This is mainly a report by HR manager to the Putteridge company management on the issues facing by the company and remedies to erase those issues. A case scenario is given here of Putteridge solution which faces employee absence and grievances after they cut the financial rewards providing to them due to a financial crisis. Management failed to impress or motivate employees through other methods and unaware of the proper HR strategies to implement to increase the commitment level of employees. Here in this report I studies the issues and found out the main cause of the issue is low employee engagement level. I have done a brief literature review of employee engagement, made a report of the issues facing by Putteridge, and suggested proper HR strategies that can be implemented in the company to improve the employee engagement, with the issues which may be occurred while implementing new strategies. The company was motivating employees only through financial rewards which was inappropriate and employees can be motivated through non-financial rewards like recognition, promotion, career development and other benefits. There is a need to train managers also to handle such situation. Let us go more deep in to the report.
LITERATURE REVIEW
Employee engagement is becoming a most talking subject in the business world as every organisation and its management realized employee engagement is directly linked with performance of employees and organisation and business outcomes. So every management seeks for ways to increase the employee engagement in their organisation and most of them are not well aware of how to do it. There are no much journals or literature about the employee engagement and it concludes with rewards like financial rewards. Academic researchers and organisational practitioners have their definitions and reasons to define it. But employee engagement in reality is the backbone of every business process. There is much confusion about the definition and measurement of employee engagement. There is no specific written definition or rule for employee engagement as it varies with organisation, management, culture, language, people, and type of business and so on. A pioneer in the field of employee engagement research, Kahn (1990), stated EE as the result of complete dedication and participation in favour of company and proves to what extent employees can be committed to their work. When employees are fully committed to their work physically, emotionally and cognitively, then it can be said employees are engaged. Cognitive deals with employees' beliefs about their management, organisation and work. Emotional aspect deals with employees' attitude towards work, management and organisation. And finally physical aspect deals with the effort the employees take to accomplish their tasks to achieve the objectives. It has been supported by CIPD factsheet of 2009.
It is the emotional and intellectual commitment of employees with their organisation and their drive to use the resources in the organisation for the betterment of the business. (Bratton &Gold, 2007).Same has said by Baumruk (2004), Richman (2006) and Shaw (2005). Employee engagement is a combination of commitment to the organisation and the values and the emotional willingness to work with fellow employees. It is a result of motivation and more than a job satisfaction (CIPD, 2007).
Institute of Employment Studies (IES) defined EE similarly as a positive attitude possessed by the employees towards the organisation they work and its values. An employee can be said as engaged when he or she is aware of the business process, works with co-workers as a team to improve job performance for the betterment of organisational performance and profitability. It is a two way complimentary relationship between the employer and employees which result in the development of employee engagement.
Researchers like Macey and Schnieder (2009) stated EE has two constituents like:
Positive or negative attitude of engagement towards the work and the organisation
The attitude and behaviour shows while doing a job to achieve organisational objective and success.
IES (2004) has specified the characteristics of employee who are engaged in the work and organisation are:
Believes in organisation
Works to improve better
Understands the business context in bigger point of view
Respects the attitude and feelings of co-workers and willing to help others
Ready to go extra mile and take risks
Saks(2006) have stated there is a significant difference between work engagement and organisational engagement and latter is the way stronger predictor of all the outcomes. Leiter and Bakker (2012) stated that response of employee to the policies, practices and structure of organisation have impact on the potential of employee to experience engagement.
Three components of employee engagement (Truss, 2006) are
Feeling well informed by the employees
Manager commitment towards the employee and organisational performance
Opportunities for upward feedback
Employee engagement model
Based on various researches which throw light into the relation between behaviour of employees and business performance, Aon Hewitt has developed an employee engagement model which has three behaviourial components- say, stay and strive. It indicates what employees want to do, what they actually do and actions taken to improve the performance of organisation.
An employee can be sais engaged if he express the behaviour of:
Say- always have a positive opinion about the organisation they work and share it with co-workers, potential employees and customers.
Stay- possess a desire to be a member of the organisation
Strive- exerting and showing extra effort and engage in work they do that result in the success of the organisation they work.
