Guest Editorial

Over the past two decades, the concept of ‘employee engagement’ has emerged as a pivotal focus in human resource management. Organisations worldwide allocate substantial resources towards engagement initiatives, conducting regular surveys and deploying significant HR efforts to cultivate a committed workforce. This editorial delves into diverse perspectives on employee engagement, evaluates current practices and identifies future trends to bolster organisational effectiveness.

Early discourse on employee engagement was grounded in foundational motivational theories. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, McGregor’s Theory X and Y, and Herzberg’s two-factor theory laid the groundwork for understanding employee motivation. These theories underscored the crucial role of managerial practices in influencing motivation and team performance. The concept of ‘engagement’ introduced a novel dimension by emphasising employees’ discretionary effort driven primarily by emotional factors.

Employee engagement is often measured as a composite indicator reflecting employees’ organisational affinity and retention intentions. Various consulting firms have developed models highlighting different aspects, such as Daniel Pink’s focus on mastery, autonomy and purpose and Simon Sinek’s insights on emotional investment. Routine engagement assessments followed by targeted interventions have become standard practice. However, the challenge lies in correlating engagement metrics with business outcomes and understanding the nuanced employee experiences across diverse cultural contexts.

The latest Gallup State of the Nation report on engagement says that only 32% of employees surveyed in India were fully engaged, and only about 14% of the employees felt they were ‘thriving’ (the global average is 34%) (see detailed report 1). Moreover, 52% of the employees surveyed in India were looking for a job. Repeat, a majority of people had the intent to leave! While the Gallup report has other details, one other metric struck me. About 35% of people in India experienced what they call ‘daily anger’ (highest globally), and about 42% experienced ‘daily sadness’ (the global average was 22%). These numbers throw up big questions. First, our work climate needs an honest, deep look. Why is there anger and sadness at such high levels? Second, whatever engagement actions we do, people are still looking out for a job. I can think of three reasons: one, the job market is still hot, two, employees probably see another job as a faster way to growth and third, engagement is no longer a differentiator as people think they will get similar ‘engagement environment’ everywhere they go. So has this engagement become table stakes?

In this issue, we have many interesting perspectives from a mix of academicians and practitioners.

Professor Sasmita Palo explores engagement through Karl Marx’s theory of worker alienation, proposing strategies to mitigate alienation through engagement initiatives.

Professor Arup Verma advocates for goal-oriented engagement strategies.

Gangapriya Chakravarti critiques current engagement practices, emphasising the need to prioritise core job elements over peripheral factors.

Dr P. V. Ramanamurthy addresses distractions in the modern work environment and suggests practical steps to sustain engagement.

Ganesh Chella challenges conventional assumptions and provides reflective questions on enhancing engagement.

Professor Dave Ulrich and Christopher Altizer look ahead, suggesting that offering hope will be crucial in organisational value propositions, addressing employees’ emotional needs.

Puneet Pratap Singh and Rashi Singh bring a global perspective to India’s engagement indicators and present some areas for the industry to consider.

Let me try and distil some learnings from all these articles and from contemporary research.

If the effectiveness of a person in a job is a function of the skills, competencies and mindset of the person, the job design including the rewards accruing from it, and the team climate, let’s take a look at how each of these could be used to drive greater effectiveness.

Effectiveness of a person = f (Talent—skills/competencies/mindset of the employee × Job design incl rewards × Team climate)

You can improve the skills of the employee through a set of development actions, including coaching and mentoring by the manager and others, and a host of career development processes. A person not only feels that she is invested in, but skills actually improve too, and increases her effectiveness. The second lever is enhancing job design, through more autonomy, removing friction to performance in the job and aligning the right incentives. The third big lever is the Team Climate—as a microcosm of the overall culture in the organisation, but one experienced in the team—a lot of which is determined by the manager of the team. We need to look at all these levers to drive greater effectiveness—not just any one of the above.

However, if we look at the above framework and ask ourselves who or what has the biggest impact on all three elements of effectiveness, it is the immediate manager. The manager is the person who has the biggest influence in a person’s upskilling and development, has the biggest impact on ensuring less friction in job design and can influence the team climate the most. Investing in the manager can lead to much bigger returns for the organisation. All research points to the fact that we need to bring back focus on the role of the manager—more so in hybrid work. So what about engagement—it is a necessary condition for effectiveness, a mixture of individual motivation, right job context and right environment.

Engagement activities that HR generally does include a lot of macro culture building, communication and team bonding events, along with ensuring processes are followed. While these are good, and set the foundation for a good culture, they tend to be too macro. Interventions within a team will have far bigger impact on employee effectiveness and engagement—but scale comes in the way of such team interventions.

In most organisations, job design or job enrichment as a source of engagement is virtually not being considered by HR, primarily because structures and job design are more centrally done in today’s organisations. However, the framework of work design by Hackman and Oldham, which outlines that Skill variety, Task identity, Task significance, Autonomy and Feedback of results are critical elements of a job, needs to be leveraged much more to drive engagement. Managers can be taught to do so at their level, through initiatives like job crafting, etc. In the age of AI, this will be an important engagement lever.

There are some jobs that are difficult and powerless. Ganesh Chella mentions about the job of the person cleaning toilets at the airport. What does engagement mean to this person? Do organisations consider such powerless people for engagement? The first premise in such cases is to respect and value every job—each adds value in its own way. In this case, providing better tools and enhancing the dignity of this job could be a lever to engage the person and increase his/her effectiveness. Of course, other levers like recognition can help. What is helpful is to change the lens from engagement to effectiveness. If we ask ourselves, what can we do to increase this person’s effectiveness on the job, we might come to the true levers.

Looking at the lens of emotions is another big opportunity. When we look at elements of engagement, we tend to look at the cognitive elements like recognition, learning, good team, etc. However, the key is to ensure that we create the right emotions in people. For instance, recognition needs to create the emotion of pride and gratitude—or rather, we have to design recognition practices in a way that it engenders pride and gratitude. That will have a far greater impact—therefore, do look at bringing the right emotions into play in your employees through your initiatives and actions. The emotions of happiness, pride, gratitude and compassion at key moments help build true engagement.

Finally, there is this question of why people still have an intent to leave, even if engaged. While further research is needed to explore that, a hypothesis could be that engagement and intent to stay could be very different. You may be engaged and very effective at work, yet you might look to explore other opportunities. Probably, we are moving away from the world of psychological contact that Sumantra Ghoshal and Bartlett articulated to a more entrepreneurial contract, where ‘my commitment is to do my best in my role for a specific period and move on elsewhere where my skills are needed’.

In summary, it might be worthwhile for organisations to reflect on their employee engagement practices. What are we aiming for—more effective performance or just feeling happy to work in that organisation. Are we looking at effectiveness of the individual as opposed to just engagement? Are we leveraging all the elements that can enhance effectiveness of the individual? If the line manager has the biggest impact on an employee’s engagement or even effectiveness, how are we enlisting their help? How are the managers being trained and incentivised to look at the engagement and effectiveness of their team? Can we focus on job enrichment and job design, including micro job enrichment actions like job crafting, to build greater engagement? How are ensuring that we create appropriate emotions in our people as we drive various engagement actions?

I am sure these articles will give you much to think about. We look forward to hear any thoughts you would have.