Management of Workforce Engagement - Coursework Example

Management of Workforce Engagement Name Institution Course Date Management of Workforce Engagement Introduction Employers all over the world concur that the business world currently is in dismal need for a more productive and competent workforce (Cook, 2008). Every now and then, they are relentlessly searching for new methods in which they can make sure that institutions always stay ahead of their competition. Therefore, employers have realized that they can be able to achieve their ultimate goal if they change their emphasis on employee engagement which may create a condition where employees offers more of their capabilities and their potential (Cook, 2008). Employee engagement is grounded on trust, integrity two way commitment as well as communication within its staff members. It is an approach that increments the opportunities of success in a business while at the same time contributing to the performance of both an individual and the organization. In addition, employee engagement is about understanding one’s character within an organization as well as being energized on where it corresponds to the in the goals and objectives of an organization (Carasco-Saul, Woocheol and Taesung, 2015). Furthermore, employee engagement concerns the pride of employees and their loyalty as they work within an organization. Therefore, this essay will highlight the factors that contribute to workforce engagement. Furthermore, it will discuss the issue of leadership as a major challenge to workforce engagement. Leadership in Workforce Engagement There are a number of factors that contribute to the engagement of a workforce within an organization. A workforce is affected with aspects such as strategic alignment within an organization. They tend to work hand in hand with where the business is heading as well as how it is going to get there (Gruman and Saks, 2011). In addition, peer culture also affects employee engagement. Highly effective peer relationship results to highly engage as well as a productive employees who are eager to drive organizational performance. Moreover, nature of career also affects the employee engagement because if employees are offered meaningful career paths, they will be inspired to work more aggressively so as to grow, develop and lead to their goals (Gruman and Saks, 2011). Development opportunities is another factor that affects the engagement of employees within an organization. If employees are offered both formal learning as well as an opportunity to practice their newly attained skill set, they will be highly engaged to learn from other outside formal learning (Macky and Boxall, 2007). Also, personal influence plays a major role in influencing employee engagement. Employees feel that they have the ability to strive in order to seek better methods of performing work, innovating new thoughts and that their efforts will be recognized. Due to globalization, organizations are altering their structure due to the competition they face in this big arena. Therefore, organizations are accumulating more value to their staff members as well as their skill set in order to create a workforce that offers them a competitive as well as a strategic advantage over their competitors (Macky and Boxall, 2007). Therefore, leaders of organizations play a major role in ensuring that this happens within their organization. Leaders have their various roles in encouraging employee engagement such as transactional leadership, leader-member exchange and transformational leadership. Transactional leadership involves the utilization of conventional reward as well as punishment so as to gain compliance from their employees (Markos and Sridevi, 2010). These kind of leaders incline to be action oriented as well as result centered. In addition, these kind of leadership are characterized by contingent rewards, laissez-faire and management by execution. For instance, contingent reward denotes the character of a leader of offering rewards if they believe that their workforce have worked adequately or even hard enough. On the other hand, if the subordinates fail to work hard enough, they wouldn’t get rewarded. Also, management by exception is a conformist way where resources are enforced to any event lying outside of instituted parameter (Markos and Sridevi, 2010). Therefore, transactional leadership seek to reduce the chances for exception by imposing defensive management processes. Additionally, leaders play a role in employee management through leader-member exchange (LMX) where they primarily focus on the relationship that exist between the leader and his employees (Pentareddy and Suganthi, 2015). This leadership character is characterized with high levels of LMX which translates to high quality of relationship where both participants feel as part of the group. As a result, they are characterized to be more responsible, possess high levels of satisfaction and also have access to reasonable resources. Then again, when participants feel out of place, their relationship is characterized as low LMX (Pentareddy and Suganthi, 2015). The relationship between leaders and their employees develop as a result of a sequence of exchanges as well as interactions during which the roles develop. Moreover, leaders demonstrate their roles in employee engagement through transformational