Drivers of employee engagement
It is evident that committed employees work better. The strongest feeling of commitment develops as a result of the feeling the employee get from the work and organisation as valued and involved in the business process like in (CIPD, 2009) :
Giving opportunity in decision making process of management
When management value the opinions, ideas and feelings of employees and act accordingly.
The career opportunities employees get from their work
Management's concern over employees' welfare and health and safety.
Job satisfaction from their work
Measuring employee engagement
Employee engagement can be measured by HR managers through numerous measures developed by researchers. Employee engagement can be measured on the basis of trust and value mostly through attitude surveys, there are numerous measures developed by many HR consultancies and survey centres. Researchers like Dily Robinson of IES has mentioned it can be measured mainly through attitude surveys. It is described in different circumstances with the company, measures engagement that are made in a way that goes in hand with the organisation where it is to be measured. (Rivenbank, 2010).
One common survey method is Gallup Q12 designed to measure the EE, employees' feelings about employer and measures to recognise their efforts. This can be used at any point of time at work to measure the engagement level (Golding, 2007). This survey is useful to management as it provides the opportunity to benchmark against others working in their sector and compare the level of engagement. It can be measured as three categories :
Non-engaged- These type of employees have no passion for work, they just focus on to complete the task give to them and are not concerned about the goals of the organisation. They are not a threat for the organisation's success up to an extent.
Dis-engaged - These types of employees are unhappy and unwilling to do their work. And they get demotivated when their co-workers achieve their goals. They try to detract other works from their task.
Engaged employees- This type of employees work with full commitment and passion enthusiastically in way to meet the objectives and goals of both work and organisation. They always think about the way to do the work more effectively to meet the goals and what is expected from them by the management. They contribute to the organisation success. These kinds of employees are assets of any organisation as they are loyal to the organisation they work. Companies try to sustain these employees with them.
(Smith & Marwick, 2009)
According to Gallup, employee engagement is the systematic approach to reduce and increase the variance in engagement in employees for the benefit of organisation. Organisation can measure and evaluate the engagement level of employees with the organisation by measuring a few general factor tools like customer satisfaction, staff survey, staff turnover, retention. Through the experience of 12 years, Gallup has introduced 12 items to measure the employee engagement.
Buckingham and Coffman (1998) has referred to the Gallup survey as 12 question survey as these 12 questions are shortlisted after conducting many quantitative and qualitative research in various industries and organisation among employees. These cannot be considered as the guideline to determine the engagement level, but to understand the behaviour and attitude of employees as employee engagement cannot be regarded as the academic concept, but it is a practice in the organisation to gain better performance. Coffman and Gonzalez-Molina (2002) considered these questions as 'conditions', while Harter, et al. (2002) use the 13 question survey with one extra overall job satisfaction level and called the survey as Gallup workplace audit (GWA).
After conducting more than 80,000 in depth and focus interviews in over 400 countries, Gallup organisation have come up with this 12 question survey that measures the strength of a work place. The twelve questions in the Gallup survey of employee engagement are:
Do I know what is expected of me at work?
Do I have the materials and equipments I need to do my work right?
At work, do I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day?
In the last seven days, have I received recognition or praise for doing good work?
Does my supervisor, or someone at work , seem to care about me as a person?
Is there someone at work who encourages my development?
At work, do my opinions seem to count?
Does the mission/purpose of my company make me feel my job is important?
Are my co-workers committed to doing quality work?
Do I have a best friend at work?
In the last six months, has someone at work talked to me about my progress?
This last year, have I had opportunities at work to learn and grow?
(Buckingham and Coffman, Simon and Schuster, 1999)
Importance of Employee engagement in Organisation
What is the importance of employee engagement in an organisation and why do we need to measure it? It is significant to have a high level employee engagement in every organisation in order to achieve high performance of employee that leads to high productivity and profitability in the organisation. Schmidt, Harter and Hayes (2002) stated that it is necessary as it increase the motivational level of employees that results in better performance of employees. It also saves the cost and time of new recruitment to achieve the goal and meet the target if the employees are efficient enough to the work well. To have high organisational commitment and that makes every employee to work for the betterment of the organisation. One employee can motivate another to do the work well and to work as a team. And through employee engagement, they can create a friendly and positive work environment in the organisation. In short, low engagement level can also affect the customer satisfaction level, high employee turnover and absenteeism.
