Discretionary Effort And Employee Engagement

What is employee engagement.

Discretionary effort and employee engagement.

But does this argument hold true. This describes an internal state of being but one which relates closely to behaviour such as discretionary effort. Every interaction with an employee has the potential to influence his or her engagement and inspire discretionary effort. The greatest company success stories can be traced to employees who went above and beyond at work to fine tune the final product to reimagine the marketing strategy to make one more cold call.

Employee engagement employee motivation discretionary effort can make the difference between a great team and an extraordinary team but what does it take to inspire and support that effort. Discretionary effort is the level of effort people could give if they wanted to but above and beyond the minimum required. Employee engagement surveys help gauge employee performance the extent to which employees feel passionate about their jobs are committed to the organization and put discretionary effort into their work. What employee engagement is not.

It s not easy but it s not highly complicated either. Employees see through such attempts very quickly and can become cynical and disillusioned. Employee engagement cannot be achieved by a mechanistic approach which tries to extract discretionary effort by manipulating employees commitment and emotions. In a leader s desire for encouraging employee engagement inspiring discretionary effort is the crown jewel.

Understand the fundamentals of employee engagement the trends shaping it and how to build an engaged workforce. Many companies have employee satisfaction surveys and executives talk about employee satisfaction but the bar is set too low. Many organizations manage performance in such a way that motivates employees to do only enough to get by and avoid getting in trouble negative reinforcement. Employee engagement doesn t mean employee satisfaction.

The most common phrase or concept you ll hear when you start looking for definitions of engagement is discretionary effort a definition of engagement might suggest that the degree to which an employee is engaged is proportional to the amount of discretionary effort they put forth in their job. How leaders manage their employees can substantially affect engagement. How can an engagement survey help your organization measure performance. Understand the fundamentals of employee engagement the trends shaping it and how to build an engaged workforce.