The employee engagement concept has been taken into consideration since 1990. The engagement of employees also affects the performance of organization along with its competitiveness. In this context, communication is an important and valuable tool for the organization to provide information to an employee and also make effective responses to employees for their information or message. Hence, internal corporate communication is a process that arranges an effective communication medium between existing employees of the organization and its top decision-makers. It also influences the relationship between employees and the organization which also affects the engagement of employees in an organization. Strategic use of communication systems within corporate organizations brings competitiveness and enhances the productivity of the organizational employees.
Employee Engagement
Effective communication enhances the mutual understanding and coordination among the functional or operational teams of the organization, which has a significant influence on organizational performance and competitiveness.
Present age business produces various new and challenging demands at the front of the organization and employee performance effectiveness and employee engagement are among them. Various organizations around the world adopt strategic measures to achieve and sustain organizational productivity and performance, and thus make attempts to enhance the efficiency of their functional teams or employees.
Global enterprises have started acknowledging the importance of employee engagement and the critical role of internal corporate communication in the achievement of the same. Contemporary studies in business management propound a significant relationship between internal corporate communication, employee engagement, and emotional intelligence, which also facilitates effective contribution to the overall performance of the organization.
In order to understand the relative significance of corporate communication over the employee engagement aspects of the organizations, an attempt will be made to perform an analysis of the same in consideration of Eskom as the organization.
Eskom
Eskom is a producer of electricity in the African subcontinent and also serves the major part of South Africa and other small African countries. It was established by the South African government in 1923 and also changed its name in 1986. In 2001, Eskom received an award from Global Power Company because of its commitment, and working standards related to Ethics, accountability, transparency, and fairness toward its stakeholders’.
It produces 95% of the total electricity of South African people and 45% electricity of total African countries. Because of this, Eskom is a part of the top ten ranks in the world in the context of electric generation capacity and it has achieved nine ranks in the rank of electricity selling.
It has a large group of employees, who help the organization to make the effective delivery of electricity to customers and also resolve their issues related to drop in electricity.
Behind the success of Eskom, there are a lot of efforts from its employees because they also believe that Eskom has success due to their collective approach and their engagement in operational activities. Eskom provides its services locally, so it is very important for the organization how they manage their affairs. To achieve the organizational vision, the organization also uses a way push/pull communication method.
To achieve effective communication between management and employees, Eskom uses several formal ways related to communication as an effective communication tool.