Company Strategy To Implement Employee Engagement Techniques (Trait Th

Question 1 - Analyse the effectiveness of a range of strategies which an organisation could use to improve engagement with its employees ? Question 1b - Using an organisation of your knowledge, comment on how the company has implemented employee engagement techniques ? Question 2 - "Leaders are born, not made." Anon. Discuss the view that some leaders are born to be great (trait theory), whilst others become leaders by developing their leadership skills ? Answer 1 : Retaining the talent in the organisation is one of the greatest challenges faced by the Human Resource team. They employ a large no of strategies to keep the employees engaged and loyal to the company. Some strategies prove to be a great success but some fails miserably. We will discuss below some of the most common strategies employed by the companies around the world and their effectiveness. Training and development: For an employer, employees are the most critical resources. And in order to keep them abreast with the latest in the industry, training sessions need to be conducted on a regular basis. This also keeps the employees satisfied to certain extent that they are being valued for their intellect and what they can possible contribute to the organisation. Work-life balance: One of the most important strategy for both employer and employee point of view. An employee would want to have a perfect balance between his personal and professional life and an employee should always be aware of this fact and should also take initiatives to help the employees in this. Open-door policy: In an organisation, there are a lot of employees working in different departments taking care of different spheres of business. Employees might have ideas to improvise the system and the process. They might also have grievances which need to be heard and addressed. For the satisfaction of employ ees, the leadership should be approachable and encourage them to have a dialogue with an open mind. Rewards and recognition: Employees like to be rewarded and recognised for their hard work. Which also fuels them to keep performing better and might also encourage other employees to work harder. Developing a sense of healthy competition among employees to motivate them to work harder and enjoy the rewards in the end. (Lockwood et al, 2007) Answer 1b. To illustrate what good organisations have been doing to engage employees and what they have achieved, we can look at Googles strategies. 1. Work culture: Google has probably provided one of the best working environment among all the employers. Employees can come in whatever outfit they feel comfortable in and can work at flexible hours and flexible locations. They provide free food and snacks which are also very hygienic and of good quality. There are different ways adopted like yoga sessions, gaming consoles etc where employees and de-stress themselves and feel rejuvenated. (Tracey et al, 1995) 2. Employee feedback: Google carries out an annual survey among employees to gather their feedback about different aspects of working in the company. The survey form is prepared after a lot of research and is focussed on critical issues. Employees can later view the results of the survey however the anonymity is maintained. Google take appropriate and prompt action to improvise itself on the basis of the outcome of the survey. This way they not only improve the overall working experience of the employees, but also instigate a sense of being valued in the employees. It is very important for the employees even at the lowest level of hierarchy to feel important and supported by the leadership. (Kotter et al, 2008) Answer 2. Leaders are born, not made. Anonymous. There has always been a conflict in opinion on whether leaders have born qualities or one can be a leader by learning and improvising. There goes a lot of supporting theories and evidences to support each school of thought. But the truth is that some leaders are born and have intrinsic qualities in them while some others become leaders by acquiring skills and develop themselves into one. We can have a lot examples like Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi, George C. Marshall etc who are unanimously considered born leaders. These are the personalities who have not only created a huge impact on their immediate followers and colleagues but has also inspired generations to follow. They have shaped the course of history and in the process, have created a better world to live in. (Shane et al, 2010) Born leaders demonstrates some of the qualities from early stages of their life. Some of the qualities are listed below. 1. Empower: Leaders give freedom along with the ownership to the people. This way they make them more responsible for their work and let them perform in their own style and fashion. Of course, if required, they provide the support needed to resolve issues and brighten the forward path. 2. Inspire: Born leaders inspire their followers and also get inspired by others in order to improvise and develop themselves and in turn produce greater results. 3. Natural leaders do not hold themselves with the problems and with the negative thoughts around it. Rather, they focus and work towards the solutions and the positive outcome of the scenario. 4. Born leaders are dreamers. They have in mind the bigger picture and the ultimate goal of the organisation they are driving. And in order to achieve that, they themselves actively participate and encourage the followers to do the same. They also encourage their followers to excel in whatever they do but should also help and collaborate for the benefit of everyone and in turn move towards attaining the ultimate goal. Made leaders develop leadership skills and develop qualities which they acquire over a period of time. They gather these qualities with their own experience and also learning from others experiences. (Ruvolo et al, 2004) Below are some of the qualities demonstrated by the made leaders. 1. Selection of right people: They are very good at making the selection of the right people for the right job instead of selecting good people and developing them to be able to do the job. 2. Tough minded: Leaders have to make tough decisions every now and then. Be it on personal or professional front. So, in order to cope up with that, they need to learn to be tough minded and think towards the overall betterment of the organisation while making such decisions. References: Shane, S. 2010. Born entrepreneurs, born leaders: How your genes affect your work life. Oxford University Press. Ruvolo, C. M., Peterson, S. A., LeBoeuf, J. N. 2004. Leaders Are Made, Not Born em The Critical Role of a Developmental Framework to Facilitate an Organizational Culture of Development. Consulting psychology journal: practice and research, 56(1), 10. Lockwood, N. R. 2007. Leveraging employee engagement for competitive advantage. 2007 SHRM Research Quarterly, 52(3), 1-12. Tracey, J. B., Tannenbaum, S. I., Kavanagh, M. J. 1995. Applying trained skills on the job: The importance of the work environment. Journal of applied psychology, 80(2), 239. Kotter, J. P. 2008. Corporate culture and performance. Simon and Schuster.