PART 2
Issues and HR Strategies in Putteridge solutions- Situational Analysis
From the case scenario, it is evident that a Putteridge solution is facing a problem of employee retention. And from the above literature review we can see that employees in the putteridge fall under the level of non-engaged employees (CIPD, 2006). Since the management has stopped the financial rewards to them due to the low market and profit, employees have started showing low engagement and commitment level with the work and organisation. This has happened because the management till date was not concerned with the employee welfare or retention program as they were motivating them only through extrinsic rewards like pay. When the company is not able to give them the same financial as in past times, management failed to focus on the alternate option to motivate them. As a result employees started working with less enthusiasm and leads to sick absenteeism and grievance which affects the productivity.
The main issues in the Putteridge are:
Bonus- Company mainly focuses on giving annual and regular bonus on living expense to all employees depends on the profitability of the company. Company is trying to motivate its employees through this external financial reward. This is the same case with teams also. When the teams perform well, management rewards them by giving collective bonus to all its members. In this case, sometimes the real performer in the team is going unnoticed and without much appreciation. Company is paying annual bonus as per the rule in UK employment law that asks a company to pay the share of its profit to its employees as bonus on the basis of number of working days of preceding year (Companies, 2010).
Financial rewards- Putteridge focuses only on the extrinsic financial rewards than the other rewards which are intrinsic that have more effect on employee engagement and performance. Company pay them according to their living expense and satisfied the employees. Everything was fine until the company faces financial problem and loss in market share due to the poor economy. The company was never prepared to face this situation and stopped all financial rewards and bonus to employees, so employees became less satisfied and became less enthusiastic at work and started being absent and showing grievance. Instead of giving both financial and non financial rewards as suggested by IES, company focused only on the financial rewards which resulted in the issue.
Employee training- Company relied on external sources to train and develop their employees and technical training was mainly depended on the competitor's strategy. Company did not focus on giving on the job training or developing their line managers to make capable enough to train the employees. There is a lot of cost implication involved in this which could have saved by proper methods. Moreover, rather than developing employees in proper way, company was focused on the outcomes.
Employee grievance- the main cause of employee grievance is the cut in annual pay and bonus due to recession. And company did not focus on motivating employees through proper reward strategy and try to retain them through other motivating factors like recognition, appreciation, career development, job enrichment and other benefits.
Here we discuss and suggest the better HR strategies Putteridge can adopted to face and solve these issues at present and in future. The main factors Putteridge should focus on are:
Increase the employee engagement level and employee relations in the organisation
Re-consider and re-design the reward strategies of the company which can include both financial and non-financial rewards.
HR Practices and strategies to improve the employee engagement in the Putteridge.
It is important to implement the HR strategies and practices in the company that management never tried to do and lack the knowledge of its effects on the organisational performance. To implement these strategies, it requires the participation of three groups such as workers and organisation, employers, managers and organisation, then government and agencies concerned with work. These strategies deal with the rewards, communication in the organisation, work life balance, employee development programs, employee welfare/grievance control strategy and so on.
1. Rewards and Recognition strategy
2. Training and development program
3. Employee voice
4. Work life balance
5. Employee welfare/ grievance control
6. Training the leaders (managers)
7. Communication in the organisation
Rewards and Recognition strategy
Putteridge was giving good financial rewards to the employees though bonus, cost of living pay and employees were also satisfied and completely engaged in the work and organisation. But when a financial crisis came, company could not afford to continue their financial rewards in the same way and they had to do it. Instead of continuing the rewards through some alternative method, company management was unable to do it and unaware of other methods. They were not prepared of it. So here as a HR manager, I would like to suggest the company management to adopt and follow different reward and recognition strategies. So even if the company is running on high profit, it should limit the financial rewards giving to employees as the motivational factor and this would help in saving more money during a financial crisis. Company management should focus more on the intrinsic rewards like job enrichment, job empowerment, training and development, recognition, promotions (NGFL, 2008)
Intrinsic reward focuses more on appreciating employees on their work. This can be done by recognizing and giving titles or awards like 'employee of the week', 'employee of the month', team of the month and company can also give food, health, travel, holiday and family benefits to the employees. This will motivate the employees and increase the commitment level and loyalty of employees to the organisation. After a regular period, promotions can also be given to the experienced and skilled employees. If they get career development in their profession, employees will have more commitment and passion to their work and company. Job enrichment is another form of rewards. When they employees feel like they are given more responsibilities and tasks because of their recognized abilities they feel motivated and work efficiently.
