Employee Engagement amid Increased Diversity
Introduction
Employee engagement is an age-old topic in research studies conducted on organizational behavior. The concept is defined as the commitment levels that employees display towards the organization and its goals. The success of an organization will often be based on a balance between financial results and the engagement of employees. While employee engagement has been a primary goal of Farmers Insurance, the issue of diversity has emerged as a challenge in ensuring that all employees work towards the same goals. Managers hence are required to address various aspects of organizational behavior to ensure that its programs of performance enhancement through employee engagement. The primary aspect of the research project is improving engagement through inclusion.
Research Questions
- How can the organization define employee engagement in a diverse work environment?
- How does inclusivity support employee engagement?
- How can workplace performance be defined?
- How can the performance of an increasingly diverse employee group be enhanced?
- What strategies of employee engagement achieve effectiveness in service organizations?
- How can disengaged employees affect an organization?
Discussion
Farmers’ insurance has for long made efforts to ensure that the levels of employee engagement have been enhanced. For example, several approaches have since been employed to address skills gaps within the employee groups (Laca, 2019). In general, the company expects its employees to have some core skill sets in accordance with the positions they hold. While this might be the case, increased diversity in the employee base has made it difficult for some of the traditional and generalized approaches to achieve the required levels of success (Laca, 2019). This means that even though the strategies might have been effective in the past, an increased need for inclusion for the diverse employee and client groups has led to the acknowledgment of enhancement required within the company’s performance improvement processes.
Inclusion means that a culture that addresses the specific needs of various employee groups. It needs to be acknowledged that losses incurred by US organizations due to the lack of employee commitment and engagements are close to 300 Billion US dollars (Cherian & Farouq, 2013). The companies with minimal levels of employee commitment and inclusion also suffered a 32.7% reduction in their operating incomes.
The conflicting employees’ leaders are also reported as highly susceptible to reduced levels of performance, reduced productivity, increased turnover rates, and lowered employee retention levels. As per the engagement theory conceptualized by Kahn, engagement will ensure that diverse individuals can express their preferred selves cognitively, emotionally, and also physically (Cherian & Farouq, 2013). This means that engagement can be enhanced when inclusiveness is used to ensure all workers invest entirely in their workplace roles.
A study on how Farmers Insurance can incorporate concepts of diversity, diversity management, productivity, and performance into their programs of employee engagement improvement will be quite valuable. In addition to ensuring that an appropriate cultural environment is built, the company will be enabled to build service frameworks that address clients’ needs from diverse cultural environments.
Counterargument
Normally, organizations should attain a 4-to-1 ratio of committed to disengaged workers to balance disengaged employees’ adverse effects. This indicates that whereas employee engagement is the major focus for most companies, it can have a greater effect than many people realized. Disengaged workers show less productivity and contribute to poor customer experiences (Slavin, 2019). Company morale and culture deteriorate when the employees fail to connect to the organization, which poses greater challenges in achieving a company’s objectives. Essentially, disengaged workers can considerably affect a company’s prosperity.
One of the ways disengaged employees affect an organization is through decreased productivity. Research has found out that disengaged workers cause 60% defects and errors because they are less competitive, demotivated, and irresponsible. On the other hand, committed employees exhibit 41% lower absenteeism and 17% more productivity compared to their counterparts. Indeed, 73% of inactive employees are always searching for jobs (Villaire, 2018). This substandard work and apathy level can cost an organization approximately $450 to $550 billion annually in employee turnover and revenue.
Another disadvantage of disengaged workers is a negative customer experience. Disengaged employees directly affect customer experience adversely. In organizations with standard or substandard customer experience, about 49% of their worker base is actively engaged in their tasks instead of 79% of their counterparts (Villaire, 2018). Indeed, dissatisfied, disengaged workers often cause poor client interactions. A measure of the Net Promoter Scorers (eNPS) shows that low employee ranks are directly related to low client-rated NPS scores.
Disengaged employees are also associated with decreased company culture and morale. Employee engagement and company culture have a symbiotic relationship. Many workers agree that their on-the-job engagement is directly related to workplace culture. If the culture is supportive and encouraging, workers are likely to feel more engaged, while a discouraging culture can cause widespread disengagement within the workforce. However, the relationship is concurrent. Disengaged workers are more likely to miss work, causing company burnout, wide-understaffing, and reduced morale (Slavin, 2019). Contrary to that, engaged employees feel appreciated by the leaders and are willing to offer the best services.
