Employee Engagement describes the level of employee dedication and their commitment towards their organisation (Anari, 2012). It is different from employee satisfaction. It can be also described as a relationship between employees and organisations (Watson, 2011). Employee engagement has a direct impact on the employee productivity and performance. There are many ways to enhance employee engagement and organisations around the world have identified suitable methods to enhance employee engagement (Akanbi et al., 2013). In the present essay employee engagement has been studied in detail and current employee engagement trends in Australia have been analysed.

Employee Engagement in Australia

According to Australian Employee Insights (AEI) analysis in Australia employee perception have changed with the passage of time in areas such as leadership, pay, rewards and career development (Charles H, 2001). It has been analysed through this report that current employee engagement trends in Australia are down and there is a room of improvement for the organisation in employee engagement (Bergsteiner, 2011). The key drivers of employee engagement in Australia are company image, company values and leadership (Albrecht et al., 2015).

There are different lenses through which organisations view their organisational policies in order to see upcoming challenges and tensions. This analysis helps the organisations to develop new approaches and practices to enhance employee engagement. These approaches and practices are based on the company goals and objectives (Robertson & Cary, 2010). The new proposals often demand for the transformational, large organisational and structural change. These proposals include clear strategies of reporting, feedback mechanism and key performance measures. These strategies, also help to enhance employee performance and have a positive impact on the organisational performance and well being (Petrou et al., 2012). There is a better financial result, happy and highly satisfied employees with less absences and stress among employees. Moreover, employee engagement helps to harness the people power There is a strong link between employee engagement and reduced absenteeism as engaged employees tends to stay with the organisation for a longer period of time. Employee Engagement has become a top priority for the leaders and senior executives around the world. The world economy is growing fast and leaders have realised that dedicated and engaged workforce is important for the growth of the organisation and is a key factor for their survival. Leaders around the world have realised that an engaged workforce helps to determine increased productivity with a reduction in costs. As it helps to retain the employees for a longer period of time and helps to cut the cost of hiring and training of new employees.  Hence the importance of employee engagement has been realised by the most of the leaders. Leaders around the world are focused to develop tangible strategies to tackle this issue. Globally best in class companies have said the employee engagement has helped them to gain competitive advantage (Bhatnagar, 2007).. They have developed metrics and practices that help to quantify and improve their employee retention policies and practices.

Research Studies on Employee Engagement

Many research studies have been conducted in this regard and companies practically learnt from these researches. Different HRM dimensions have a strong link to the Employee engagement and many studies have been conducted to analyse their relationship and their impact on the organisational performance (Markos & M. , 2010). Job crafting is one of the HRM strategies that is used to effectively use the talent of the employees. A research study has been conducted with a focus on crafting daily jobs in the organisation. The aim of the study was to explore the motivational outcome of crafting daily jobs and employee engagement is considered as one of the important outcomes of crafting daily jobs. A survey was carried out and 95 employees from different organisations participated in this survey (Ployhart, 2006). It was found out the daily job challenges have a positive relation with the employee engagement. Hence, it can be concluded that daily challenges of job and workplace helps to enhance the employee engagement. Routine jobs do not produce effective results as employees become dull and they feel that they are wasting their talent as they seek opportunities to excel (Warr & Ilke , 2012).

Impact of Employee Engagement

Employee engagement has a direct impact employee performance as employees feel motivated when they are more engaged in their jobs and they enjoy their jobs more. Hence, it affects the level of their performance and it tends to increase (Robertson, 2007). A research study has been conducted in this regard in which it was aimed to analyse the relative importance of the employee engagement and other job attitudes such as Job satisfaction, job commitment, job involvement and their impact on the employee performance (Reeshad S. Dalal et al., 2012). It was found out during the study that employee engagement is an important predictor of Employee Performance. It is very important to effectively measure the employee engagement as it is relevant to the theory and practice of Human Resource Development. Similarly, employee engagement has a strong link with the person-job fit as it helps the employee to adjust in the workplace for a long period of time (Schaufeli & Arnold , 2004).

Employee Disengagement

There are many reasons of employees not actively engaged in their jobs such as workload, routine job, ineffective leadership, poor reward system, biased attitude of management. All these factors have a negative impact on the performance of the employees and they will lead to the low performance of the employees. Hence, it is important that leaders must try to create a clear communication with their employees as it would help to understand the problems of the employees (Srivastava & Jyotsna, 2008). The employee would have a better relationship with their leaders. The leadership in Australia has significantly improved in this regard and leaders have clearly managed the change in the organisations (Bal & Simon, 2013). The leaders have focused on this area and they have a clear sense of direction. Career development is an important area that should be focussed in order to enhance the employee engagement. When senior management shows a serious concern for the employee wellbeing and welfare, employees feel secure and they own their job and tend to stay in an organisation for a longer period of time. In Australia, gradual improvement, to enhance the career development plans of employees, have been noticed in the last five years (Alfes et al., 2013). There is a consistency in the development of training programmes and it should be improved. Hence, it can be concluded that Australian organisations have realised the importance of Employee engagement and have taken initiatives in this regard as well but there is still more room for improvement.

References

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