Employee Engagement - Literature review

Employee Engagement

Reilly & Brown, cited in Armstrong, (2010) words such as Organizational Culture, Job Satisfaction, motivation and commitment are the words which are customarily been used when describing the satisfaction of employees, however, these words been replace by “Employee Engagement” because it overlooks the Organizational culture in a different and more descriptive force. According to Human resource development Fairlie, (2011, p. 509) “work could be designed not only to enable the acquisition of job-specific knowledge, skills and abilities but also to satisfy the fundamental development needs of employee”.

Employee Engagement can be defined as Kahn cited in Armstrong, (2014, p. 194) “The harnessing of organization members’ selves to their work roles; in engagement, people employ and express themselves physically, cognitively, and emotionally during role performances”. 

Also, employee engagement Schaufeli and Bakker, cited in Baker, (2011, p. 265) define as “An active, positive work-related state that is characterized by vigour, dedication, and absorption.”   According to Truss et al, cited in Armstrong (2010, p. 155). Employee Engagement can be defined as “creating opportunities for employees to content with their colleague's managers and the wider organization. It is also about creating an environment where employees are motivated to want to connect with their work and really care about doing a great job.”

When it comes to an organization there can be different levels of subordinates who perform in different levels of engagement, it is vital to know each of these levels and give priority to make them engage or to have decisions on their behaviour to the growth of the organization (Krueger and Killham, 2006). These levels can be categories in three segments such as,

1.      Engaged Employees:-  Subordinates who drive innovation and move an organization forward

2.      Disengaged Employees:- Subordinate without putting any energy or passion into their work

3.      Actively Disengaged employees:- Employees who aren’t just unhappy they busy acting out their unhappiness 

Figure 01 shows how the above levels of engagement will impact the organization

Behaviour

However, to engage and employee in an active manner it is vital to know the antecedents of engagement. (Saks, 2006) elaborate these Antecedents of the employee engagement basically depends on the following factors,

A.    Job Characteristics

B.     Perceived Organizational Support

C.     Perceived supervisor support

D.    Rewards and recognition

E.     Procedural justice

F.      Distributive Justice

These drivers of engagement also can be summarized as (Macleod and Clarke, 2009, cited in Armstrong, 2010),

i.                    Strong Leadership which can create a transparent and explicit organizational culture where it gives a clear site on their Job and the organizational needs aims and the vision.

ii.                  Appreciation of employees’ efforts and contribution where employees feel that they been valued at the organization

iii.                By allowing to voice their Ideas

iv.                The belief among employees that the organization lives its values,

These factors will enhance and create employee engagement towards the job and the organization which will directly influence the

a.       Job Satisfaction

b.      Organizational commitment

c.       Staff turnover

d.      Organizational citizenship

e.       Behaviour



References  

Armstrong, M. (2010) Armstrong’s Essential Human Resource Management Practice: A Guide to People Management. 1^st edition. New Delhi India: Kogan Page Limited.

 

Armstrong, M. (2014) HANDBOOK OF HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT PRACTICE. 13 edition. United Kingdom: Kogan Page Limited.

Baker, A. B. (2011) An Evidence Based Model of Work Engagement. Current directions in psychological science, 20 265-269. Available at http://www.engagementfch.cl/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Bakker_2011_An_Evidence-Based_Model_of_Work_Engagement.pdf [accessed 29th September, 2018]

Fairlie, P. (2011) Meaningful Work, Employee Engagement, and Other Key Employee Outcomes: Implications for Human Resource Development. Advance Development In Human Resources, 13, 508-525. Available at https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Paul_Fairlie/publication/216717417_Meaningful_Work_Employee_Engagement_and_Other_Key_Employee_Outcomes_Implications_for_Human_Resource_Development/links/09e41508148f347011000000.pdf [accessed 29th September, 2018]

Krueger, J. and Killham, E. (2006) Who's Driving Innovation at Your Company?. Gallup Business Journal available at https://news.gallup.com/businessjournal/24472/whos-driving-innovation-your-company.aspx [accessed 29 September 2018]

Saks, A. M. (2006) Antecedents and consequences of employee engagement, Journal of Managerial Psychology, 21 (6), pp 600 –619. Available at https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Alan_Saks/publication/275714108_Antecedents_and_Consequences_of_Employee_Engagement/links/556f083908aeab77722828e9/Antecedents-and-Consequences-of-Employee-Engagement.pdf [accessed 30 September 2018]