The Issue Employee Engagement that Will Be Affecting The Future of Work

The purpose of this report is to analyse the issue, employee engagement that will be affecting the future of work. It will be analysing the potential impact of employee engagement on hospitality business as employee engagement is now a trending topic for the customer-service business and also the impact on the human resource management in the hospitality industry. This report will then provide some recommendations on future strategies options that human resource managers should be considered to pursue. The term, employee engagement is now a trending topic across businesses. It has emerged as one of the issues that will be affecting the future of work. Kahn (1990) was one of the first to introduce the idea of engagement. He defined engagement as “the harnessing of organisation members’ selves to their work roles; in engagement, people employ and express themselves physically, cognitively and emotionally during role performances’. He also proposed that engaged individuals are prepared to invest significant personal resources, in the form of time and effort, to the successful completion of their task, and that engagement is at its greatest when an individual is driving ‘personal energies into physical, cognitive and emotional labours.

Therefore, employee engagement is defined as the level at which employee dedication, both emotional and rational subsist in relation to achieve the mission and vision of the organisation (Gupta, 2015). It usually involves the satisfaction of employee with their work, the extent to which people enjoy and believe in what they do for work and the perception that the manager values what they contribute to the organisation. A lot of researches has been done to investigate the relationship between employee engagement and job performance. The researches have proved that greater the engagement of the employee, the greater the employee is performing on the work.

Engaged employees are also believed to be more likely to commit to stay in the business than the disengaged employees. Today, with increasingly competitive markets, globalisation, a volatile economic climate, employee engagement has become one of the critical drivers that leads business to success, especially in for the hospitality business. The success of a hospitality business is influenced by customers’ satisfaction which therefore is important for the business to ensure that their employees are engaged and productive as there are evidences shown that employees who are engaged and committed to their work are performing better on their work. Having trained and experienced employees is easy to satisfy customers as they are experienced in providing a best experience for the customers. In order to retain these trained and experienced employees, the business should provide a satisfied and engaged workplace for the employees. The research has also stated that highly engaged employees are perform 20% better and they are 87% less likely to leave the business.

However, Employee engagement does not only have the potential to affect employee retention, productivity and loyalty, it is also a key link to the customer satisfaction, company reputation and overall stakeholder value. Business should see engagement as a profit because engaged employees are more productive which leads to a better job performance. Engaged employees are more profitable, more customer focused and more likely to commit to stay in the business. By involving them in the business, the employees will be motivated to contribute to the business’s goals and missions and this will also improve their sense of well-being (Harshitha, 2015).

According to the research, the earning per share growth rate of the organisations that have greater engagement is 2.6 times more than the organisations with little engagement. In general, when employees start to join the business, they are usually enthusiastic because the environment is new to them so they are committed and ready to be an advocate for their new employer which means that they are highly engaged. However, there is also some researches stated that the longer the employees stay with the business, the less engaged they will become.

Therefore, it is important for the business to understand the impact of employee engagement as it will affect the productivity of the business. In today’s global business environment, as employee engagement has become a critical issue that will affect the current and future business, hospitality business should be aware of the impact of employee engagement. In order to survive in this competitive market, the business should have the human resource department to set agenda for employee engagement and commitment in order to gain a competitive edge in the market.

Having a high-performing workforce is critical to survive in this competitive business environment as an engaged workplace can develop the work, increasing the profit and as well as decrease costs related to maintenance and hiring new employees. Hence, human resource plays an important role in the strategic planning as it will affect the customers, results of the business and ultimately the value of shareholder (textbook). Employee engagement is an important practice that human resource department need to implement because if the employees are not engaged in the workplace, that means that they are not committed to their work which is likely to slow down the performance. As stated, ‘objectives are more easily met when employee is engaged and more likely to fall short when they are not.’ When an employee is not engaged, it is difficult for the human resource manager to get them to help driving the business goals.

Therefore, the human resource managers need to be able to develop and implement HR strategies that support the business objectives, improve productivity and enhance employee wellbeing in this volatile business environment. Business must also invest in its human resources practices in order to engage employees and also to benefit from the engagement when the employees feel satisfied, involved, motivated to commit and contribute more to the business.

However, human resource manager should take employee engagement into account when doing the human resource activities such as planning, recruitment and selection because there is an increasing awareness on the impact of employee engagement for business which will affect the performance and success of the business. For hospitality business, people are the main resource in order to operate the business. Planning how business will meet its current and future HR needs and how people will be supported and nurtured within the business is a critical step for success. Human resource planning, also known as employment planning is the process by which an organisation attempts to ensure that it has the right number of qualified people in the right jobs at the right time. It ensures that employees with appropriate knowledge, skills and abilities are available at a specified time in the future (textbook). According to (textbook), engagement and development of high quality employees is one of the factors that affects the performance of a business.

However, HR planning could be affected by employee engagement as when an employee is not engaged in the work, the employee might decide to leave the business with or without any sign so the HR manager should make sure that every employee is engaged in their work. After the HR planning process, recruitment is then carried on. Recruitment is the process of seeking and attracting a pool of applicants from qualified candidates. A job vacancy may be filled from within or outside the business. Recruitment can be done through job posting, newspaper advertising, social networking sites and executive search (textbook). There is a correlation between employee engagement and recruitment. When the employee is engaged, there is probably no need to recruit as the engaged individuals are enthusiastic about their work and they will most likely to stay in the business whereas when the employees are not engaged in their work, they might decide to leave the business and this is when business would have to start recruiting to seek for engaged employees.

However, business can recruit engaged job applicants by using attractive messages such as challenging work assignments, a highly skilled team environment or minimal supervision to attract the job applicants. Applicants who notice and respond to it are more likely to be excited for the job they apply. Also, business could also consider to seek candidates within the business, the existing employee will be even more engaged than before being recruited for his desirable jobs whereas, if the business recruits from outside of the business when there is qualified internal employees available, there is a high chance to disengage the existing employees. Once the recruitment is done, the human resource manager has to select among the job candidates to fill the available positions.

Selection involves in choosing from the available candidates predicted to be most likely to perform successfully in the position they are applying for. Steps in the selection process include computer screening, reviewing applications, psychological testing, employment interviewing, reference checking and completing a medical examination. Based on the information gathered, a selection decision is made (textbook). When selecting a candidate, HR professionals should be able to apply evidence-based selection processes to predict who is the most likely to be engaged on the work in order to employ a high calibre, high achieving, productive, committed and engaged employee for the business.