Employee Engagement for Organisational Success

Chapter 1: Introduction

Background

The heightening business competition driven by such factors increasingly complex consumer preferences, demands for quality products, changing internal and external organizations environment, governmental regulations, and complexity in marketplace has forced organisations to seek needs innovative ways to weather competition, integrate change factors, and adopting to sustainability measures. One notable approach recognition of employees as core variable to organisational meeting its goals and consumer demands as a roadmap to success and sustainability. Myriad studies have been conducted over the last decade focused on employee engagement and motivating factors framed to enhance the organisational productivity. The primacy of employees’ engagement is built on the reducing risk of turnover, boosting employees’ satisfactions, and, in return, enhances organisations general outcome. Markos and Sridevi (2010) outlined that engaged employees by making them feel valued and being part of the bigger organisational sphere. According to Anitha (2014) and Macey et al. (2011), by acknowledging individual and group contribution and accomplishment to organisation’s goals and objectives as well as putting mechanism that provide fair, useful, and consistent feedback results in more input and discretionary effort. Notably, employee engagement and subsequent motivating factors are multifaceted concepts because factors pushing individuals to work harder and put more effort in a given tasks vary widely with some driven by monitory factors and others motivated by meeting basic their respective basic to self-actualisation. In manufacturing sector, taking pride of one’s work such as the quality of product produced leads to setting higher standards for themselves and likely to instil the same to team members. Largely, organisations have integrated approaches built on factors such as effective communication, employee support from executive and management personnel, promoting inclusivity and diversity, encouraging employee connectivity and teamwork, and implementing corporate social responsibility (CSR) guided by employees and consumer ideals.

Research problem and justification

Scholars have recognised the influence of employee engagement on the organisations’ sustainability, growth, and performance. Theoretically, highly engaged employees show significant positive correlation to the output. Numerous studies show that employee engagement through strong managerial support, effective communication tools, and feedback loop lead to long-term increased productivity. As such, adoption of engagement and motivation strategies is not a new concept to any sector that includes manufacturing industry. However, effectiveness of the strategies has been a subject of contention with some scholar arguing it is largely depended on the understanding the employees opinions, feelings, and showing employees opinions and contribution matter while other eliciting difference of being motivated and engaged as a factor to employees’ productivity. In this study, it explores the engagement strategies employed in manufacturing industry taking a case study of Unilever Company UK. This study attempts to analyse whether the costs incurred by the manufacturing companies in particular Unilever UK in relation to engaging their employees lead to bringing out desired and measurable benefits measured by individual and organisational outcome. Moreover, it examines the future of ways in which employee will be engagement as perceived by the organisation in manufacturing industry.

Aim and Objectives of the study

Aim

The aim of this research is to analyse the impact of current employee engagement strategies practiced in manufacturing industry focusing particularly on its effectiveness on productivity culture of Unilever Company

Objectives

This study into effectiveness of modern-day engagement strategies on productivity culture is guided by the following objectives:

To critically analysis concepts and theories on employee engagement strategies, organisations productivity culture, and engagement drivers

To explore the effectiveness of engagement strategies on employee productivity in manufacturing industry

To investigate Unilever Company UK employee engagement practices driving its productivity culture

To outline present and future employee engagement strategies built around enhancing employee productivity culture using research findings

Research question

What is the role of employee engagement in shaping organisational productivity culture?

Are there potential benefits of implementing employee engagement strategies in the manufacturing sector?

What is the cost of disengagement for entities operating in the manufacturing industry?

Is there noticeable correlation between effective employee engagement and a low number of staff turnover?

Chapter 2: Literature review

Introduction

Employee Engagement concepts and theories / Employees’ productivity concepts

Maslow Need Hierarchy Theory

Herzberg Motivation Hygiene Theory

McGregor’s participation theory

Employees’ productivity drivers and enablers (creativity, focus, motivation, aptitude)

Review literature on employee productivity

Employee engagement

Employee engagement strategy

Gaps in literature review

Chapter 3: Methodology

Introduction of the chapter

Research ideological framework

The research philosophical framework outlines sources and nature of developing knowledge. Using pragmatism recognises that there exist several constructs of knowledge development such as is subject to measurable as well as socially constructed beliefs, views, and norms (Morgan, 2014). In this case exploring effectiveness of employee engagement strategies on productivity in subject to measurable factors such key performance indicators (KPI) as well as individual and team satisfaction levels and efforts.

Research approach

Mixed research encompassing quantifiable variables such as KPI and qualitative research approach participants’ perspective of engagement.

Research strategy

Exploratory

Data collection method

Primary – Open-ended questionnaire

Data analysis method

Using Nvivo tool and thematic analysis framework

Ethical consideration

Chapter 4: Results and Discussion

Results

This section captures the findings from the questionnaire such that it outlines the take of the participants regarding the productivity, engagement, and generally effectiveness of the engagement strategies adopted by Unilever UK.

Discussion

The discussion parts links the findings of this study to literature that includes concepts, theories, and previous argument on employee engagement, employee engagement strategies, and productivity culture determining whether there exist a correlation

References

Anitha, J., 2014. Determinants of employee engagement and their impact on employee performance. International journal of productivity and performance management.

Macey, W.H., Schneider, B., Barbera, K.M. and Young, S.A., 2011. Employee engagement: Tools for analysis, practice, and competitive advantage (Vol. 31). John Wiley & Sons.

Markos, S. and Sridevi, M.S., 2010. Employee engagement: The key to improving performance. International journal of business and management, 5(12), p.89.

Morgan, D.L., 2014. Pragmatism as a paradigm for social research. Qualitative inquiry, 20(8), pp.1045-1053.