Training and development program
Another way to motivate employees can be done through giving career developing opportunities by developing skills their and knowledge. Since the company has around 300 employees working in technical section there is a need for career development program which helps in retaining employees in the organisation. Their skills and knowledge can be updated by proper and regular training and coaching. It can be done through off the job, on the job training, class room training, workshops and can be given by technical experts in the company, HR managers and head of departments (Armstrong, 2009). Since Putteridge is facing financial crisis, management sop hiring external trainers to the employees. Since the company decided to stop new recruit, they don't need to train new employees and it will further reduce the training cost. Management should arrange this and do this periodically irrespective of what competitors do. Training should also be given on health and safety measures periodically to the employees. By doing so organisation can achieve competitive advantage and increase the employee engagement to retain the employees. To do this proper planning, designing, execution should be done by the management (Dessler, 2004).
Employee voice
Employee voice is a new concept in the HR management and is an effective method to motivate and retain employees. This is a kind of communication in the organisation. When employees feel like they have an equal opportunity and authority to express their feelings and opinions and will be heard by higher authority and give proper response, they will get a trust on the organisation and management that they focus on the well being of employees (Wilkinson and Adrien, 2004). The freedom to express their opinion and freedom to speak will increase the employee engagement level positively and engage more deeply in the work and give effective results. Employees can express their voice mainly in three ways:
Joint consultation- this happens during a regular meeting with employer and employee or manager and employee for discussing the pay, knowledge, expertise and the work related matter of general interest (Allen, 2009). During joint consultation, employees can express the reason behind their grievances and can clear all the confusions on the company strategies and laws. This will motivate them to work well. This can be done in every department under the head of departments every month.
Attitude survey
This is an opportunity for employers to question and discuss the problems, opinions with employees in face to face interviews. The questions will be based on the work covering all the strengths and weaknesses of the organisation and prepares by HR experts in the organisation. (Marchington et al, 2001). Through when they attitude and feelings of employees about the work and organisation understood, management can take necessary actions to improve the employee engagement. This survey method is an opportunity for employees to express their view points about the weaknesses. This should be done regularly and very often in a year to analyse the work environment and HR practices of the organisation and to take necessary actions to improve the areas that need change to increase the employee engagement (McLeod &Clarke, 2010).
Suggestion method
HR department in the organisation can place suggestion or complaint box in various areas of the work place as sometime employees may not be open enough to express their opinions and feelings. This can be checked and reviewed by HR experts and necessary actions can be taken in weak areas. (Armstrong, 2009).
Work life balance
Employees should have flexible work life in between to ensure the high involvement of employees. A flexible work life gives employees to give more productivity than a restricted a work life, especially for the technicians. This gives a flexible and tension free balance between work and personal life. If an employee is late at work for one day, he should be given the extra one hour to work to compensate the hour he lost, there by management can also gain by it by covering the loss. Employees can also cover the work hours without losing the pay. So employees in the Putteridge should be given regular leave, paid leave, and benefits for the family of employees like health insurance, personal insurance at work, counselling, child benefits which make the employee engagement and performance better through the commitment of employees at work.
Employee grievance control
Management can establish a grievance control department to manage a grievance process by handling the complaints about the employees in a very careful and effective way. The purpose of this department should be erasing the problems of employees regarding the work and management activities and improve their work performance and commitment level. When the employees feel that management cares for their feelings and problems employees feel comfortable and it reduces absent and attrition rate.
Training the leaders
Training given to managers who are the leaders is equally necessary as the training given to employees. Managers should also be trained by higher authority especially in HR properly to understand and deal with the employees. This helps the managers to understand the attitude of employees and work accordingly. The employee attitude, attrition, retention, engagement are depend on the efficiency of a manager (Vance, 2006). An efficient manager can make their employees understand about the organisation, its problems during difficult times, need for employees to have a commitment level with the organisation at all times and can make the employees to engage in the work with 100% effort.