leadership. In this process, leaders engage with their employees in a way that either of them raise the others motivation and morality to a higher level (Rice and Marlow, 2012). Transformational leadership are most at times very visible and acknowledged for their passion as well as their energy in every part of their work. They do this by spending a majority of their time communicating with their employees and searching for other initiatives which increases the value of their future team. Furthermore, leaders utilize transformational leadership in order to motivate and empower their staff members, often exceeding short-term goals and objectives by focusing on higher order intrinsic needs (Truss et al., 2013). Additionally, transformational leadership are characterized with four dimensions of leadership. They include: idealized influence which is concerned with building both confidence and trust of their employees, also, they possess inspirational motivation which is concerned with motivating the whole organization (Truss et al., 2013). Furthermore, they possess intellectual stimulation which deals with changing and arousing the awareness of problems of the employees as well as their capability to find solutions to those problems. Lastly, they possess individualized consideration which is concerned with responding to particular, unique needs of employees so as to make sure that they are adequately represented within the transformation operations of an organization (Carasco-Saul, Woocheol and Taesung, 2015). Leaders within an organization have four levels of leadership that influences their subordinates which includes: position, permission, people development and pinnacle (Maxwell, 2013). Position is considered the lowest form of leadership level. They often have employees but not team members. They depend on regulations, policies as well as organizational charts which are intended to control their people. Their employees will only go by their rules within an established boundary of their authority. Furthermore, position is the only leadership position which does not need either ability or effort in order to attain it. The second level of leadership is permission. In this level, leaders learn to work within a permission level. The employees therefore follow orders given to them by their leader rather than merely complying with them (Maxwell, 2013). This comes about because the leader influences his subordinates with a sense of relationship rather than just his position. Therefore, when employees feel favoured, cared for and included in an organization’s activities, they commence to work together as a team which can entirely change the working environment. The third level of leadership is people development which emphasizes on a personal and corporate productivity. The leader gains the capability to develop a highly-productive team and at the same time an organization shows a higher degree of leadership capability than most others show (Maxwell, 2013). Therefore, in order to reach this level of leadership, one should be able to create an elite organization and at the same time should be able to transition from producers to developers. This is primarily because the most appreciated assets within any organization are the workforce. In this level, great leaders invest their time, money, energy and thinking into developing others as leaders. They tend to change their aim from the production attained by others to the creation of their potential (Maxwell, 2013). In addition, leaders at this level put 20% of their focus to their own selves and an entire 80% to developing and leading others. Finally, the forth level of leadership is the pinnacle. It is considered one of the rarest level of leadership which requires very high degree of skill as well as a considerable amount of natural leadership capability (Maxwell, 2013). It always takes quite a lot of hard work to reach this level and develop other leaders. Most leaders who have reached this level often leave a legacy in the organization they served. Furthermore, pinnacle leaders stand out from every other person within an organization and they are often associated with bringing success wherever they set foot on (Maxwell, 2013). In addition, leaders at these position uplifts an organization and creates a working environment that benefit the employees and brings success to the organization. Successful organizations understand the significance of an engaged workforce in their daily performance. Engaged workforce place their heart and soul into their job and also have the energy as well as the excitement to offer more that is actually required into the job (Williams, 2010). Therefore, leaders ought to practice certain activities in order to create a culture that cultivates employee engagement. First and foremost, leaders can maintain a strong vision. Leaders have the duties of communicating the vision of the organization to their workforce and always keep it in front of their employees (Rice and Marlow, 2012). Employees within an organization should have the ability to recite the vision statement. Employees are always emotionally connected to the vision of an organization and are always committed and at the same time loyal to the organization. In addition, leaders should be able to practice consistent communication with their subordinates. Leaders should practice