Disengaged employees also lead to failed corporate goals. 71% of top managers believe that employees’ engagement is essential in achieving a company’s success (Villaire, 2018). It is apparent to them that a committed workforce leads to increased performance and productivity and increased motivation. When workers feel discontented with the organization they work for, they see little value in achieving corporate goals (Villaire, 2018). Indeed, it is unworthy for them to align their goals with a company with no loyalty or connection to them.
Employee engagement strategies are vital to a company’s success. Disengaged workers can lower an organization’s morale and productivity, impede the company from achieving its goals, and affect customer relationships (Slavin, 2019). Organizations should, thus, address employee engagement on a broader scale to avoid this trend. By understanding their bottom line and customer experiences, they would likely record a positive shift in their performance. To achieve improved employee engagement in a company, managers should concentrate on enhancing organizational culture (Villaire, 2018). More emphasis on worker appreciation and recognition causes greater enthusiasm for their position and hence improved engagement and retention.
Apart from that, an organization should prioritize its workers’ strengths. Historically, investing in personal training centers and strength-based development around every worker’s strong bases causes a 9% to 15% rise in employee commitment and can also trigger improved profit between 14% to 29% improvement, output between 10% to 19%, and the engagement of customers between 3% to 7% increase (Richardsen, 2019).
Another viable strategy is to focus on improving the internal communication strategy with a worker communication platform. Poor communication leads to stress in about 80% of the US employees, with approximately 70% of the victims feeling overwhelmed because of broken communication methods and fragmented information (Richardsen, 2019). By integrating more efficient and effective internal communication platforms, organizations can anticipate their workers’ agility and increased engagement.
An organization can also reward employees. Managers could use numerous ways to establish a connection between performance and engagement for offering rewards to workers. Performance correlates with commitment once a reward and response opportunity exists. Research has found out that worker alignment occurs in prize commitment performance when the concentration is at its best instead of the best practices of a reward program (Richardsen, 2019). Organizational leaders should employ various factors at work to align reward and performance with engagement.
Recommendation
Employee engagement enhances organizational success. Thus, organizational managers should ensure that approaches in this research coincide with their own companies and business engagement to worker commitment. Commitment related to business alignments begins from monitoring each component of its strategy and fostering a positive work culture. It is crucial for organizational heads to monitor contemporary engagement approaches and introduce contemporary strategies that could correlate with their strategic goals. Improved commitment leads to worker commitment, improved performance, reduced turnover, and productivity.
Conclusion
Organizational leaders are responsible for ensuring worker engagement in the business. The committed employees need care and support from the managers and a secure environment to foster development. Comparatively, employee disengagement occurs when workers withdraw from their tasks, which is caused by poor leadership. Leadership in such situations creates an abusive and hostile situation for workers. However, safeguarding workers from a poor environment develops a secure workplace to exploit their skills fully. Consequently, this increases the productivity of the firm. Indeed, leaders should be responsible for ensuring a suitable environment for the workers. Negative politics exists in unwelcoming workplaces, which suppress creativity and opinions.
References
Cherian, J., & Farouq, S. (2013). Does an effective leadership style drive the financial performance of banks? Analysis in the context of the UAE banking sector. International Journal of Economics and Finance, 5, 105-114. DOI:10.5539/ijef.v5n7p105
Laca, A. (2019). Farmers Share Employee Engagement and Retention Tools. Business. https://www.agweb.com/article/farmers-share-employee-engagement-and-retention-tools
Richardsen, A. M. (2019). Work engagement: Increasing employee well-being and organizational effectiveness. Creating Psychologically Healthy Workplaces, 311-331. doi:10.4337/9781788113427.00025
Slavin, A. (2019). The seventh level: Transform your business through meaningful engagement with your customers and employees. Lioncrest Publishing.
Villaire, J. D. (2018). The Stepford employee fallacy: The truth about employee engagement in the modern workplace. Cognize Consulting LLC.