Employee Engagement Reflection on applying takeaways from class to my current management career

Applying and understanding the concept of 'employee engagement' and the 'glass ceiling' to my management career

For the past fifteen years I have been employed as a manager at a transportation company with an over 180-year history in the business. I have personally witnessed many shifts in the corporate culture during my tenure as I have moved up the ranks, most notably the company's increased emphasis on encouraging employee engagement. Rather than simply taking a 'carrot and stick' approach and trying to incentivize improved employee performance solely through raises and sanctions, the company has increasingly emphasized intrinsic motivation. It is not acceptable to simply try to make employees perform -- they need to want to perform. At a very basic level, motivating someone means making him or her desire to perform an objective, rather than compelling him or her to do so. Employee engagement is defined as when "everyone in the organization doing the right thing, the right way, at the right time -- even when no one is watching. Engaged employees who are enabled to create exceptional service experiences will give organizations a real and sustainable competitive advantage. If you can create that type of culture, it is difficult, if not impossible, for competitors to replicate" (Ketter 2012).

When an engaged employee sees that a process is not currently working, even if not specifically instructed to do so by management, he or she will raise this issue and attempt to create a potential solution. For example, recently at the company where I work, a number of employees noted that customers were expressing dissatisfaction with various aspects of our operations. Instead of ignoring this problem or trying to hide it from management, they proactively brought it to the collective attention of the organization and steps could be taken to prevent the issues from occurring in the future.

However, to create this...

Instead of viewing employees bringing up concerns in a punitive fashion as disagreement or disobedience, managers must see such dialogue as positive evidence of engagement. Employees become engaged when they are treated like valuable, thinking components of an organization, not as mere cogs in a wheel. The engaged employee is always thinking about how to do things better, faster, and smarter. However, unless management makes it clear that such engagement is welcome rather than unwelcome, employees will not volunteer their input. Employee engagement is critical to a strategy of 'participatory management' in which the entire organization is collectively viewed as part of the effort of improving customer satisfaction. Employees' grounds-eye perspectives can offer unique data such as market research about customer needs that managers may lack.
In general, "three broad categories combine to define engagement: satisfaction, motivation, and effectiveness. While each of these factors is important on their own, only when all three are present simultaneously does true engagement occur" (Ketter 2012). First and foremost, if an employee is not satisfied with his or her place or remuneration, he or she is unlikely to feel engaged. For example, if the organization does not pay employees a living wage comparable with other companies within the industry, it is unlikely that employees will be willing to go above and beyond the minimum requirements of performance. That is why companies such as Wal-Mart have such high rates of attrition and must spend so much money on worker training at the lower levels. Workers are viewed as disposable commodities in terms of the wages and benefits they receive.

However, workers must also feel motivated to care. Companies must show respect to employees in terms of how they treat them on a day-to-day basis. In a survey of job satisfaction, 62% of employees listed the opportunity to use skills and abilities as…