Employee Engagement

Some organizations are more successful than others when it comes to the ability to engage with employees. Considering a successful middle eastern airline with hundreds of operations worldwide, it is noticeable that most of its employees are either completely disengaged or moderately engaged. While these employees may seem unappreciative of the organization's efforts, the truth is that they just aren't fully committed and interested in what the company has to offer. A skillset update or a pay raise can significantly impact employee engagement. Organizations fail to create more strategies due to multiple levels of engagement existing within the organization, concentrating on engagement ranging from highly engaged or highly disengaged when they should think of deeper levels of employee participation. It is important to consider strategies to be employee-oriented rather than entity oriented to improve engagement. According to Frye and Breaugh (2005), an organization needs to addr

Employee engagement theories play a vital role in understanding employee motivation and performance. By creating an environment where employees feel valued and empowered, companies can create an environment that is conducive to success. Employee engagement theories are based on the idea that creating a positive work environment is essential for success. Employees must feel positive emotions toward their work to be personally meaningful, consider their workload to be manageable, and have hope for the future of their work (Hargrove, Nelson, Quick, and Quick, 2003).   According to (Snyder and Lopez, 2002), leaders play a pivotal role in the long-term engagement and retention of talent in the organization. The relationship between the employer and employee becomes critical in defining levels of employee engagement as this relationship greatly influences the economic and behavioral outcomes of an organization (Rousseau, 1989) Figure 1- The Zinger Model (Source- Zinger, 2009) Th

  As employee engagement continues to gain momentum in modern managerial positions, it is only imperative that employee engagement levels within an organization be measured before making managerial decisions. Organizations get a better understanding and learn more about their employees by measuring employee engagement levels. According to (Krueger and Killham, 2005), the U.S. economy is burdened with around $300 billion dollars as an annual cost of actively disengaged employees. Since employee engagement is not concrete and based on various factors, it can be difficult to measure. Establishing key performance indicators (KPIs) plays an important role in ensuring employees perform to desired levels of identifying areas of concern (Aswani, 2016)   The Harvard Business Review found that 71% of business executives agree that employee engagement is a crucial factor in achieving a company's goals (In-text citation: (A REPORT BY HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW ANALYTIC SERVICES, n.d.) Further

  Engaged employees possessing the required knowledge, skills, and proficiency is crucial for the growth of the organization (Kirkpatrick and Wendy Kayser Kirkpatrick, 2016). Training and development act as a major factor for enhancing engagement and commitment usually beginning with the orientation process for new hires. Tahir et al.,(2014)  said that one of the best ways to engage employees and increase productivity is through providing training and development to employees.   In the airline industry, newly hired employees are presented with several opportunities to know more about the organization’s goals, working schedules, salary, and employee expectations. It is an important step to show the importance of the employees’ contributions toward reaching the company’s mission. The orientation process usually also involves delivering of information to the employees in terms of the hierarchical outline of the company’s roles, teams, and employees and a tour of the employee’s designa

  Low employee engagement is a global problem. Due to the diverse range of customers in the airline industry, employee engagement holds more significance (Karatepe and Olugbade, 2016). Due to the nature of work dealing directly with customers, substantial workload, and dealing with a diverse range of cultures and backgrounds, employees face immense pressure to ensure customers are satisfied with the airlines’ products and even more so the service and avoid any form of dissatisfaction (Cheng-Hua & Hsin-Li, 2012).   A high turnover rate in the airline industry can prove to be very costly for airlines due to the considerable amount of time and money spent on training. Saks (2006) claims that employee engagement is negatively related to turnover rates and therefore it is essential to find out what factors are affecting employee engagement in an organization. Supervisor support towards cabin crew has been identified as a major predictor for job satisfaction (Vinnicombe, 1984) and is

  1.     Ensure Psychological Safety Employees feel insecure when exposed to inconsistent or unpredictable surroundings at the workplace. According to Kahn (1990), the four factors that complete psychological safety are management style, group and inter-group dynamics, norms and interpersonal relationships. Employees tend to perform better in a more encouraging manner when they do not perform work under stress. Employees perform better in more predictable environments where there are no risks in expressing themselves (Saks and Gruman, 2011). Subordinates sense more psychological safety at the workplace when exposed to approachable Management where the sense of belonging is felt and employee performance is not hindered (Spreitzer, Lam and Fritz, 2010). 2.     Freedom of Expression and Accumulative Decision- Making For trust to be built between the organization and the employees and to encourage employee engagement, employers must work towards creating transparency and sustainable