Employee engagement is a unit in Level 5 of the CIPD course. It is a course that provides insights on how well the employees are involved in their workplaces, committed, and engaged. It is a concept that requires the learners to understand their roles as professionals in developing an engaged workforce, which is aligned to enhancing achievement of organizational goals and objectives. Learners are expected to acquire the knowledge, skills, and competences in analysing the relationships between employee engagement and organisational performance. The learners learn the strategies are meant to promote shared goals within the workplace, improved organisational values, and development of an engaged culture that supports the employees and the organisation. Employee engagement unit therefore is important in helping the learners understand their roles and responsibilities in supporting the interaction and connection of the people, which then promote organisational success. Learners pursuing the course seek to acquire the knowledge and skills needed in promoting an engaged culture, and also focus on developing organisational success.
Dimensions of employee engagement
There are cognitive dimensions of employee engagement, affective dimensions, and behavioural dimensions that are considered for implementation in different organisations. These are concepts in employee engagement that the learners should relate with in order to identify with the roles of HR professionals to promote sustainable and well engaged workforce. Learners should seek to understand the dimensions and determine how they can use them to improve levels of engagement among different people and in different workplaces. Learners who have a good understanding of these dimensions are get to understand the rationale for promoting employee engagement for purposes of ensuring that they promote high-performance working conditions for the employees. The purpose of employee engagement in this perspective is to ensure that the employees get involved in promoting positive reputations in the workplace, which then promote development of positive outcomes that support the organisational bottom-line objectives.
Managerial implications of employee engagement
People who are engaged are highly satisfied and they experience some sense of belonging to the organisation. They are committed to the work they do in the organisation, and they rarely decide to quit from their workplace. The management in this perspective has to take responsibility in measuring the employee engagement levels, and identify measures that should be considered to improve the levels of engagement. This means that they have to take charge of asking questions in order to obtain information that is relevant to improving the engagement level of the employees. This means that the managers have to be responsible leaders, who take responsibility to measure the parameters that promote high levels of employee engagement. This then result to the understanding of the platform that results to improvement of employee relations with their colleagues, and with the management. Learners have to be keen to learn the basis of promoting employee engagement, by understanding the components, and principles of employee engagement, and further learn the drivers of promoting an engaged workforce within the organisation. Learners should further understand that employee engagement is promoted through the support of other organisational stakeholders, who act as agents of developing and engaged work environment, which promotes support of organisational goals and objectives.
Learning objectives
By completing the unit, the learners should;
- Understand the intrinsic concepts of employee engagement, and how this facilitates business improvement
- Explain the connections between employee engagement, leadership, and HR strategies within the workplace, and how these impact development of HRM
- Explore the contribution of employee engagement to the success of the organisation
- Identify the impact of employee engagement to the development of high-performing environment in the workplace
- Be able to develop justified, cost-effective, and strategic actions that are meant to promote employee engagement
- Evaluate and identify levels of employee engagement, and designed recommended changes that are meant to improve engagement levels among employees in the workplace.
The unit is suitable for persons who;
- Have knowledge in HR and L&D, and want to improve their skills in carrying out their assigned roles and responsibilities in the workplace.
- Have an influence on the organisational roles and responsibilities, and participate in decisions that influence strategic decisions of the organisation
- Are HR and L&D practitioners seeking to grow their careers in the field
- Have the aspirations to become CIPD professional members
As part of the assessment to complete the employee engagement unit, the learners are expected to complete an assignment with 2500 words. In some instances, students would be required to provide a presentation on briefing paper answering the questions. The assessment questions for the assignment include;
- Identifying the principle dimensions of employee engagement
- Identifying the components of employee engagement (they include the job, organisation, communication, growth and development)
- Explanation of how employee engagement differs from other organisational concepts (employee engagement promotes employee motivation, commitment, and satisfaction)
- Identifying the principle drivers of employee engagement (strategic narrative, engaging management, employee voice, and integrity)
- Describing the benefits of an engaged workforce in the organisation to the different organisational stakeholders, including the employees, the managers, the organisation, and customers
- Explaining the steps taken by managers in creating a culture of engagement (job design, and organisational citizenship)
- Assessing how engagement practices can be aligned to the corporate/business components (identify with organisational mission, learning and development)
- Identifying the diagnostic tools for measuring the attitudes of employees to enhance improvement of employee engagement levels (interviews, HR metrics)
- Explain the HR strategies that are meant to raise employee engagement levels ((team building events, newspapers)
- Identify barriers that minimise engagement levels (training, support to employee well-being)
Winding up;
Before deciding to take the course, learners should be able to identify and find out what their learning objectives are, in order to find out whether the employee engagement course is in line with their objectives. The learners should also evaluate their capability and find out whether after completing the learning objectives they would be able to record better performance in their workplace. Finally, the learners should be able to find out the outcomes that the course will help them achieve, and in this perspective, get to find out how they would make them become more effective in their line of work.
