Discretionary Effort And Employee Engagement

What employee engagement is not.

Discretionary effort and employee engagement.

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. 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. Employee engagement cannot be achieved by a mechanistic approach which tries to extract discretionary effort by manipulating employees commitment and emotions.

Many companies have employee satisfaction surveys and executives talk about employee satisfaction but the bar is set too low. 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. Employees see through such attempts very quickly and can become cynical and disillusioned. Discretionary effort is the level of effort people could give if they wanted to but above and beyond the minimum required.

This describes an internal state of being but one which relates closely to behaviour such as discretionary effort. 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. Understand the fundamentals of employee engagement the trends shaping it and how to build an engaged workforce. In a leader s desire for encouraging employee engagement inspiring discretionary effort is the crown jewel.

Employee engagement doesn t mean employee satisfaction. Custominsight provides strategies on how to improve engagement and why it is important. Every interaction with an employee has the potential to influence his or her engagement and inspire discretionary effort. It s not easy but it s not highly complicated either.

How can an engagement survey help your organization measure performance. Often discretionary effort is associated with engagement as a byproduct of sorts the more engaged you are the more effort you ll put forth in your job. Understand the fundamentals of employee engagement the trends shaping it and how to build an engaged workforce. What is employee engagement.