Abstract
Dear Readers
Employee engagement has generated a great deal of interest since the 1990s both among the academic and the practitioner HR community. The origin of it can be traced back to Yale organisational psychologist William A. Kahn (Kahn, 1990) who published his famous article, ‘Psychological Conditions of Personal Engagement and Disengagement at Work’, in the Academy of Management Journal. Kahn’s work is considered the foundation for the theory of employee engagement, which has evolved over time. Historically speaking, before employee engagement entered the vocabulary of HR leaders, the closest concept to that of employee engagement was job satisfaction. Going back to the 1930s, the employee–company relationship was initially understood as broadly disconnected and limited to an employee’s satisfaction with their job. However, with the advent of research studies, HR practitioners realised that an organisation could have a highly satisfied employee, but job satisfaction did not automatically translate into any kind of active engagement within the organisation. It is then practitioners realised that though job satisfaction may impact the retention of employees, it is not enough to ensure productivity and other positive employee behaviours in organisations. Needless to say, there’s another important reason practitioners started focusing on employee engagement so much more—unlike job satisfaction because employee engagement was found to be positively co-related to employee performance (Anitha, 2014), which in turn affects organisation’s business outcomes.
Employee engagement has become a widely used and popular measure for employee productivity in recent years. Interestingly, most of what is available in the literature about employee engagement are largely sourced from practice rather than theory and empirical research. According to Saks (2006), ‘employee engagement has the appearance of being somewhat faddish or what some might call, “old wine in a new bottle”’.
Similarly, Robinson et al. (2004) concluded that ‘employee engagement has been defined in many different ways and the definitions and measures often sound like other better known and established constructs like organizational commitment and organizational citizenship behavior’.
Kahn used the term ‘personal engagement’ and defined it 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’. Thus, according to Kahn, engagement is meant to be psychologically present when occupying and performing an organisational role. Saks (2006) defined employee engagement as one that is characterised as ‘a distinct and unique construct that consists of cognitive, emotional, and behavioral components…associated with individual role performance’.
Whereas Rothbard (2001) also defined engagement as psychological presence but went on further and identified it is two critical components: attention and absorption. He referred to attention as ‘cognitive availability and the amount of time one spends thinking about a role’ while absorption was referred to as ‘means being engrossed in a role and refers to the intensity of one’s focus on a role’.
Schaufeli et al. (2002) on the other hand defined engagement ‘as a positive, fulfilling, work-related state of mind that is characterized by vigour, dedication, and absorption’. They further concluded that engagement is not a momentary and specific state, but rather, it is ‘a more persistent and pervasive affective-cognitive state that is not focused on any particular object, event, individual, or behaviours’.
As I narrated above employee engagement became popular among practitioners because it gave them adequate data to look at various forms of organisation-individual interconnectedness which led to different organisational outcomes. Studies (Saks, 2006) showed that engaged employees often displayed a deep, positive emotional connection with their work and also attentiveness and mental absorption in their work. Gallup researchers (Fleming & Asplund, 2007; Wagner & Harter, 2006) in their books clearly concluded to show that engaged employees are consistently more productive, profitable, safer, healthier and less likely to leave their employer, Macey and Schneider (2008) postulated that employee engagement has a much wider perspective that included both attitudes (satisfaction, commitment, involvement and empowerment) and behaviours (organisational citizenship behaviours, taking initiative, willingness to take on new responsibilities and acceptance of the change. Perhaps this is the reason HR professionals across the globe embraced employee engagement interventions to increase organisational effectiveness.
Interestingly researchers always tracked global employee engagement regularly since the last decade. According to Einar H. Dyvik (2024), employee engagement in the world increased from 2011 to 2020, but dropped slightly in the next years. It stood at 67% in 2022 and 2023. It was at its highest in 2020 when it reached 69%. Whereas according to the Gallup report (2024), only 14% of Indian employees who responded to their survey, considered themselves to be ‘thriving’, which is lower than the global average of 34%. Whereas 86% of Indian employees considered themselves to be ‘struggling’ or ‘suffering’, which is higher than the global average. The report suggested that the high rates of ‘struggling’ and ‘suffering’ among Indian employees may be due to a combination of factors, including financial insecurity, lack of access to healthcare and socioeconomic challenges. However, the report also reported that India’s employee engagement rate is 32%, which is higher than the global average of 23%. It will not be out of the way to mention the recent tragic death of a young finance professional at one of the big five consulting firms, Contrary to building employee engagement, the culture of glorifying overwork at this consulting firm is believed to have resulted in this untimely death of this young professional. It is in this context, Correa and Devarajan (2024) noted that ‘The glorification of overwork as a sign of success must be dismantled, and a new paradigm that values mental health and work-life balance must emerge. Only then can companies foster a culture of sustainable success, where employees thrive rather than merely survive’.
