--By Amit Sharma

 

Imagine that you are a line manager of a very young guy in your IT department who has been time and again complaining of having to work even during holidays. You thought that the introduction of overtime allowance that the company introduced since last three months will address the issues raised by the IT staff. He, however, has been very ‘hard working’ and you can see him very ‘committed’ while at work. He is always interested to learn the new systems and comes forward to volunteer whenever a new technology is being tested. You consider him a very committed employee until one fine morning he comes in and submits his resignation letter only to tell you that he has joined a competitor who has just brought the same ‘technology’ your company had been using since last six months. And, this guy was quite interested to learn this technology and had fairly mastered the new system. After he leaves, you don’t have an immediate replacement and this will hamper your customer support service. You had thought this employee was committed!

 

Then you have a branch manager at Biratnagar who is considered to be a very god sales staff. He manages a team of 10 people and most of these people are quite productive. However, one thing that really worries the management is the turnover in the branch. When you analyse the exit interview reports, you can clearly see that the branch manager is not a very good team player. His subordinates are quite dissatisfied with the branch manager’s behaviour. When you talk to these employees informally, they point out the weaknesses in the manager like he often scolds them, even for small mistakes, in front of the customers. Strangely, the branch managers used to report positive things about these employees and would come strong when recommending rewards and recognition to his subordinates. You thought his subordinates were very lucky to have a supervisor like him. You try to counsel the branch manager but things wouldn’t improve and you cannot let go the branch manager because of his high sales achievement. You had earlier assumed that the loyal staff wouldn’t leave your reputed company even if they had some ‘petty’ issues with their supervisor.

 

And, the third employee who has worked with you for last 5 years at your customer service department has been very vocal about how good she feels about your company. She is a very good at handling customers and has been receiving very good ratings in her performance appraisals. However, one thing you don’t understand is that her co-workers have been struggling with their performance. Your rational thinking is that the other people would learn from her or even she should be aware of the lower quality of work her team members perform. You once talk to her informally on the issue and seek her advice on what can be done to improve their performance. She, however, doesn’t want to be involved in ‘improving’ their performance. She says that’s not her job. You used to think that she was quite committed to the company and would go ‘that extra mile’ to improve her co-workers. You were wrong.

 

So, what is missing in the employees you thought were committed? You realise that some visible aspects of commitment do not bind them with your company. These people were not engaged with your company!

 

From Commitment to Engagement

Employee commitment has different dimensions and absence of one dimension will not make your employee committed in real sense. Basically, it has three aspects: Emotional Commitment (Feeling), Cognitive Commitment (Thinking) and Behavioural Commitment (Doing).

 

When we have all three dimensions of the employee commitment, we can say that the employees are engaged with the organisation. Thus, by using the term employee engagement, we will be covering the employee commitment in its holistic form.

 

As illustrated in the three staff issues in the beginning, presence of only one dimension doesn’t work. As in the first case, employees can be engaged with their job (Job Engagement) but may not be engaged with their organisation (Organisational Engagement). Similarly, some employees may be emotionally committed because of the reputation of the organisation (a good example might be Tribhuvan University itself) but only emotional commitment does not work.

 

The third case was that of behavioural commitment. Engaged employees not only give their best productivity, but also ‘go extra mile’ to improve the quality of work of their co-workers even if their role doesn’t demand such kind of responsibilities. Such employees not only feel and think for the organisation, their action (doing) are aimed towards the betterment of the organisation.

 

What Organisational factors affect the engagement level of the employee?

Various factors affect employee engagement. In addition to understanding how engaged our employees are we must also know what actions will be most effective in increasing their engagement.

 

Many research and consulting firms have tried to work out a model representing engagement drivers. One such simple and well known model is that of AON Hewitt’s which has identified 21 drivers, shown in the following diagram, known as “Engagement Drivers,” that can potentially drive people’s engagement.

 

Is there any link between employee engagement and organisational performance?

The general philosophy of employee engagement is that engaged employees contribute more, help in creating positive work environment, stay with the organisation longer and have higher commitment to the quality. These ‘traits’ of the engaged employees leads to increased customer satisfaction and which ultimately helps in achieving business outcomes.

 

Many researches have shown relationship between employee engagement and financial performance of the organisations. Internationally known consulting firms like Gallup and Aon Hewitt have long history of measuring employee engagement and its effects especially in business organisations. Aon Hewitt uses a term called “Engage-O-Meter” for showing the engagement level and the organisational performance.

 

In a research done by Aon Hewitt, covering data from 2008-2010, it was found out that organisations with high levels of engagement (65% or greater) continue to outperform the total stock market index and posted total shareholder returns 22% higher than average in 2010. On the other hand, companies with low engagement (45% or less) had a total shareholder return that was 28% lower than the average. As there was a global recession during that period, the correlation was still valid in times of financial crisis.

 

Engagement Level in Nepali Organisations

Though we haven’t heard much of such scientific research engagement done in the Nepali organisations, some of the organisations conduct annual engagement survey of their employees and the organisational climate surveys and the results of these surveys are only for internal consumption.

 

Officially, Standard Chartered Bank (SCB) group annually conducts an engagement survey in association with Gallup. Thus, the SCB Nepal, as a part of the group, has been conducting the annual survey. However, one more bank uses the same survey questionnaire but uses its own resources to conduct the survey and analyse the results. Some multinational companies like Coca Cola(Bottlers Nepal) use employee surveys prescribed by their parent company.

 

This paper will present the key summary of three years data from the engagement survey conducted in one of the bank in Nepal and will try to see if there is any relationship with the financial performance of the same bank during the period.

 

The Measurement Tool-Engagement Survey

Amongst various surveys used worldwide, the Q12 (later Q12+1) survey used by Gallup is one of the most popular in corporate world.

 

The survey used following 12 standard statements covering different engagement hierarchy and 1 question on measuring the satisfaction index:

1. I know what is expected of me at work.

2. I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right.

3. At work I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day.

4. In the last 7 days I have received recognition or praise for doing good work.

5. My supervisor or someone at work seems to care about me as a person.

6. There is someone at work who encourages my development.

7. At work, my opinions seem to count.

8. The mission or purpose of my company makes me feel my work is important.

9. My associates or fellow employees are committed to doing quality work.

10. I have a best friend at work.

11. In the last six months someone at work talked to me about my “progress”.

12. This last year I have had opportunities at work to learn and grow.

13. How satisfied are you with your Company as a place to work?

 

The statements mainly cover four aspects of engagement like Basic needs, Management Support, Team work and Growth.

 

Measurement of engagement in a Nepali organisation

The organisation (name withheld due to confidentiality reason) is an 11 year old entity and has been using the Gallup questionnaire since 2010. The response from three year data has been summarised in the table below. For the purpose of simplicity, only responses “Strongly agree” and “somewhat agree” are considered to be positive response. The responses are expressed in terms of percentage.

 

Relationship between engagement and performance

Though we can see some relations between the engagement level and the organisational performance, we cannot have a mathematical expression on these indicators. Further research on this area will be helpful for both corporate sectors and academic institutions in Nepal.

 

(Sharma is the Head of the Human Resource Department of Janata Bank Nepal Ltd.)