Analyzing Employee Engagement Strategies At Frishco And The Consequences Of Not Addressing Employee Engagement Issues

Ways in which Frishco’s HR department engages its employees

1. Analyse the different ways or methods in which Frishco’s HR department engages its employees.
2. Critically discuss the  potential consequences of an organisations’ inability in addressing employee engagement issues including how it would affect their motivation.
3. Evaluate which methods you feel would create the most impact in achieving the highest level of employee engagement within Frishco.

Human Resource Management (HRM) involves the different organizational function that aims to systematize, employ and promote the participation of the employees of a particular organization, to accomplish the maximum outcome from the work of the employees or workforces. This department particularly focuses on different systems, strategies and policies of the organization. According to Bratton and Gold (2012), the key activities of the Human Resource Department engross recruitment, training, and development, benefits of employment, appraisal and rewards. One of the important functions of this department encompasses the development of a competitive edge for an organization by fairly engaging the employees of the particular organization. Frishco is a well-known retail company as well as a brand, which is known for its quality of service worldwide. This organization has successfully achieved an international reputation by establishing the brand values. The department of HRM has undertaken certain strategies, which have discovered an efficient way to keep the organizational members engaged. This will be discussed in Task 1 of this report. While in Task 2, the impact of an organization inability to focus on the engagement of employee and the effect on the motivation of employees will be highlighted. In Task 3, the most effectual method of engagement of employees in Frishco will be discussed.

1. According to Bratton and Gold (2012), the workforce of this organization play a major role in maintaining its brand values since its organizational members are considered as a fundamental resource. In this organization, the HRM department has identified that in order to attain success in the business, it is necessary to engage the workforces at the appropriate time as well as in the required areas.  According to Price (2011), a high “turnover rate of employee” have negative implications for the businesses that are related to the performance and cost. Therefore, in order to reduce the “turnover rate of employee” and improve the engagement of employee, a survey was conducted in Frischo. A number of alterations were made to improve the engagement of the employees after the completion of the survey (Salcito et al. 2014).

Consequences of an organizations’ inability in addressing employee engagement issues

The top management has identified a hierarchical pattern of the structure of this organization. The new structure presented additional responsibilities to the manager or boss to enhance their level of job satisfaction (Berman et al. 2015).

The employees who worked in the ground level were given additional duties of leadership by establishing the model of transformational leadership (Price 2011).  According to this particular model, the individual who is a part of the top management establishes the mission and vision but all the employees should get equal opportunities for participating in the process of decision-making by means of the quality of personal leadership (Turner and Popovski 2013).

A communication of a better quality helps in keeping the workforces updated regarding all the organizational strategies and policies. The HRM department of Frishco has developed a mode of communication to provide information to the employees regarding the operational plan, which can influence their job directly. The fundamental improvement was promoted to obtain the views of the employees (Rainey et al. 2014).

The planning has been done to assure that all the members of Frishco, understands the significance of brand values.

The department of HRM has assured to establish the cultural changes so that it can improve employee engagement. The policies, which were constructed by this department to promote the engagement of employees, are:

Morning briefing- Information provided to the employees about the work plan of the whole day and current statistics of sales.

Magazine for the employees- The magazine named “Your Frishco” has been published, which aid the employees to be updated regarding the interview news, personal snapshot and charity features and also offers the employees with the opportunities of giving their feedback regarding the organization in the “Agony Aunt Column”. (Menguc et al. 2013).

Quarterly Forum- It involves a set of volunteers who are among the employees and they enable the other employees to deal with the issues and contribute to benefit the organization.

Intranet- The facility of intranet facilitates the employees of the organization to remain associated and share the information related to work.

Other types of policies- A scheme named ‘Bright ideas’ has been designed that allows the workforces to share their creative ideas and participate in the further improvement of this particular organization (Price 2011).

In addition to this, the HRM department of Frishco has identified the needs of modernization of restaurant to provide the staff with health of a good quality and provide them with the opportunity to make a healthy communication by through meetings.  The current leadership of this organization is based on democratic leadership style (Anitha 2014). In this type of leadership, the ideas and suggestions of the employees are considered equal to that of the topmost management or senior authorities. This strategy not only supports the enhanced involvement of the employers, but also improves the quality of the service, which is provided to the clients or customers (Bratton and Gold 2012).  

Methods that create the most impact in achieving the highest level of employee engagement within Frishco

In an organization, engaged employees are those individuals who assist the organization in achieving its targets and maintains its values. However, the satisfaction of employees is not similar to the engaged employees (Salcito et al. 2014). The satisfaction of employees is concerned with the level of contentment or discontentment among the employees of an organization. It does not address the emotional involvement or commitment and motivation level. In comparison to the engaged employees, there are disengaged employees who are least involved and lacks motivation. These employees can have negative effects on the organization because they are not contented with the existing work environment in the organization in which they work (Bennett and Ho 2014).

