Employee engagement is one of the top priorities of companies these days.

There is a greater improvement in performance reported by those employees who have been appreciated by their managers as opposed to those who are not. So, what is employee engagement? Employee engagement is the state of mind of employees which contributes to higher efforts in the workplace in sync with the organisation’s growth.

Statistics are also available to prove this fact. 83% of workers who got appreciated for their performance reported a favourable experience, as compared to 38% of employees who didn’t. Similarly, 80% of employees who got feedback also reported a favourable experience in comparison to 41% who didn’t. There are 4 components of employee engagement, enabling, energy, empowerment and encouragement.

There has to be engagement in an organisation by employees which implies that the companies provide enabling experience to en employee. This kind of effort by a company yields a lot of positive results. It means helping the employees to do their jobs and removing all the obstacles in their way. Employees might be facing some impediments at work. For example, they might want bigger monitors to do their jobs. This can be done by giving them faster approvals for such kind of hardware purchases. Another example is that an employee might be facing problem because he has to take care of his old parent. So, he has to be provided with a work schedule which can help him in doing so.

The second component of building engagement is energy. Companies have to focus on the energy levels of employees. The energy levels don’t pertain physical energy only. There are other types of energies also. Schartz says that the other energy levels are emotional energy, mental energy and spiritual energy. Emotional energy refers to the mental well being of a person, which can be negative or positive. Negative and positive are the two extremes of this kind of energy.

Mental energy refers to how well can one person concentrate on something. Spiritual energy comes from the knowledge that anything done by us is really important.
Companies can improve such energy levels by making sure that there is positivity in the working environment. On the other and, employees can be motivated to have the same purpose and values as the company.

Empowerment is the third way of building engagement with the employees. Empowerment is putting trust in an employee. It makes sure that the employee can achieve results on his own without taking any help from the manager. When people are given the power to take decisions, without asking someone, they become accountable. Since employees know that they are accountable for something, they are likely to work more efficiently.

Encouragement is also a way of getting engaged with employees. This implies that there should be gratitude expressed to them for something that they have done well. When employees are recognised for their efforts, the employees can get confidence to do well even in stressful situations. Hence, encouragement means providing courage to employees to handle negative situations.

So, this is how companies can increase employee engagement.