Singapore - As employee engagement takes a nosedive during a downturn, what can companies do to raise the level of employee engagement?

According to Samir Bedi, senior consultant of Hewitt Associates, employee engagement comprises of three components:

• The "say" component is the degree where engaged employees consistently speak positively about the organisation to their co-workers, friends and families, who may become potential employees and customers.
• The "stay" component involves an intense desire to be a member of the organisation. 
• The "strive" component is having engaged employees exert extra effort and engage in behaviours that contribute to the success of the organisation.
  

Bedi feels the key to increase employee engagement is to improve the "strive" component. That way, employees will feel involved in the organisation.

Using rewards can directly increase performance and affect employee engagement as connecting pay to performance has the greatest impact on discretionary effort. Performance-related pay also has a particularly strong impact on engagement of top performers.

However, Bedi explains that rewards is just one component which can be worked on. The key is to improve the "strive" component and have employees take on more responsibilities so as to increase employee engagement.

"HR practitioners need to look at how they can redesign jobs and how they can create roles which have growth in them," says Bedi. He feels that by doing so, employees will feel motivated to exert more effort in a position with potential, and contribute to the growth and success of the organisation.