1.
www.zenithctc.co.uk
@ZenithCTC
Dr Sharon Xuereb
Employee
Engagement:
What, Why, How

2.
What is employee
engagement?

3.
Employee engagement?

4.
What is employee engagement?
 Vigour - The physical aspect.
 Energy, resilience, effort
 Dedication - The emotional aspect.
 Enthusiasm, inspiration, pride
 Absorption - The cognitive aspect.
 Concentration, being engrossed in what you do

5.
So what is EE? – Based on Kahn’s work
 3 components:
 Psychological meaningfulness
 Psychological safety
 Psychological availability

6.
Developing EE:
Psychological meaningfulness
Variety
Job
challenge
Reward and
recognition
Opportunities
for
development
Feedback

7.
Psychological safety
 Org justice
 Job security
 Social support
 Workplace climate
 Boss employee relationship
 Transformational leadership

8.
Psychological availability
 Role overload
 Family-work conflict
 Resource inadequacies
 Dispositions
 Personal resources
 Time urgency
 Off-work recovery

9.
Is this possible?
 Organisations will have limited control over
some of these points, e.g. off-work recovery.
 Therefore…
 Do the best you can with those you have
control over, e.g. Flexible working conditions to
avoid work-family conflict; Considering current
personalities in a team when hiring a new team
member.

10.
Why do we need employee
engagement?

11.
Increased discretionary effort

12.
Other benefits of engagement
(CIPD, 2010)
 Engaged employees:
 Perform better.
 Are more innovative.
 Want to stay with the company.
 Enjoy better personal well-being.
 Perceive their workload as more sustainable.

13.
How do you develop
employee engagement?

14.
Killing employee engagement
 No autonomy
 ‘This is how we have always done it’
 Lack of clear strategy
 Lack of challenging goals
 Negative personali-
ties or dynamics
 No career prog-
ression

15.
The current picture
 A CIPD report (2010) found that:
 Only 8% are strongly engaged.
 The majority are moderately engaged.
 Previous UK reports found up to 17% of workers
disengaged.
 Men are less engaged than women.
 Younger workers are less engaged than older workers.
 Those on less flexible contracts are less engaged than
others on flexible contracts.
 Non-managers are less engaged than managers.
 Most employees have negative views about their
organisation’s HR policies and practices.

16.
EE
Excellent
managers
Vision
Job
crafting

17.
Excellent managers
 Does an excellent accountant, engineer, therapist …
make an excellent manager?
 People skills: A leader who inspires others, is a good
role model, is approachable, makes staff want to do
more.
 Team manager: Brings team together to work towards
the same goal.
 Problem management: Whether related to goals or
challenging behaviour from employees.
 Clear strategy and vision: Taking on board staff
opinions and concerns, and communicating back.

18.
How to achieve this?
 Formal training.
 Peer support amongst managers.
 Coaching and mentoring: More intensive in
preparation of the role and towards the
beginning.
 Proactive and two-way communication with
their own managers.

19.
Job crafting
 Do-it-yourself job descriptions … within limits.
 Altering task boundaries: Doing more or fewer tasks,
or doing them differently.
 Altering relationships, e.g. resdesigning the job to
increase or decrease interactions with colleagues or
clients.
 Changing perception, e.g. an administrator who is
considering retraining as a counsellor could see his
job as a way to help colleagues when they are
struggling.

20.
Vision
 The current narrative of the organisation.
 What employees say about the organisation when
with their friends/family.
 Saving money?
 Doing more for less?
 Offering more quantity at the expense of quality?
 Surviving
 How do you communicate it?

21.
Next step …

22.
What does this mean for you?
 What is EE like in your organisation?
 What about in specific teams?
 What are you doing about this?
 How we can help:
 One-to-one coaching, including over Skype.
 Training, e.g. Coaching skills for managers,
Managing staff with challenging behaviour.

23.
We can particularly help …
 Teams not achieving their goals.
 Teams/staff who have limited motivation.
 Managers who waste time firefighting.