginning, presence of only one dimension doesn’t work. As in the first case, employees can be engaged with their job (Job Engagement) but may not be engaged with their organisation (Organisational Engagement). Similarly, some employees may be emotionally committed because of the reputation of the organisation but only emotional commitment does not work.

 

The third case was that of behavioural commitment. Engaged employees not only give their best productivity, but also ‘go the extra mile’ to improve the quality of work of their co-workers even if their role doesn’t demand such kind of responsibilities. Such employees not only feel and think for the organisation; their action (doing) is towards the betterment of the organisation.

 

Link between employee engagement and organisational performance

The general philosophy of employee engagement is that engaged employees contribute more, help in crating positive work environment, stay with the organisation longer and have higher commitment to quality. These ‘traits’ of engaged employees lead to increased customer satisfaction that ultimately helps in achieving business outcomes.

 

Several researches show a relationship between employee engagement and financial performance of the organisations. Internationally known consulting frims like Gallup and Aon Hewitt have a long history of measuring employee engagement and its effects in business organisations. Aon Hewitt uses a term called “Engage-O-Meter” for showing the engagement level and the organisational performance.

 

A research carried out by Aon Hewitt covering data from 2008-2010 found that organisations with high levels of engagement (65% or greater) continue to outperform the total stock market index and posted total shareholder returns 22% higher than average in 2010. On the other hand, companies with low engagement (45% or less) had a total shareholder return that was 28% lower than the average. As there was a global recession during that period, the correlation was still valid in times of financial crisis.

 

Engagement Level in Nepali Organisations

Though we haven’t heard much of such scientific research on employee engagement done in Nepali organisations, some of the organisations conduct annual engagement survey of their employees and the organisational climate surveys. The results of these surveys are only for internal consumption.

 

Officially, Standard Chartered Bank (SCB) group annually conducts an engagement survey in association with Gallup. Thus, the SCB Nepal, as a part of the group, has been conducting the annual survey. However, one more bank uses the same survey questionnaire but uses its own resources to conduct the survey and analyse the results. Some multinational companies like Coca Cola (Bottlers Nepal) use employee surveys prescribed by their parent company. 

 

(Sharma is the Head of the Human Resource Department of Janata Bank Nepal Ltd. The article is adapted from a paper he presented at the HR Conclave organized by the School of Management, Tribhuvan University on January 10, 2014.)