Employee engagement definition? What’s your definition of employee engagement?  And what might it do for you, for your line managers and for your organisation?

Employee engagement definition courtesy of Engage for Success:

“A workplace approach designed to ensure that employees are committed to their organisation’s goals and values, motivated to contribute to organisational success, and are able at the same time to enhance their own sense of well-being.” Plus another employee engagement definition “Creating the conditions in which employees offer more of their capability and potential.”

It’s not just engagement, its employee engagement, there is a significant difference and that’s not simply that it is employees being engaged as opposed to any other audience, it’s a workplace approach and is about mutual commitment not merely engagement.  Engagement alone has a definition courtesy of the Oxford Dictionary as: The action of engaging or being engaged: ‘Britain’s continued engagement in open trading’

If companies want high performance, leaders must demonstrate the connection between the company’s success and that of its employees.

Quirke, B: Making the connections 2008:13

Traditionally, internal communication has been broadcast to employees, with management conclusions and strategic decisions announced rather than communicated.  However, since the later part of the 1980’s, business leaders have discovered the exponential value of employee engagement and instead of cascading messages down the management ladder, industry giants are starting to find innovative channels to engage, motivate and collaborate with their employees, regularly and consistently.

Happy employees work harder, improving personal productivity by 12%, while unhappy employees can be up to 10% less productive. 

Employees today are not only needing a clear direction of their role, but for them to feel and integrate true engagement they need to understand the company’s purpose, objectives, and values and recognise how they personally can contribute to the company. That way they can contribute to and better understand how the overall culture lives and evolves in their daily working attitudes and activities.  With a better understanding, they also benefit from strong and collaborative leadership who can provide regular feedback on their progress and performance.  Successful businesses have leaders who are emotionally intelligent, that are supported through a business culture of high trust and who are developed to be equipped with good listening skills and have better autonomy and decision making understanding of what motivates their team at work. These skills in turn provide better insight and understanding to develop relevant and appropriate incentives to motivate employees to achieve and excel further.

Therefore, it makes sense to include employee engagement courses as part of your learning and development of line manager capabilities. They are fundamental in the structure and sustainability of successful employee engagement strategies and the subsequent action plans that follow and are often initially introduced and repeatedly upheld by the managers.

Giving management teams, business leaders and senior representatives the ‘Why’ as well as the ‘What’s in it for me?’, through strategic direction and insights, incentives and motivation into how best to be engaging their staff on a daily basis, can have a significant positive affect in how they integrate engagement throughout their workforce; contributing to staff’s improved understanding and subsequent productive actions within their roles.

Our Employee engagement courses examine the wider context of employment relationships and employee relationship management and how they can affect how engagement is interpreted, understood and integrated by leaders and managers into the organisation and across the company. They provide valuable insight into engagement dilemmas, provide solutions for handling negative feedback and can identify strategies to manage engagement or communication gaps effectively with immediate and long term impact.

Engagement courses not only nurture your workforce but fundamentally, they provide the key to a highly productive, most often present, retained and profitable workforce. If you would like to discuss our employee engagement definition or add to it, please get in touch. We love to share best practice and help spread education and insight in to positive people behaviour in the workplace.

Nurture your employees and they will grow with you as well as grow your organisation.