Strategies for Increasing Employee Engagement Level in Fast-Growing Organizations

Driving an “Engagement Culture” is the essential foundation to build an organizations employee engagement initiative. Organizations must use the findings from their engagement surveys in order to identify the key factors that drive engagement & organizational KPIs in their context and then pick the ones that are of the highest importance to the business, in order to design engagement initiatives around those specific items (Vance, 2006). In today’s highly competitive business world, more and more organizations are becoming aware of the importance of employee engagement and are taking up initiatives to increase the employee’s engagement levels. As evident on Gallup surveys from 2018, the percentage of engaged employees is on an increasing trend in the U.S. (increased from 30% in 2012 to 34% in 2018) and this is by no mere coincidence but through organizations investing on building a culture of engagement (Harter, 2018).

A variety of different approaches are discussed in literature, in terms of the techniques/strategies an organization should exploit in order to increase employee engagement. According to Armstrong (2009), a strategy for enhancing employee engagement must consider the below 05 key areas, which will be discussed in detail with relation to a fast-growing organization.

     1.    The work itself: The nature of the work the employees are assigned to do, can intrinsically trigger their engagement to increase. Employees today prefer work that is intellectually challenging and interesting which also gives them a sense of accomplishment while making themselves feel significant in the organizational big picture (Armstrong, 2009). In fast-growing organizations, the job roles are usually very specific (narrow job scope) & can often be monotonous because the roles are designed mainly with efficiency in mind. At my current workplace, certain roles where these drawbacks exist, are handled carefully by using methods such as periodic job rotation. For example, a job role for a specific sub-function where the team members were required to do quite a lot of monotonous data entry work, was combined with a less monotonous sub-functional role to create a “hybrid” role for the combined team.

      2.    The work environment: This has to do with cultivating a culture of positive attitude towards work, encouraging interest and excitement in the work while reducing work pressure. The organizational talent management practices should be clearly defined. The employees should feel that their workplace is a psychologically safe place to work. Ensuring the employees have appropriate physical working conditions (example: chairs, desks, computers, air conditioning, internet connections) also play a role in employee engagement. From my experience, the managers of a growing organization play a vital role in making the work place a psychologically safe place to work. On the other hand, today’s employees demand good physical working conditions – this is one aspect where my current organization has gotten very positive feedback on employee satisfaction surveys from the employees.   

      3.    Leadership: Here, Armstrong (2009) focuses mainly on the very important role played by line managers in increasing employee engagement levels. Also, the author emphasizes on the training of line managers and prospective managers to equip them with the skills and knowledge required to play this role. My current organization has invested in this area greatly and there are a few training programs that are mandatory for different levels of leaders. Ongoing performance management is done through a human resource management system and there are periodic trainings & refreshers conducted for the managers on performance management techniques.  

     4.    Opportunities for personal growth: Creating a learning culture is an important aspect in nurturing employee engagement. Discretionary learning instead of obligatory (often unproductive) training programs should be encouraged – this process takes place when employees truly are interested in acquiring the skills and knowledge that are needed to support the organization’s mission (Sloman, 2003 Cited in Armstrong, 2009). An essential aspect of this strategy is that the employees should have an enough amount of flexibility for them to be able to expand on their roles and contribute in areas that they are talented in.

However, this can be challenging unless the guidelines are clearly defined, specially in fast-growing organizations. The primary role an employee is expected to play, should not get significantly affected due to him/her focusing on other areas they wish to contribute in. Career development related guidance and support should also be covered in the strategy. At my current workplace, the employees are encouraged to contribute to a suggestions scheme, the suggestions necessarily do not have to be related to their job role – they are recognized on the evaluations for their contributions and there are monetary rewards and Non monetary rewards/awards (recognition from the top) based on the value addition the suggestion brings in. From a career guidance standpoint, each team member who joins the organization is assigned an experienced team member (a team lead or a manager) as their “mentor” & the mentor acts as a “career counselor” among other things, sharing their wisdom with the new comers. All these things combined, has created a strong cultural foundation of learning and continuous improvement. However, it must be said that as the organization continues to grow, the focus on these initiatives seem to have slightly diluted.

5.    Opportunities to contribute: The opportunities for the employees to contribute with their opinions and ideas is a critical aspect of making sure that the employee feels that they are an important part of the organization. Open communications must be encouraged, and hierarchical organizational structure shouldn’t be allowed to limit the bottom layers of employees communicating with the top. At my current organization, formal employee satisfaction surveys are sent out quarterly and it consists of a few open-ended questions where the employees can share their honest opinion. The organization has an “open-door” policy, across the board. As the organization continues to grow, the manager to team members ratio has increased to about 1 to 40, this was about 1 to 25 a few years ago – nifty changes in organizational structure has helped keep the communications open despite the increase in the ratio. Any growing organization should consciously make changes to its organizational structure to make sure there are no roadblocks to open communication. 

References:

Armstrong, M. (2009). Armstrong's handbook of human resource management practice. 11th ed. London: Kogan Page, pp 338-340.

Harter, J. (2018) Employee Engagement on the Rise in the U.S. [Online] Available at: https://news.gallup.com/poll/241649/employee-engagement-rise.aspx [Accessed on 04 September 2019].

Vance, R. J. (2006) Employee Engagement and Commitment. [Online] Available at: https://www.shrm.org/hr-today/trends-and-forecasting/special-reports-and-expert-views/Documents/Employee-Engagement-Commitment.pdf [Accessed 04 September 2019].