Essay On Employee Engagement: Methods, Consequences, And Impact Evaluation In Frishco.

1: Different Methods of Engagement of Labours

1. Analyse the different ways or methods in which Frishco’s HR department engages its employees.
2. Critically discuss the  potential consequences of an organisations’ inability in addressing employee engagement issues including how it would affect their motivation.
3. Evaluate which methods you feel would create the most impact in achieving the highest level of employee engagement within Frishco.

Frishco is a recognised brand all over the world. Its reputation is instilled through its brand value. This company is operating over 160 years. Recently Quebec Holdings has acquired Frishco. Employees of this company are vital to them. The employees interact with the stakeholders in order to run day-to-day business. This company has identified the importance of employees in achieving success of the business. The Human Resource Department of this company has played important role in managing the employees. They recruit the workers; train them to adjust in the organizational culture. HR department also monitor the performance and offer opportunities to the employees in order to develop their career in the existing company. A business is said to be benefitted by involving the employees in the decision making process. This is known as employee participation and engagement (Crawford et al. 2014). In this report, the task is to analyse the different methods of Frishco in which it engages its employees. It will also discuss consequences if an organization is unable to engage its employees. In addition to this, the paper will evaluate which methods can create major impact in achieving high employee engagement level.

In order to reduce the employee turnover rate, the first way is to find out the employee’s perception about the working at Frishco. Hence, the company has conducted an employee survey.

By making the organizational structure flatter, i.e. by reducing too many levels of hierarchy, Frishco has made its employees taking more responsibilities. This has enabled the job enrichment. Moreover, by offering opportunities to an employee to take responsibility will increase their job satisfaction. Creating business vision is another approach of engaging the employers to achieve some certain goals. Change in the leadership approach can also increase the employee engagement. When the senior management creates vision, the ground level employees actually undertake leadership responsibility. Hence, role of leadership transforms from top level to personal level and everyone is engaged with accomplishing the vision.

Frishco informs its employees about day-to-day operational plans that directly affect their work. Improved communication of this company will enable the employers to know the strategies of the firm. Through proper communication, employees will be aware of the aims and direction of the business. Improved communication will enable them to inform management about their views regarding the adopted strategies (Hodge and Rainey 2014). This will encourage the workers of the company to take part actively.

2: Consequences of Labour Disengagement

Through cultural change, the people will be engaged in a better way. Culture is considered as DNA of an organization. The engagement method of the managers and employees are: publishing internal employee magazine; conducting morning briefing; using intranet; arranging employee forum on a quarterly basis and so on. The popular and creative magazine of Frishco, named “Your Frishco” publishes interviews with the key people of the company that helps to communicate with the workers. The company informs the shop-floor teams about the latest sales statistics and motivates them improve their performance at morning meeting. Through sharing of information the employees can select which aspect they will focus.

The HR Department of Frishco encourages the engagement of the employees and development of its employees. This involves spotting the talent who can make significant contribution to Frishco. The company recognizes the enthusiasm of an individual for a given role. Even if the employee is unsure about his/ her capability, the company nudges that person in the right direction. The experienced employees are kept engaged by mentoring and coaching new or less experienced people as an advisor. The line managers encourage the employees by communicating targets and advice in order to make them taking active participation. Face-to face interaction keeps everyone active. Employees can give advice about improvements of the company and it will be more effective as communication is of one-to-one basis. Employee’s engagement will enable the HR managers to develop their skills and modify the strategies (Bal, Kooji and De Jong 2013). Frequent communication between managers and employees and involving workers into the decision making process, increases the involvement of the workers.

The company’s HR department can ensure effective engagement of the workers by committing to look after their well-being. Frishco ensures co-operation among the top level managers and ground-level staffs. This effective association and co-ordination encourages the workers at all level to contribute in the growth process of the company. Allowing workers to approach the senior managers and providing their feedback is amajor component that keep all workers engaged in the business activity (Hodge and Rainey 2014). Employee forum of Frishco enables the employees to present issues to modify the strategy. They are also encouraged to participate by offering schemes like “Bright Idea” for sharing innovative ideas to improve the overall performance of the company. The HR policies and practices are also made clear to the workers so that they can understood the culture of the company and act accordingly. The HR policies must be accessible.HR department of Frishco must offer fair pay to motivate the workers, along with other benefits.

3: Evaluation of Impactful Methods in Frishco

This company avoids dissatisfaction of the workers through offering like pay structure with performance benefits; company retaining policy; interpersonal relationship and providing job security. These are hygiene factors according to the Herzbergs. Frishco also motivates its workers by giving them proper recognition and awarding their work. Since it involves its workers, it imposes responsibility on them. These are motivational factors of Herlzberg (Yusoff, Kian and Idris 2013) .The relationship with the workers, managers are strong, and they communicate while sharing their views and thoughts. The interpersonal relationship is thus strong. Hence, according to the Maslow’s hierarchical need, the workers are motivated due to the love and belongingness (Pinder 2014). The HR mangers of the company have planned to offer performance based pay structure and high rate of bonuses. It is expected that the high pay will improve performance; high effort will lead to higher outcome of the company (Miner 2015). This follows Vroom’s expectancy theory.

