Creating Customer Experience: Importance of 'Employee Engagement'

EMPLOYEE engagement refers to one's emotional and intellectual involvement in unique value creation.

- By Dhammika Kalapuge

It is a positive attitude held by employees towards the organisation and its values. This becomes evident when an employee demonstrates a business sense supported by the right competence to perform the job, along with timely commitment. Employee engagement is a crucial factor in establishing a customer experience culture in any organisation.

When service quality drops, leaders often look at training, systems or policy. Too often, they overlook the human factor-employee engagement. The truth is simple: disengaged employees create disengaged customers.

Purpose drives performance

A feeling of psychological connection with the organisation generates Positive Energy Transformation (PET) across the entity. This creates a positive atmosphere in the workplace, where even the most routine tasks are performed with enthusiasm. When staff have a clear understanding of the real purpose for which the business exists, they demonstrate engagement. Thus, employee engagement drives performance.

Staff should be given clear directions and made to feel that they are a vital part of the business. When employees are clear about their mission and understand the bigger picture of the organisation's existence, they put their heart and soul into delivering outputs that achieve stakeholder delight. Engaged employees experience positive emotions which broaden their thinking, leading them to become more focused and absorbed in their work. This means there is a direct correlation between employee engagement and employee performance.

How can we achieve employee engagement?