The importance of cultivating employee engagement

A company with an engaged workforce is likely to see greater productivity, lower retention rates and higher employee satisfaction. In a recent article for Business 2 Community, business strategist and management consultant Maz Iqbal writes that employee engagement must be cultivated within organizational contexts in order to truly become part of the fabric of a business and effect valuable, long-lasting change.

Iqbal cites a book by David L. Bradford and Allan R. Cohen, titled “Power Up: Transforming Organizations Through Shared Leadership,” which he characterizes as a departure from the idea that it is possible to “generate employee engagement in the context of command and control.” He explains that in order to maximize engagement and make breakthroughs in performance and productivity, businesses must adopt the shared leadership model in which “leadership-power-responsibility-accountability of the whole is shared by all, at all levels in the organization, in all functions and teams.”

Using Kaizen to improve engagement

The type of approach championed by Iqbal involves elements of Kaizen, as the philosophy of continuous improvement dismantles the traditional top-down model in favor of empowering employees. This is accomplished by encouraging workers to provide feedback that can then be integrated into operations with the goal of streamlining processes to increase efficiency and reduce waste. Offering avenues for workers to take responsibility and ownership of their jobs and processes is a powerful method of increasing engagement, as this course of action makes employees feel their opinions and input are meaningful and have the potential to make a real difference within their organizations.

“No human being wishes to see himself or relate to himself merely as a resource or a tool at the command of another,” writes Iqbal. But all too often, leaders fail to acknowledge their workers' humanity by overlooking the importance of motivation, rewards and engagement. Not only are disengaged employees probably not performing to their full potential, but they are also more likely to leave their companies in search of better opportunities with employers that boast higher engagement. Costs associated with employee churn, including recruitment efforts and investments in training, can quickly pile up, and bolstering workforce engagement is an easy way for companies to minimize these types of expenses.