good communication since it is the most important thing an organization needs to do in order to foster adequate employee engagement (Gordon, 2010). The organization’s workforce constantly need to know the financial status of the organization so if they are adequately communicated to by their leaders, a culture of workforce engagement is created since they are able to recognize how they contribute to the organizational success. Furthermore, leaders need to improve their leader-employee interaction so as to create a culture of employee engagement. Researches have been carried out and they indicate that most employees exit organizations because of their direct supervision (Gruman and Saks, 2011). Therefore, healthy interactions demonstrated by leaders by showing care to their workforce creates a healthy and engaged workforce engagement. Leaders can also create a culture of trust within their team members. To ensure success within an organization, employees need to trust each other and their leadership. Therefore, leaders can create an environment that natures trust since employees are always watching how their leaders’ decisions affect the strategic direction of an organization (Macky and Boxall, 2007). Furthermore, leaders can also encourage a culture of reward and recognition. Once employees feel validated and acknowledged as worthful members of an organization, their level of engagement towards driving success within an organization increases. Therefore, leaders should show how much they care for their workforce and also how demonstrate recognition for every effort their employees show (Pentareddy and Suganthi, 2015). Moreover, leaders should ensure that their employees are satisfied in one way or another within an organization. If employees feel as part of every process within an organization, they get satisfied that their ideas matter (Williams, 2010). They are always on the front line and thus know how operations are performed within the organization. Therefore, if leaders actively solicit the feedback of their subordinates as well as involving their thought and ideas in the daily operations of the organization is always a very effective way of engaging a workforce. Also, leaders can ensure that they demonstrate clear expectations to their employees. They can effectively do this by offering employees goals and training, tools as well as resources required to do their job (Rice and Marlow, 2012). In addition, leaders should hold employees accountable for attaining their goals via an arranged performance management process. Conclusion To sum up, employee management is very important in ensuring success within an organization. Employers all over the world concur that the business world currently is in dismal need for a more productive and competent workforce. The factors that influence the engagement of employees within an organization includes: strategic alignment, peer culture, personal influence, nature of career and development opportunities. Furthermore, the roles of leadership within employee engagement are transactional leadership, leader-member exchange as well as transformational leadership. In addition, there are various levels of leadership which are as follows: position, permission, people development and pinnacle. Finally, in order for leaders to create a culture of employee engagement, they should practice the following: consistent communication, trust, leader-employee interaction and employee satisfaction to name a few. References Carasco-Saul, M., Woocheol, K and Taesung, K 2015, Leadership and Employee Engagement: Proposing Research Agendas through a Review of Literature, Human Resource Development Review, vol. 14, no. 1, pp. 38-63. Cook, S 2008, The essential guide to employee engagement : better business performance through staff satisfaction, London Philadelphia, Kogan Page Gordon, R 2010, Dispersed Leadership: Exploring the Impacts of Antecedent Forms of Power Using a Communicative Framework, Management Communication Quarterly, vol. 24, no. 2, pp. 260-287 Gruman, J.A and Saks, A.M 2011, Performance management and employee engagement, Human Resource Management Review, vol. 21, no. 2, pp.123-136. Macky, K and Boxall, P 2007, The Relationship between “High-Performance Work Practices and Employee Attitudes: An Investigation of Addictive and Interaction Efforts, Journal of Human Resource Management, vol. 18, no. 4, pp. 537-567. Markos, S. and Sridevi, M 2010, Employee Engagement. The Key to Improving Performance, International Journal of Business and Management, vol. 5, no. 12, .p.89-90. Maxwell, J 2013, 5 levels of leadership : proven steps to maximise your potential, Hodder & Stoughton Ltd. Pentareddy, S. and L. Suganthi 2015, Building affective commitment through job characteristics, leadership and empowerment, Journal of Management & Organization, vol. 21, no. 3, pp 307-320 Rice, C & Marlow, F 2012, The engagement equation leadership strategies for an inspired workforce, Hoboken, N.J: Wiley. Truss, C., Delbridge, R., Alfes, K., Shantz, A. & Soane, E 2013, Employee engagement in theory and practice, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon New York, NY: Routledge. William, K 2010, ‘The essence of engagement: lessons from the field’ in Simon Albrecht (ed) 2010, Handbook of Employee Engagement: Perspectives, Issues, Research and Practice, Edward Elgar Publishing. Read More