International Foundation Programme: Employee Engagement Essay Analysis

This essay explores the effectiveness of employee engagement programs in reducing absenteeism within organizations. It begins by highlighting the significant impact of absenteeism on a company's productivity and morale, citing statistics on employee engagement levels in the UK. The essay argues that employee disengagement, often stemming from how a company treats its workers, necessitates the implementation of targeted engagement programs. These programs should be tailored to employee needs and organizational objectives, considering factors such as employee demographics (disabled, older, and younger workers) and incorporating elements like flexible working hours, performance-based incentives, and improved workplace morale. The essay emphasizes the importance of establishing a culture of engagement, focusing on employee voice, empowering leadership, organizational integrity, and active managerial participation. The essay also outlines the sequential steps for developing and executing these programs, including identifying the reasons behind absenteeism and implementing changes. The conclusion emphasizes that employee engagement is a fundamental part of organizational culture, which requires changes in leadership and management. The essay references the work of Bridger (2015), Allen (2014), and the Chartered Managers Institute (2015) to support its arguments.

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Topic: Employee engagement programme to reduce absenteeism
Absenteeism of employees is one of the major problems that highly impact on bottom line of
a company, in terms of reducing morale and productivity of associated people. Lack of
cooperation and shortage of employees also performance of remaining team members. In UK, it
has been evaluated that 17% of employees are engaged while 57% are not engaged and
remaining ones are actively disengaged’ (Allen, 2014). As per research, extent of employee
disengagement depends on way a company treats its workers. Therefore, it is essential for a firm
to overcome from such an issue and mitigate absenteeism, otherwise it will affect long term
success of business and could be detrimental for workplace culture. For this purpose,
programmes which help in improving and increasing employee engagement, that may encompass
with a wide range of initiatives. Along with this, best outcomes from such process are achieved
when programmes are tailored with employees’ needs and organisational objectives. For this
purpose, companies are required to consider needs as well as motivations of employees, as per
different groups that are – disabled employees, older and younger workers. Furthermore, while
developing organisational strategy to run employee engagement programmes like improvement
in workplace morale, flexible working hours, paid-off time, incentives as per performance, etc. it
is essential to implement four main aspects first (Bridger, 2015). It includes employee voice,
empowering leadership, organisational integrity and active participation of managers. This would
help in setting a clear vision for mitigating absence of employees.
Under this process, it is also essential for firms to take sequential steps for developing and
executing employee engagement programmes. It includes identification of main reason behind
absence of workers; create immediate changes in process that arise such situations by engaging
leaders in the same; engaging teams and implement process for embedding modification. All
such procedures aid in building a culture of engagement also, where values and respects to each
employee will be given equally (Chartered Managers Institute, 2015). Building an effective
culture also demonstrates integrity and fairness, where open communication among employees
and upper management will be promoted, that empowers them to make their own decisions for
giving out best performances and taking initiatives accordingly.
Thus, from all over discussion it has been summarised that employee engagement refers to
an alteration in culture and working procedure. It makes change in way leaders lead their teams
and managing them to give out best performance. But such process, doesn’t include
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accountability of an individual department only, nor as an initiative which focuses on completion
of some specific tasks. Therefore, unless engagement of workers becomes a fundamental part of
organisational culture, till then benefits of same couldn’t be gained.
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REFERENCES
Bridger, E. (2015) Employee Engagement. KoganPage, London, UK.
Allen, M. (2014) Employee Engagement – a cultural change. Available at:
https://www.insights.com/media/1091/employee-engagement-a-culture-change.pdf (last accessed
30/07/20)
Chartered Managers Institute (2015) Employee Engagement Checklist. Available at:
https://www.managers.org.uk/~/media/Files/Checklists/CHK-245-
Understanding_employee_engagement.pdf (last accessed 30/07/2020)
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