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Time changes and so does the mindset of people. With every new generation that enters the workforce; there comes a plethora of changes in the way people work, behave, perceive, and function at workplaces. People’s behaviour at work is affected by a lot of psychological experiences (Hackman & Oldham, 1980). Such experiences are influenced by external factors (Alderfer, 1989) namely, “perceived organizational support, communication, performance management system, organizational culture and vision, human resource policies, superior-subordinate relationship, etc.” Therefore, based upon the psychological experiences that an employee goes through, he/she may either be engaged or disengaged.

It is believed that when it comes to fairness and productivity, “satisfied” employees may not always be the “best” employees that an organization has. Only "engaged employees" who are intellectually and emotionally committed to the organization, committed to the organization's goals, and committed to its results can be called "engaged employees." Such an employee goes above and beyond the call of duty and participates in actions that advance the business. The fact that it has a great impact on the results increases its importance. A company's quality and competitive advantage depends on the quality of its employees. Engagement is about encouraging employees to do their best.

Employees are considered the most important resource in any organization, especially in the service industry. The struggle to find good talent is increasing around the world, and every organization must ensure that it not only attracts but also retains top talent. It is also not enough to retain employees in an organization because someone may have the best talent but lack passion for their job. Kahn (1990), who is considered as the father of employee engagement, stated that employees should be physically and mentally fit while performing their duties.

One of the toughest challenges facing many organizations' chief operating officers (CEOs), customer service (HR), and business leaders is ensuring that employees show up to work every day, not just physically, but also mentally and emotionally. (Pandita and Bedarkar, 2014). This means that organizations need to engage employees so that they can be motivated to work towards achievement of organizational goals.

Definitions of Employee Engagement

Employee engagement has been a popular topic among researchers and practitioners for many years now. (Saks, 2006; Macey and Schneider, 2008; Saks and Gruman, 2014). Today, employee engagement still has many meanings (Burnett and Lisk, 2019) as cited by Segalla and DeNisi (2019). There is no standard definition but varied terms have been used by researchers to describe the state of employee engagement like: “enthusiasm, commitment, dedication, motivation, passion, satisfaction, fulfilment”.

Employee engagement has been defined by different researchers as:

“The harnessing of organization members’ selves to their work roles; in engagement, people employ and express themselves physically, cognitively, and emotionally during role performances”. (Kahn,1990)

A “positive, fulfilling, work- related state of mind that is characterized by vigor, dedication, and absorption” (Schaufeli et al, 2002).

“A positive attitude held by the employee towards the organization and its value. An engaged employee is aware of business context, and works with colleagues to improve performance within the job for the benefit of the organization. The organization must work to develop and nurture engagement, which requires a two-way relationship between employer and employee.” (Robinson et al., 2004)

“Engagement is above and beyond simple satisfaction with the employment arrangement or basic loyalty to the employer—characteristics that most companies have measured for many years. Engagement, in contrast, is about passion and commitment—the willingness to invest oneself and expend one’s discretionary effort to help the employer succeed.” (Erickson, 2005) and “a person's emotional state to the following outcomes: ‘long term tenure, productivity, positive action to further the organizations’ reputation and interest, positive customer interactions, discretionary effort into their work, efforts that contribute to organizational success, efforts that contribute to individual and organizational performance, productivity and well-being, working on behalf of the organizations’ goals.” (Albrecht 2010; Christian, Garza, and Slaughter, 2011; Macey et al. 2009)

Generally, “employee engagement is defined as an emotional and intellectual commitment to the organization” (Shelley Khosla and Dr. Anu Sahi, 2019) or a high level of effort for office workers. Jamie A. Gruman and Alan M. Saks (2010) define “employee engagement simply as motivation to work”. It is a positive and satisfying work-related mood consisting of energy, passion and focus. (Schaufeli and Bakker, 2004).

Maslach (2008) “defines engagement as the positive side of a negative situation” and found that employee engagement can be explained in terms of energy, cooperation and performance. These characteristics are contrary to burnout which is defined in terms of weakness, negative thoughts and ineffectiveness. Therefore, it can be concluded that engagement lies on the opposite end of burnout.

(Schaufeli et al., (2002) found that engagement is “a positive, fulfilling, work-related state of mind that is characterized by vigour, dedication, and absorption”. Engagement cannot be ascertained correctly at any given point of time because it is a persistent state of mind that prevails over a long period of time and does not focus on any specific object, incident, person or behaviour.

Kahn (1990) explained that engagement is the ability of organizational members to devote them to work. Engaged people use their physical, intellectual and emotional roles. The state of engagement influences the perception of employees about the company, management and the work. Emotional factors describe the feelings of employees about these dimensions of engagement and whether they have a positive or negative attitude towards the organization and its leaders. Therefore participation means having mental and physical energy while thinking and working in the organization.

Many researchers have highlighted the existence of a sense of connection as a premise of engagement. Public relations researchers, Kang (2014) and Men (2015) consider that psychological empowerment of employees is inevitable for establishing strong communication in the organization. Based on a study of higher level internal communication managers, engaged employees are those “who are connected to the values and mission of the company, feel empowered, bring energy, passion, and discretionary effort to their jobs, and serve as advocates.” (Ewing et al., 2019)

Recurring themes in this context indicate the way employees think, experience, and physically connect with their work. Although this definition refers to many aspects of employee engagement, it focuses on understanding significance of connecting within a workplace, as noted by Linjuan Men et al (2020).

A study of around 7,939 business organizations from different industries conducted by Harter et al. (2002) suggested that employee engagement can be defined as his/her involvement at work as well as satisfaction and enthusiasm about his job.

Employee engagement is a psychological state that is, the presence of thinking and feeling. (Rothbard, 2001) In general, each definition involves some type of motivation and the effects of this motivation on employees (Hughes et al., 2019). Kahn (1990) said that psychological meaning can be incorporated into work by providing features such as job complexity and multitasking that enable people to use different skills, as cited by Shelly Khosla, (2019).

Types of Employee Engagement

According to Macey and Schneider (2008) there are three levels of engagement namely:

1. Trait engagement

2. Psychological engagement, and

3. Behavioural engagement

Here trait engagement refers to the involvement that reflects in one’s disposition, thoughts and awareness. A sense of belonging towards the organization in the form of emotions and affection is termed as psychological engagement. While involvement reflected in employee’s behaviour at work is regarded as behavioural engagement.

Ms.T.Suhasini and Dr.K.Kalpana (2018) defined three levels of engagement:

a. Participation: - Employees who are committed and have good relations with the organization. They promote innovation and are progressive at work.

b. Disconnected: Employees who are present and busy at a job, but waste time at work and do not give enthusiasm and energy to their job;

c. Disinterested: - Employees are dissatisfied with their jobs and show job dissatisfaction.

Michelle Segalla ( 2019) mentioned about a where the participants together discussed about creating an outline for future research on employee engagement. After a lot of discussion the invited authors proposed that researchers should take into consideration the following four types of employer-employee engagement situations in the future, namely:

-Shared Engagement- Both the employer and employee work for mutual success and are actively engaged.

-Unsatisfied Engagement- The employee is engaged but perceives that there is no reciprocal engagement from the organisation’s side.

-No Engagement- Neither the employer nor the employee believe in mutual success. Both work for self interest.

- Abusive engagement- Employees are engaged for a short period through organizational efforts which leads to burnout.

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