People & Organisation : Employee Engagement (Part 02)

EMPLOYEE SATISFACTION VS. EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT

Employee engagement has emerged as a critical driver of business success in today's competitive marketplace where employee engagement relates to the level of an employee's commitment and connection to an organisation. High levels of engagement promote retention of talent, promote customer loyalty and improve organisational performance.

Employee Engagement

Employee engagement is the passion and energy that employees have to give to their best to the organization to serve the customers (Cook, 2008). In other words, it is about the extent to which employees feel passionate about their jobs and are committed to the organization’s success.

Federman (2009) defined Employee engagement as that the degree to which a person committed to an organization and the impact that commitment has on how deeply they perform and their length of tenure.

Employee Satisfaction

Employee satisfaction is the indicator used to understand whether the employees are happy, contented and their desires and needs at work are fulfilled (Saxena, 2019).

Today, many managers mistakenly think that employee satisfaction can increase employee motivation (Rogel, 2018). According to Frederik Herzberg's Mivation - Hygine Theory proposes that people are influenced by two factors: 

Hygiene factors determine a person’s level of satisfaction with their job. This strongly influences on employee retention. Employees who are not satisfied with their jobs look for better opportunities elsewhere. However, the addition of more or better hygiene factors over a certain baseline will not increase job satisfaction or performance. Hygiene factors consist of pay and benefits, supervision, working conditions, and job security (among others).

Motivation factors influence how a person performs on the job. Motivated employees invest more of themselves in their work and strive to do better. Merely being satisfied does not cause an employee to work harder. Motivation factors include challenging work, recognition, and responsibility.

There may be some employees who are highly motivated but not satisfied with the job. They might find the work interesting and challenging, but if they worry too much about job security or think they can be paid more at a different company, they will not be satisfied.

However above described Both factors can be considered as key components of employee engagement. Basic hygiene factors required to ensure employee satisfaction and retention and they are easy to identify and improve. On the other hand, an employee must also feel motivated to perform at a high level. But the motivation factors differ for each employee and are most influenced by the employee’s supervisor. Therefore the managers need to understand what drives each of his or her employees and create the circumstances for them to perform at their best.

Most organisations conduct employee satisfaction surveys each year and employees do give positive responding indicating employee satisfaction”. But is has been observed that satisfied employees may be happy enough to attend the office but not put any extra effort to work hard which means such employees are satisfied but not engaged?Organisations with genuinely engaged employees have higher retention, productivity, customer satisfaction, innovation, and quality. 

References

Cook, S., 2008. The Essential Guide to Employee Engagement: Better Business Performance through Staff satisfaction. 1st ed. London: Kogan Page Limited.

Federman, , 2009. Employee Engagement : A Roadmap for Creating Profits, Optimizing Performance and increasing loyalty. San-Francisco: John Wiley & Sons Inc.

Rogel, C., 2018. decisionwise.com. [Online] Available at: https://decision-wise.com/job-satisfaction-vs-employee-engagement/ [Accessed 30 September 2019].

Saxena, V., 2019. Employee Engagement: A recipe to boost Organisational Performance. Chennai: Notion Press.