Communication in the organisation
A proper communication in the organisation is needed for the better work environment. It should be a two way process between the management and employees in a horizontal hierarchical way (Baumruk, 2009). Internal communication is important to erase the confusion and problems in the organisation and at work by employees. It also helps the employees to feel more empowered as they are given chances to express their opinions and feelings. Management can ask employees or participate in decision making process. It can be done either through direct face to face periodical meeting between employees and management in Putteridge or through the technical levels like video conference, emails as Putteridge is capable to do it and also through team meeting, newsletters, and departmental meetings.
Issues in implementing HR strategies
It is not easy to implement new strategy or a change an existing one in an organisation. Putteridge should make its employees and leaders understand the need for change and prepare them to accept the change. As per the Kurt Lewin model, company can refer the change management model that consists of freezing, change and unfreezing levels. Change should be regular process and need for an organisation for the betterment of its performance.
WHO? - one problem can be who will implement, monitor and execute the change? A management or HR manager cannot do it without the help of its employees or supervisors. So there should create a sense of responsibility among every employee in the organisation and make them believe change is needed and implementing new strategies are their concern and for their benefits. Management can do this in decision making process which can also make the employees to involve in the meeting. A regular monitoring is also need after implementing the process. This should be done by line managers, supervisor, HR managers and the employees themselves to monitors and check their work capacity and level and should compete with themselves and co-workers.
Reward strategy- when replacing existing or implementing new reward strategy, employees many feel discomfort and dissatisfaction. Managers should talk to them and make them understand the need for the change in reward strategy due to the financial situation of the company. One cannot implement a new strategy on a fine day. This can be done only with the help and support of employees as well. If there is any negotiation process is needed with the employees, it should also be done and make the employees believe rewards and changes are for the employees' benefits and should end up with a win-win situation.
Training leaders- Training is needed for both leaders and employees, but the cost of giving training is an issue during the financial crisis of the company. but whatever expenditure the company has on training, it is beneficial for company itself and it will result in the better productivity and profitability of the organisation. To cut the cost of training, company can stop hiring external trainers, prepare and guide internal managers and technical experts to give training to their employees. Training giving to leaders can cause ego problem among the managers but need to make them realise the need for it and why the company is doing it. But they should be trained even to face a problematic situation and crisis in the management among employees and how to handle it properly. The result they focus is high employee engagement level and better productivity.
Conclusion
Employee engagement is an employee's attitude, behaviour and commitment level at work in a organisation. Every organisation needs employee with high performance and productivity, but to achieve that it is not easy. It is a give and take policy. When the management gives something to satisfy employees, they get what they want from an employee. For that proper HR strategies and policies should be implemented in an organisation to motivate the employees. Employees cannot be motivated only through financial rewards. In the case study given here, this was the problem faced by Putteridge solutions. They were motivating the employees through financial rewards and when a financial crisis occurred in the company and no longer able to give the same financial rewards to them, company started facing low commitment level from employees. In this report as a HR manager, I suggested the proper HR strategies that can be implemented in the company after studying the issues facing by company, to improve the employee engagement level. I have done a brief literature review of employee engagement and based on that I suggested the HR and reward strategies and policies that can result in better organisational performance. A management cannot work alone without the help of its employees and in every step they take, every change they make, a management needs the support of it employees as they are the assets of the organisation.
Cost and Time implication of the proposed strategies
NO
STRATEGY
BY WHO
COST implication
TIME implication
1
Need to have a meeting with all employees with management to solve the issues
Initiated by HR manager
Nil
1 to 5 days
2
Training for employees in both technical and HR levels
By the experts in the company
No cost exactly as it will be given by the experts in the company itself as it is a part of their job.
From 1 week to 2 months depends on the area
3
Training for leaders
By top management
Nil as it is inside the company by the management
From 2 days to 2 weeks as they are experienced and no need to spend more time on training
4.
Employee grievance control
By line managers and supervisors
Nil
Periodical meeting, once in every week.
5.
Communication in the organisational structure
Between management and employees
Nil
During every regular meeting, once in a month
6.
Intrinsic reward like appreciation to employees and teams
By managers
Nil
After every performance appraisal
7.
Intrinsic reward like job enrichment
By line manager
Nil
After every 3 months
8.
Promotion
By manager
Nil
Depends on the experience, skills, seniority
