Employee Engagement in Organizations

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Think about your current (if you are not currently working - you last job). What does the organization do to engage workers? If the CEO came to you and asked you to develop a plan to engage workers, what would you suggest? Support your answers with material from this week's material.
Note to Student:
The way in which I approached the first question is to give examples of companies that successfully engage their workers. The objective of this information is to help you pick from those examples what you have experienced from your own organization of employment in order to answer the question from your own personal experience. Following a summary of the five forces of engagement in Clark's PDF.
Think about your current (if you are not currently working - you last job). What does the organization do to engage workers?
At the end of this summary are examples of three companies that practice successful engagement strategies that you may be able to use when describing your experience with your company or perhaps a friend or relative's experience.
From the article, Engaging the Disengaged, leaders use five basic forces to retain and engage employees: connecting, learning, envisioning, earning, and contributing.
A. Connecting - Creating a sense of community by allowing employees to build relationships through two-way sharing of ideas, facts and feelings. Leaders need to communicate face to face twice as much as managing the status quo (Clark, 2008).
B. Learning: Creating a culture of formal and informal learning within the organization's learning system needs to be embedded into the daily workflow, which will help keep employees and their skills relevant, and avoid employee value depreciation based on the speed of skills that are no longer needed or wanted (Clark, 2008).
Employees need to understand the concept of competitive cycle, which involves the rise and fall of competitive advantage. This helps prepares employees ( avoids most of the fear and resistance to change) to get on board with needed organizational change based on where the company is within that cycle and shelf life of the organizations current competitive advantage (Clark, 2008)
C. Envisioning - Motivation is driven by vision. The two visions of highly engaged employees are: 1) A personal vision that creates a portrait of who and what they will become; and 2) An organization vision that outlines a compelling picture of where the organization tries to go. Envisioning is defined by how much creativity and innovation is encouraged. Formal envisioning assignment involves a team to look at one process, system, product or service offering and project it into the future (Clark, 2008). Envisioning is not just a skill for leaders, but employees need to be encourage to engage in that assignment and should be a life-giving force for employees on all levels (Clark, 2008).
D. Earning - Compensation and benefits are important economic connectivity between employees and their company, which are dependent on the quality of that compensation system and employee priorities. Employees either consider that compensation is the most important force of engagement, or not most important priority of the job. Most employees will disengage if compensation does not meet needs or expectations (Clark, 2008).
E. Contributing - Employees need to feel that they contribute to the company and that the company recognizes their accomplishments. Accomplishing an assignment builds confidence, and creates social acceptance and motivation for continued progress. Employers can sustain employee engagement when they openly recognize that their employees are motivated and contribute to the accomplishment of organizational goals. (Clark, 2008).
Other elements of engagement not mentioned here that you, but actually encompass the same thing above that you may have encountered at your workplace are: 1) Inspiration, 2) Reward, and 3) Empower. In talking about your company, ask yourself if your company practices these kinds of employee engagements.
1. ABC Supply - Largest roofing distribution company in the U.S.
Ken Hidericks (the late CEO) believed putting his employees first so that they would in turn put the customer first. Fostering and maintain an engaged workforce was about creating a people business built on relationships ( Gallant, 2013).
a. Treat employees as equals, as peers and as friends.
b. Talking face to face with managers to inviting hundreds of his employees to weekly parties at his summer home. This developed a culture of support, appreciation, communications and respect.
c. Hendricks also had yearbooks printed for ABC Supply employees is all of his locations (350) with photos, employee lists, and each office's goal for the upcoming years.
As you can see, ABC had at least three practices of engagement according to Clark: Community, Envisioning, and Contributing.
2. FullContact: "Paid, paid vacation." FullContact is a contact management API development firm. The organization offers a creative environment with ample benefits and programs (Gallant, 2013). The paid vacation comes under Clarks employee engagement by Compensation (incentive). Each year an employee is given $7500 to go on vacation.
To qualify for this incentive is:
a. Employees have to actually take the vacation to get the money.
b. Disconnect form work - meaning no calls, emails, social media updates.
c. Cannot work while on vacation.
This tied to the welfare of the employee in terms of their health. This is in hopes that they will continue to be motivated to help build and support the company
3. Costco is in second place behind Google for successful employee engagement. Their compensation and benefits rival Facebook, Adobe, and Microsoft (Himelstein, 2014).

They way that CEO Craig Jelinek builds engagement and goodwill:
a. He hires internally which establishes an upward mobility of advancement. This gives employees the motivation to give their best (Himelstein, 2014).
b. He advocates equality: Supports a diverse culture that includes policies on equality and inclusion providing full health benefits for same-sex couples and supporting diversity ...