Employee Engagement vs. Employee Satisfaction

Employee Engagement
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Introduction
Satisfaction surveys have been used in the past to assess the level of staffs’ commitment and happiness, with respect to the level of performance of employees. However, satisfaction surveys do not address the issues related to motivation, emotional commitment and involvement to the goals of the organization alongside those of the stuff. It has since emerged that highly satisfied staffs does not necessarily indicate high performance. As such, most of the organizations have now turned to employee engagement measures to evaluate the commitment of employees to the organization. Ideally, engagement of the employees measures the relationships that the two parties have. Firms that have high employee engagement not only have satisfied staffs, but also staffs that are inspired by their jobs and the goals of the organization (Markos & Sridevi, 2010). As such, these employees tend to outdo their satisfied counterparts. Hiring brilliant employees at a firm and paying them handsomely to increase their satisfaction does not provide results if the employees are not engaged to the organization and the goals stipulated. A firm that hire lowly trained employees but with higher employee-engagement levels will outdo the previously mentioned firm. Health care organizations are particularly affected immensely by the engagement of the employees, especially the clinical departments. As such, for the human resources department in medical centers and health care facilities, the issue of employee engagement is crucial.
Coptic Employee Engagement
Overall engagement
Coptic General Hospital has had quite some experience in the issues related to employee engagement. Being a community level hospital, patients range from simple flu ailments to fatal accidents patients. The clinical section of the hospital according to the employee engagement survey carries mid this year is the worst performing, compared to the rest of the hospital departments. This follows strategies to increase the salaries of the entire hospital staff citing that most of the employees complained of increased living standards, mid last year. After realizing that the payment increase did not work, the hospital human resources department decided to take the employee engagement survey to get a different perspective.
Engagement of Clinical employees
Other than the low HCAHPS scores, by the clinical department compared to the rest of the departments, the employees in this department have also showed some indicator signs. The hospitals mission relates to offering quality and patient centered care, while the vision relates to being the best health care center in the region. However, most of the staffs in the clinical department have been reported to show signs of lack of apathy when treating patients and even their colleagues (Dávila & Piña-Ramírez, 2014). As such, most of the do not seem to care whether the goals of the organizations are met or even that the patient outcomes are low. In the last three months there have been two cases of four nurses undermining the authority of the physicians in different patient cases. More than 40% of the clinical department staffs reported that they do not have high morale in their jobs, while more than 30% of the staffs were reported to show signs of withdrawal.
Comparison to Other Hospitals
There is a wide gap between the levels of employee-engagement at Coptic General Hospital compared to the Guru Health Care. Although guru health care is much larger in size and capacity, the employee engagement ratings are much higher and the patient outcomes have been rising over the last three years after a change in management. According to the HCAHPS scores, released last and this year, the level of engagement by the clinical department staffs is much higher than that at the Coptic general hospital. More than 65% of the staffs were reported to have meaningful connections, intellectual contribution efforts and experienced positive emotions towards their jobs, their goals and the goals of the organization. This is contrary to what was reported at Coptic as all the positive feedback was based on willingness to perform.
Role of HR in Employee Engagement
The human resources department plays a major role in ensuring that the staffs are engaged and delivering not only on the organizations goals and objectives alone but also on their own goals professionally and socially. At the heart of employees engagement is the alignment of the values of the organization and those of the staffs. Where the organization tries to enhance this alignment, staffs tend to be more committed to the organization&rsquo...