Employee Engagement

Introduction

Clifton (2008) defines employee engagement at work as the harnessing of organizational members selves to their work roles. In other words it is employee's involvement in the workplace, where they can express themselves physically, cognitively and even emotionally during their role performances. It is therefore noteworthy that, employee engagement is the level of commitment and involvement that an employee exhibits towards the organization and its values (Endres & Mancheno-Smoak 2008). When employees are engaged, they are quite aware of the business context and therefore work hand in hand with their colleagues so as to improve performance within the job for the good of then entire organization as stated by Melcrum publishing (2005).

It is therefore of great importance for organization to develop and maintain engagement which culminates from good relationship between the employer and the employees in accordance to Clifton (2008). This is due to the fact that, it is an accurate determinant of the association of an individual with the organization. Engagement in this case is closely associated with construction of job involvement as stated by Endres & Mancheno-Smoak (2008). Job involvement in this case is the degree to which job situation is the main focus by the person and his or her identity. This in short depicts that, job involvement culminates from a cognitive judgment about the needs satisfying abilities of the job.

According to Clifton (2008), employee engagement is a very vital aspect that managers must nature in their organizations for it increases workers commitment and motivation which in the long run results to improved performances of the entire organization. The human resources are the most important assets in any given organization, having the motivated and commitment means that the organization will utilize their skills and expertise to the competitive advantage of the organization(Rafferty et al 2005), by the use of skills and expertise from the human resource.

People engage in three different ways. Emotional, behavioral and intellectual: emotional refers to how people feel about their work, organization and their superiors/bosses (Ellis & Sorensen 2007). Raffertry and others attributed to the fact that, human beings are emotional beings and therefore must fell something about what they are doing in order to be engaged in it. Behavioral aspect is linked to what people do or intend to do in the future. For example, do they have an intention of staying in the organization, do they put much effort into the job, and do they recommend potential employees of customers to the organization. This and much more are the behavioral factors that impact of the engagement of an individual. Lastly, intellectual factors are whether people believe in and support the goals of the organization or their part of the organization. Without aligning their fit with that of the organization, engagement can never be realized as it is clearly stated by Clifton 2008).

According to Shaw (2005), employee engagement falls under two basic approaches: philosophical approach and pragmatic approach. For the philosophical approach, engagement inclines much on management philosophy to consider when making human resource decisions while pragmatic approach is a dedicated program where engagement is measured. Rafferty and others (2005) exonerated that high levels of employee engagement have significant and positive impact at organizational and individual levels. This therefore entails that, it is an important aspect to incorporate in any given organization to assist in the realization of goals and objectives. Most importantly, employee's engagement also enhances organizational commitment, customer satisfaction, loyalty, profitability and safety as stated by Harter et al (2002). Employees who are engaged experience greater job satisfaction and greater well being (Alfes et al 2010)

Engagement should be incorporated in the organization to boost performance. Clifton (2008) in his work stated that, managers should value this aspect as they manage the human resource. In actual fact, engaged employees work harder, tend to be more loyal and are likely to sacrifice for the sake of the organization. Employees alone can not drive engagement. The entire organization, managers and employees make the level of engagement (Rafferty et al 2005). It is noteworthy that, for an engagement to work successfully, then workers must feel satisfied and in the long run produce quality work. Managers therefore must communicate and lead the employees towards the goals of the organization. In other words, they must set vision and goals and spread it throughout the organization and this is according to Clifton (2008). Employees must clearly understand what the organization stand for and the desired goals, so that they can start to work towards that. This therefore entails that; managers must consider employee engagement so as to achieve the goals with ease.

Employee engagement is a responsibility of the management. It is well stated by Ellis & Sorensen (2007) that managers must select and develop employees for success, open communication system and provide the necessary tool for the completion of the job. When this is done, manager will be empowering employees and this in the long run will give an organization the boost and competitive advantage to succeed. There is no organization that can win over the long run without the energizing employees who believe in their mission and understand how it can be achieved. This is due to the fact that, engaged employees go beyond understanding the mission, to understanding what is needed in order to achieve it as stated by Rafferty and others (2005). This entails that, employee engagement is a prerequisite in the achievement of goals and most of all in having satisfied employees which translates to skills retention through employee's retention (Ellis & Sorensen 2007).

Endres & Mancheno-Smoak (2008) acknowledged that, manager should value employee's engagement for these employees have attributes such as skills, knowledge, abilities, attitude and personality just to mention but a few. An employee uses there attributes to accomplish work behavior which is in line with organization defined procedures, by the use of tools, equipments and technology and this is according to Clifton (2008). Work behavior on the other hand creates the product or the service that makes the organization succeed. This calls for cultivation of this behavior by the mangers so as to help employees discharge all the expertise to the realization of the entire organization's goal, as stated by Ellis and Sorensen (2007). Managers therefore should take the initiative of implementing employee engagement programs.

Endres & Mancheno-Smoak (2008) in their