The disengaged employees affect the culture of the organization, because they are not able to understand the mission and vision of the organization and have a tendency to follow those principles that are not similar to the organization (Porsdam et al 2016).  Hence, as a result the overall working environment of the organization gets affected. The disengaged employees affect the brand name of the organization. The employees are the main brand ambassadors of the organization and if they are not contented or encouraged then they might create an unconstructive impact on the market allowing their competitors to lead the market. Other than culture and brand, an additional section can be enormously affected by the disengaged employees and which is the main thing of an organization (Turner and Popovski 2013). Every year, an organization could lose 628 pounds if it fails to inspire its workforces. In addition, employee disengagement exterminates the self-esteem of the employees, affects the clients or customers and reduces their job performance. It furthermore creates a negative impact on the teamwork, quality, improvement, absenteeism and customer relations. Such conditions of work hamper team building and allow the engaged and talented employees to seek a new and favourable environment somewhere else (Turner and Popovski 2013).

Motivation refers to the level to which a person desires and prefers to be engaged in certain specific behaviours. The performance of employees at the workplace is determined by what motivates them to work. It is an effect of motivation along with the capability. Two kinds of motivation are concerned with the staff motivation and team performance, namely, intrinsic and extrinsic motivation (Bratton and Gold 2012).  Extrinsic motivation involves remuneration and promotion of individuals at work while intrinsic motivation is associated with job satisfaction and gaining appreciation. The key theories of motivation encompass process theories and content theories. In content theories, stresses on what motivates the employees to work and process theories comprise the genuine motivational process. The employers should consider both of these theories of motivation (Porsdam et al 2016).

Therefore, every organization should focus to overcome the problem of disengagement of employees and should incorporate the policies and rules that are feasible for the employees and can ease their existing conditions of work (Berman et al. 2015).  According to the survey that was conducted by Frishco, it has been concluded that Frisco has paid attention to recover the employee engagement and trust. It has incorporated four key elements in their existing strategic plan like inclusion of a flat organization, implementing a democratic leadership style, efficient communications between the management and employees and maintaining the brand value. Such challenges allowed Frishco to become an organization, which is more focussed on the employees. One of the reasons why it is flourishing at present is due to the reason that it provides its employees a voice for change (Salcito et al. 2014).

The organization should concentrate on its leadership style, which is incorporated within the organization (Torrington et al. 2008). A democratic leadership style should be followed by all the organizations and the employees should be allowed to voice their opinions. In addition, the organizations should also focus on the effective decision-making, as it contributes to disengagement in employment (Anitha 2014). 

The methods that would create the most influence in achieving the highest level of employee engagement in Frishco are altering leadership and enhanced communication.

Altering leadership: It involves the creation of an environment in which the employees are expected to make decisions independently (Bennett and Ho 2014). The higher authorities such as the bosses and managers go on to generate a vision of trade but the ground level employees are given the roles of “delegated leadership”, for example dealing with the clients. The best model, which the managers can make use of is transformational leadership style where the aims and objectives involves personal leadership, which is formed by the top management but implement by the employees (Bratton and Gold 2012).

Enhanced Communications- In an organization, an effective communication allows the employees to know the strategies of the organization. It allows them to outline the organizational aims and objectives (Turner and Popovski 2013).  In addition, they also allow them to acquire knowledge regarding the operations on a regular basis. Communication does not simply mean to converse with the employees, it rather means making the employees aware regarding the strategic plans of the organization (Wu et al. 2012). The culture that is present in the organizations rests upon faith and respect for one another. Furthermore, the organization influences rotation of job to offer the opportunities of career growth. It offers development of new skills in the different sectors (Bal et al. 2013).

The management style should be participative, which means that the management based on the consent of the employees takes the decision. Such management style is mostly accepted amongst all the other styles of management. An autocratic management style is the most unwanted management style in the organizations (Salcito et al. 2014).  Efficient communication also plays a significant role in a way that the employees think that their issues are addressed. It is necessary for an organization to make their employee feel that they can be contented only with an efficient communication with all of its employees. To overcome the issues of employee disengagement, it is essential for every organization to be aware regarding the factors that adds to the disengagement of employees (Menguc et al. 2013).

If Frishco adopts these changes, it may make the employees focused and will facilitate them to adapt to the changes within the organization. Hence it should focus on becoming an employee based organization rather than a dictatorial organization.

Conclusion

In the end, it can be conclude that HRM should be observed as a strategic function of an organization. It assists the organizations to build a competitive edge by allowing employee engagement by incorporating an appropriate style of leadership and efficient communication with the workforce. It has been observed from this report that an engaged and infirmed workforce has led Frishco to achieve tangible profits. The developments of policies that are developed by the HRM department of this organization are based on the autonomous process that has proved to be beneficial for this organization. However, if an organization is not able to address the engagement of employees properly, then it might lead to a downfall in employee motivation, quality of service and decline in the profits of the organization. It has been recognized that effective communication and alteration in the leadership style can have a maximum constructive effect on the outcomes of the organization. Therefore it can be said that certain effectual policies concerning the engagement of employees has proved to be advantageous for Frishco and further improvements in the autonomous leadership could persist to uphold the organizational status in the future in an efficient manner.

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