Employee Engagement and Intrinsic Motivation Thesis

Employee Engagement and Intrinsic Motivation - Thesis Example In 2006, the Conference Board published ‘Employee Engagement, A Review of Current Research and Its Implications’. Going by this report we see that twelve extensive studies have been published over the course of four years mainly by research firms such as Gallup, Towers Perrin, Blessing White, and the Corporate Leadership Council among others (Soldati, 2007). The Conference Board as a result took and combined all the results in order to come up with a blended definition that incorporated all the themes in it. They define employee engagement as â€Å"a heightened emotional connection that an employee feels for his or her organization, that influences him or her to exert greater discretionary effort to his or her work†. According to at least four of the studies agree upon eight of the key drivers: 1. Trust and integrity – how efficiently do managers commune and do what they preach? 2. Nature of the job –Is it psychologically inspiring every day? 3. The line between company performance and employee performance – Does the employer have an idea of how their performance will affect the company as a whole? 4. Opportunities for career growth – Will there be opportunities to grow in the future? 5. Pride about the company – Does the employee feel proud to be associated by the organization? 6. Coworkers/team members – Teamwork will greatly improve the employee motivation 7. Development of the employees – Does the organization make an effort to improve the employee’s skills and abilities? 8. Relationship with the manager – Does the employee treasure his or her relations with the boss? The other vital findings of the study included the fact that in comparison to the smaller companies, the larger companies tend to involve the workers more in the workplace. Employee age also creates a big difference in the vitality of the various drivers. As an example we can quote that employees who fall over t he age of 44 will place more importance on ‘recognition and reward for their contribution’, in comparison to their younger counterparts who place a higher value on ‘challenging environment/career growth opportunities’. However, one things that came across as the most important factor among all studies was the factor of one’s relationship with one’s manager. It was seen that it highly influenced the motivation levels of the employees in almost every case. Also according to the report, employee engagement is plays a very important part in the workplace. There is obvious and rising proof that high levels of employee engagement eagerly associates to individual, group as well as corporate performance in a number of crucial areas such as loyalty, retention, productivity, customer service and turnover. It is also seen that this difference is not just by small margins but big ones. Even though the results varied from study to study, the employees who were highly engaged usually outperformed their counterparts by a whopping 20-28%. This is a clear image of how employee engagement influences their workplace decisions as well as paves a way towards further organizational success by effectively instilling into the workers a desire to work efficiently. Finally, there is some verification that companies are reacting to this concept of employee engagement challenge mostly by creating flatter chains of command and also providing training for first-line managers to improve the communication at all levels (Flemund &