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Definition and Meaning of Employee
Engagement: A Review of Literature |
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| Paper Id :
18562 Submission Date :
2024-02-14 Acceptance Date :
2024-02-21 Publication Date :
2024-02-25
This is an open-access research paper/article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. DOI:10.5281/zenodo.10799843 For verification of this paper, please visit on
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| Abstract |
Employee engagement has been a very important aspect of human
resource management for many years now. Irrespective of the culture, climate,
nature, and location of organization; it is essential to have a motivated
workforce. This paper seeks to summarize the meaning of employee engagement
based on the literature available. The conclusions of this paper will enable
learners to know the notion of employee engagement as evolved over the years
for the purposes of managing human resources. |
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| Keywords | Work Engagement, Employee Engagement, Management, Human Resource Management, Organization. | ||||||
| Introduction | 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. |
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| Objective of study | This study is aimed at summarizing various definitions of
employee engagement for researchers and learners so as to enable a
comprehensive understanding of the concept. |
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| Review of Literature | 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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| Conclusion |
Certainly Kahn,
who is considered as the father of employee engagement, gave one of the
simplest definitions of employee engagement. According to Kahn (1990) engagement
refers to how "people employ and express themselves physically,
cognitively and emotionally during role performance”. Firstly, physical
expression is about the physical strength that employees are required to
perform their duties at work. Secondly, cognitive statements relate to what
employees think about the organization and its top management. And lastly,
attitude refers to how employees feel about the workplace, which reflects in
their behaviour.
Schaufeli et al
(2002) proposed another fundamental concept and viewed engagement as a state
where performance, success and work is influenced by energy, dedication and
focus on mental characteristics. Saks (2006) added a new aspect to Kahn’s
definition of engagement. He proposed that engagement is not just about being
psychologically attached to one’s job role, but also involves the employee
being psychologically involved as a member of the organization as a whole. |
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