Autocratic leadership approach may lead to disengagement of the labours. Since, the leaders order the employees regarding what to do; the employees do not get the opportunity to share their views. Due to this, the firm will remain unaware of the circumstances of the market, which will in turn hinder the continuous improvement process of the company. Therefore, autocratic approach leads to disengagement of the labour in the business. The employees are often not engaged in the sensitive decision- making by the top management. Negligence of workers and asking any feedback might also lead to disengagement of the workers (Hackman and Johnson 2013). The unclear and inconsistent policy of the HR department may also reduce the engagement of the employees. Disengagement arises due to the unclear and confused communication. This is because; when the communication between the managers and employees is not effective and workers hesitate to approach the senior managers; information gap takes place. The employees feel nothing good about the company as they are demoralized and put less effort into the work.

The first consequence of inability of an organization to engage its people is high employee turnover rate. Employee disengagement leads to high rate of labour turnover. High turnover rate has enormous cost to the company. This is because; firm spends huge on recruitment process. Even after recruitment, it provides training for some period, which involves huge money as well as time. If workers are not engaged in the process, then overall performance will not be improved and investment made on workers in terms of training and wage, all will be in vain (Menguc et al. 2013). In fact, it may lose huge amount that will hamper the revenue of the firm as output will be decreased. Disengagement of the employee will kill morale of the employee and they will be reluctant to perform to contribute to the company.

If employees are not engaged in the decision making process and if their feedback is not addressed properly, they will lose loyalty towards the company. If employees are not bothered about the performance of the company, then there will be gap between the employees’ experience and customers’ experience. Employees will offer high quality of services and focuses on increasing the customers’ loyalty only if they are satisfied and their views regarding the customers’ services are valued and acknowledged (Anitha 2014). If the engagement of the workers of a company is less then they will not give proper feedback and firm will fail to understand the requirement of the customers. The firm may also lose client or client may get affected due to the dissatisfaction of the employees. They do not invest time and effort in improving the customers’ satisfaction; as a result of this the company’s reputation gets hampered.

Disengaged employees have more absenteeism as they have no motivation to work. Due to their disengagement, these workers come late to the office; affecting the work-culture adversely. Their disengagement not only creates dissatisfaction but undermine the productivity of the engaged employees (Mowday, Porter and Steers 2013).Disengaged workers not only develop negative feeling but also have health problems due to anxieties and depression. The demotivated workers also influence the engaged workers by transferring negative emotions. These people also, feel unwilling to advocate the management about its product and services. They are also less innovative and less creative. Due to disengagement of the workers, unethical behaviours take place within the company (Moore et al. 2012). Disengagement of employees also has social consequences, for example, existing disengaged workers occupy the job position in the company that could have been offered to some enthusiastic labour who will make contribution to the company. However, dissatisfied workers often leave the job and this might also cause unemployment in the company (Mone and London 2014).

Involving the ground level employees in undertaking the leadership responsibility and through improving the communication between the employees and the senior management, Frishco created significant impact in achieving the employee engagement. Managers of higher hierarchy level are not directly connected to the daily business activities and do not deal with the customers directly. Moreover, even if the senior managers lead the strategies, the lower level workers execute them. Therefore, their role in executing and implementing the plan will encourage them to participate effectively (Breevaart et al. 2014). This will generate a feeling of gratitude of the workers towards the company, which will make them to take more part in the business process. Democratic leadership implies that before making a decision, employees’ feedback will be considered. This improves the morale of the workers and they will be engaged more. By transferring responsibility to every worker, the leadership responsibility is also shifted to all levels of employees. With more responsibilities, workers will remain engage in their respective role and there will be no scope for disengagement of workers (Truss et al. 2013). The workers are motivated in Frishco as this company values the feedback of the employees and considers their ideas regarding the strategic plan. This also motivates them and they put more effort in order to contribute to the production of the company.

Improving communication is another crucial tool for achieving the employee engagement. Communication keep workers updated bout the day-to-day operations and managers about the performance of the workers (Mishra, Boynton and Mishra 2014). Monitoring through effective communication will encourage the workers engaged in business activity. This is mainly because; he or she might be asked about their effort on a daily basis report. Magazine of the company enables the key people of the firm to send messages to the all workers. This communication approach motivates the workers. Improved communication also enables the employees to be focused on single aspect where they are to put effort. Through improved communication, workers can directly approach to the higher authority to provide them feedback. Moreover, Frishco also rewards unique ideas of the workers. This has encouraged the employees to take part in the decision making process.

Conclusion

The report is presented base on a given case-study of Frishco. Frishco prefers to involve the employees in the decision making process. In the above discussion, the methods adopted by the company in order to keep its employees engaged have been illustrated. The paper also critically discusses the potential consequences of disengagement of labours. In this report, it is also evaluated the most effective methods to achieve high engagement of labours. It can be concluded that, the HR department of this company has adopted many approaches to keep the workers active in work. They have taken several steps to motivate the employees so that they take active participation in the decision making process. From the discussion, it can be also concluded that disengagement of labours hinders the overall performance of the company. Disengagement increases employee dissatisfaction and thus rising labour turnover rate. Company loses its customers due to demotivated workers at service. It has been evaluated that, changing leadership and improved communication can engage the workers successfully, as employee’s morale increase when the top management is considering their views and feedbacks.

References

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