Employee Engagement and Its relevance to Sri Lanka

What is employee engagement? 

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Employee engagement is a form of personal attachment to the workplace and they find personal meaning in what they do, (Kruse, 2012). It is rather a psychological contract between the employee and the organization. When employees are engaged and committed, competitiveness increases, produce higher sales, increase productivity and lower the turnover of employees, (Vance, 2006). Engaged employee perform 20% more compared to their counterparts and they support the business in many ways, (Robertson - Smith and Markwick, 2009).
Further, a review on employee engagement has shown that engagement level differs among employees. It determines by the personal characteristics, seniority, occupation and length of service. Older and experience people showed higher engagement while younger workers have a low level of engagement, (Robertson - Smith and Markwick, 2009). 

Employee engagement in Sri Lanka

Employee engagement is one of the key factors of higher performance. The productivity of both government and the private sector employees is a key factor in the economic and social realities of a country. When we consider post-war Sri Lanka, it needs accelerated GDP growth to catch up the missed opportunities. There are strategically important sectors that drive the economic growth of Sri Lanka. 

The Government sector of Sri Lanka has about 1.1 million Government employees (excluding the military) for its 20 million population, (Satharasinghe, 2018). Although the government sector has 44 % of total employees, (Onlanka, 2017) and drain half of the tax collection, (Lanka Business Online, 2015) their productivity and the efficiency level remains low. Therefore, reforms shall give priority to improve employee engagement, efficiency and productivity when aiming for the development of the country to an upper-income category. 

Private sector is considered as the growth catalyst in a country. When Sri Lanka is concern, the export appeal industry and IT-BPO sector can be considered as important foreign exchange earners. The export apparel industry has shown steady growth in the past few decades. In 2017, it has recorded $ 4.8 billion revenue which accounts for 40 % of the export of Sri Lanka, (Sri Lanka- Textile, 2018). Low productivity, high absenteeism and high turnover of employees has been identified as the burning issues in the industry. Similarly, the IT - BPO industry showed leapfrog growth in the last decade. The industry is preparing for staggering growth during the next five years with the target of $ 5 billion export revenue and they are optimistic about creating 220, 000 direct jobs by 2022, (Government of Sri Lanka, n.d.).  But the higher turnover of employees is a key challenge. A survey conducted by the Postgraduate Institute of management  has shown that overall employee engagement was 40 % in export apparel sector while it was 31% in the IT-BPO sector, ( Dharmasiri, 2017).

in summary, improving employee engagement helps to improve the performance of any organization. Therefore, human resource management shall formulate strategies to increase employee engagement of an organization improve performance, efficiency and productivity.    

References 

1. Dharmasiri A., 2017. Engaging employees for enterprise effectiveness: Emerging evidence from Sri Lanka. Colombo: s.n.
2. Government of Sri Lanka, n.d. National export strategy of Sri Lanka information technology strategy, Colombo: Government of Sri Lanka.
3. Kruse K., 2012. What is employee engagement? [Online] Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kevinkruse/2012/06/22/employee-engagement-what-and-why/#31834de87f37 [Accessed 21 May 2019].
4. Lanka Business Online, 2015. Sri Lanka State Sector Workers Need Training To Improve Efficiency: Eran. Colombo: Lanka Business Online.
5. Onlanka, 2017. State sector employees top 1.1 million now. Colombo: Onlanka.
6. Robertson - Smith G. and Markwick C, 2009. Employee Engagement A review of current thinking, Brighton: Institute for employment studies.
7. Satharasinghe A., 2018. Public and semi-Government sector employees exceed 1.1 million, Colombo: Financial Times.
8. Sri Lanka - Textiles, 2018. Sri Lanka - Textiles. [Online] Available at: https://www.export.gov/article?id=Sri-Lanka-Textiles [Accessed 20 May 2019].
9. Vance R. J. , 2006. Employee Engagement and Commitment. [Online] Available at: https://www.shrm.org/hr-today/trends-and-forecasting/special-reports-and-expert-views/Documents/Employee-Engagement-Commitment.pdf [Accessed 21 May 2019].