Tomar (2019) while digging deep in terms of looking at Indian’s varied employee engagement in different sectors reported that IT sector organisations have better engagement practices vis-à-vis other sectors. In India, the IT sector is followed by the Aviation and Healthcare sectors. These three sectors in India were rated as world-class in terms of higher employee engagement. Retail, tourism, telecommunication and media & entertainment sectors comprised of organisations having mediocre employee engagement practices. banking and financial services, insurance and logistics sectors in India had trifling engagement practices. In his study, Tomar (2019) also reported that for the IT sector, the most prominent engagement attributes were ‘insightful work’, ‘pragmatic management’, ‘positive work environment’, ‘growth opportunity’ and ‘engaging leadership’.
It is becoming increasingly clear that for employees working every day, being engaged with their job/role, organisation and their co-workers plays a critical role in their overall satisfaction and experience. Employees become more energised and efficient, and they go beyond what’s expected of them. Naturally, this influences their own mental health at work and can positively influence those around them, such as colleagues and customers. Over the years organisations across the globe experimented with various interventions to enhance their employee engagement scores. There has also been a shift in who is responsible for overseeing employee engagement. What was once a human resource responsibility, now requires the involvement of other departments, managers and those in leadership positions. However, problems started to arise when employees in many organisations started noticing a gap between the espoused importance attributed to employee engagement and what they started to experience in reality. While employee engagement and culture have been reported by many organisations to be their top people-related challenges (Deloitte, 2015), in reality, they were lost in an overlong list of ‘to do’ activities in which human resources had to respond simultaneously. As a result, two following outcomes were noticed (Matthews, 2018):
employees become all too aware of the gap between the rhetoric and reality; the efforts of the employer were more focused on measuring engagement rather than addressing the real issues hidden behind the employee engagement score.
In order to deal with these issues Matthews (2018) proposed the following four distinctly differing Options for approaching employee engagement. These are described below:
Proactive and HR Focused Approach Engagement seen as an indicator of the employee value proposition. Measure shows success of HR’s employee engagement interventions. Proactive and Business Focused Approach Engagement seen as a way of increasing business performance. Measure here is a leading indicator for business performance. Reactive HR Focused Approach Engagement seen as a barometer of workplace problems. Measure here is a workforce early warning system. Reactive and Business Focused Approach Engagement seen as a tool to help offset organisational challenges. Measure here serves as a spotlight on possible business issues.
Looking at the future a report (Vantage Circle, 2024) suggested the following emerging global trends for employee engagement:
More than half of employees (59%) are quiet quitting (not engaged), and 18% are loud (actively disengaged). Regions with the highest levels of employee engagement are South Asia (33%), the United States and Canada (31%) Companies with engaged workforces have higher earnings per share. Employee engagement today is costing the world $8.8 trillion in lost productivity. Nearly two-thirds of millennials strongly prefer a lower-paying job that ignites their passion over a higher-paying job that they find dull. The statistic reveals that 75% of workers are actively contemplating or considering leaving their current jobs. In total, 81.9% of employees agree that recognition for their contributions improves their engagement. In total, 82% of employees have found their happiness meter rocketing skyward. Thanks to the newfound freedom of working from wherever they please. In total, 68% of HR professionals agreed that employee recognition positively impacts retention, while 56% said it also helps with recruitment. In total, 72% of executives strongly agree that organisations with highly engaged employees usually have satisfied customers.
As narrated above, employee engagement though studied a lot by researchers is still a topic of avid interest among HR professionals even today. Keeping that in mind we had requested Dr Krish Shankar, a very successful HR leader to guest edit our current issue on the theme ‘Employee Engagement—A Hype or a Driver for Business Success?’ A special mention here is that Krish not only led many successful engagement interventions in many organisations where he headed HR functions but also carried out his doctoral work in this area. So, we thought he would be the best person to guest edit this issue. On behalf of my editorial team want to express our deepest gratitude for not only accepting our request and getting ahead with personally selecting the contributors persuaded them to narrate their views and experiences to build this issue from scratch to completion in a limited time. I am sure all of you will enjoy reading this issue.
Finally, I am happy to share with you that we have decided to cover one more contemporary theme for our next issue. This will be our October 2024 issue on the theme ‘Women in HR’ guest edited by Harini Muralidharan Human Resources Director at Dentsu based at Bangalore.
Please continue to offer your feedback and suggestions for improving the content and reach of our journal at me@nationalhrd.org.