Exploring employee engagement
The importance of employee engagement has developed since it arrived in the early 1990s and has since become a focal point of HR. Over the last decade, work pressures have continually increased, highlighting the value of employee engagement and enthusiasm.
The CIPD has recently published research on employee engagement, exploring how to measure it and what contributes to employee engagement and motivation.
The researchers advise that employee engagement should be an umbrella term for a broad area of people strategy, similar to how we use “leadership skills” as a term that encompasses various independent skills which make up effective leadership. Therefore, when measuring employee engagement, we must define what element of engagement needs to be assessed, such as organisational commitment or work output.
The CIPD recommend The Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES). This scale is reliable and is the most commonly used scale for measuring engagement. A scale such as the UWES allows organisations to discover specific areas of engagement and motivation in their organisation, or lack thereof, through targeted questionnaires.
The report explains that some of the most significant factors in what engages and motivates employees are:
- When employees feel genuinely supported by their managers and colleagues.
- Feeling empowered within their role, having the confidence to utilise skills to perform well and the ‘work autonomy’ to make decisions.
- Psychological wellbeing, where employees are not overwhelmed by workloads or demands.
For the full report on what contributes to employee engagement and how to measure it, please click here.
