Understanding the value of employee engagement

The benefits of creating an enabling atmosphere at work can never be underestimated.


Anousha Bawany June 17, 2012

KARACHI:


What makes up a best place to work? Everything must be taken into consideration; the workplace culture, support from the organisation to help enlist company values into its employees and most of all employee satisfaction and engagement.

The Great Place to Work Institute, in partnership with Fortune Magazine, has been working for 25 years to gather information on the 100 Best Companies to Work For in the United States. Their work has shown the importance of the study and the value of the data collected. The data helps organizations in building workplace trust, which has proven to be the best investment any company can make, leading to better recruitment of talent, a lower turnover, higher productivity, more loyal consumers and higher profits margins.


Engage Consulting, a leading HR consulting and recruitment firm in Pakistan with offices in Karachi, Lahore, UAE and Malaysia, is announcing the launch of the Express Tribune 2012 Best Place to Work Study. In its third year running in Pakistan, this study is meant to help organisations throughout the country transform themselves by a process of discovering their strengths and areas of improvement through benchmarking against other organizations.

Since its original launch in 2008, the Best Place to Work Study has recognised leading workplaces throughout Pakistan, including top companies such as Pepsi, GSK, Engro, DHL, Telenor, P&G, Standard Chartered and many others. The Best Place to Work is an integrated look at survey data of employees from each company, across all industries making it Pakistan’s largest annual study of workplace excellence.  This study surveys a sample of 100 employees on 48 statements that are based on the four Engagement Clusters; Belonging, Alignment, Growth and Commitment. Employees have to rate statements on a scale of one to five, with one being Strongly Disagree and five being Strongly Agree. Organisations with high engagement levels is reflected in the number of employee responses who Strongly Agree and Agree with statements.

“The Best Place to Work Study recognises companies that have demonstrated a serious commitment to building workplaces that foster trust, pride and solidarity amongst their employees” says Paul Keijzer, CEO of Engage Consulting. “Each company should be proud of their accomplishments. To be recognised for your company culture and respected for the vision and values of your organisation is a great achievement.”

One of the most crucial insights the Best Place to Work offers is a look into employee engagement. Employee engagement is a significant part of any successful workplace and true engagement goes beyond job satisfaction and loyalty — instead, it delves into an individual’s personal satisfaction leading to increased productivity, enhanced corporate pride and improved employee competency. Engagement can result in improvements in common workplace attributes such as team building, communication skills, analytical thinking, leadership potential, diplomacy, flexibility, conflict resolution, problem solving and time management skills.

“Organizations with high engagement rates are 78% more productive & 40% more profitable than those organizations with low levels of engagement.”  Hewitt Quarterly

The Best Place to Work survey has given a chance for employees to share their attitudes toward their employer, giving companies insights into the level of employee engagement within their own company as well as being able to compare themselves with other companies.

“It’s a good initiative in the HR Industry and is conducted by a reputable and trustworthy organisation. It also gives us the ability to benchmark our company, get an insight into our employees views and the employer branding opportunity” says Humaira Ahmed, Talent Acquisition and Development Manager at GSK.

The recipient of the 2010 Best Place to Work award was Telenor. They were acknowledged for their open work environment, expanding learning opportunities, democratic policies and non-discriminatory benefits.

To find out the winners of the 2012 Best Place to Work Study, stay tuned – Engage Consulting in partnership with The Express Tribune will be announcing the winners in mid June.

The writer is marketing coordinator at Engage Consulting

Published in The Express Tribune, June 18th, 2012.

COMMENTS (2)

Holierthanthough | 11 years ago | Reply

But what about those organizations that violate Labour Laws and HR rules. Local organizations are not the only ones that are engaged in this. Who will highlight them???

Carla Mathews | 11 years ago | Reply

Wonderful piece of writing. I would like to hear about some knowledge based Articles on understanding the online business opportunities.

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