INTRODUCTION

Employee engagement is a property of the relationship between an organization and its

employees. An "engaged employee" is one who is fully absorbed by and enthusiastic about
their work and so takes positive action to further the organizations reputation and interests.

What can be engagement?

Engagement can be in terms, it can be like get together, group discussion, a group dinner or
games activities.
It can help to foster relation between an employee and employer, an employee gets a chance to
know the company very well.
It can help to grow job satisfaction and attrition rate can be way too low for such companies who
take employee engagement as their HR policy.

Definitions:

Employee Engagement is a measureable degree of an employee's positive or negative

emotional attachment to their job, colleagues and organization which profoundly
influences their willingness to learn & perform at work.
Source Scarlett Surveys

An "engaged employee" is one who is fully involved in, and enthusiastic about, his or her
work and thus will act in a way that furthers their organization's interests

Engagement is seen as a positive attitude to the job and it is distinguished from both job
satisfaction and commitment. It is more temporary and volatile than commitment, which
is a more stable perception.
Copyright 2010 by William J. Rothwell, Ph.D., SPHR 39

By: Mahechchha R. Patel

Employee Engagement is the means or strategy by which an organization

seeks to build a partnership between the organization and its employees,
such that:

Employees fully understand and are committed to achieve the organization's objectives,
The organization respects the personal aspirations and ambitions of its employees.

A definition of a fully engaged employee

Is intellectually and emotionally bound with the organization

Gives 100 percent
Feels passionately about its goals and
Is committed to live by its values.

The employee goes beyond the basic job responsibility to delight the customers and drive
the business forward

By: Mahechchha R. Patel

LITERATURE REVIEW
Definition:
Defining Engagement One of the first challenges presented by the literature is the lack of a
universal definition of employee engagement. (Kahn, 1990) Defines employee engagement 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. The cognitive aspect of employee engagement concerns employees beliefs about
the organization, its leaders and working conditions. The emotional aspect concerns how
employees feel about each of those three factors and whether they have positive or negative
attitudes toward the organization and its leaders. The physical aspect of employee engagement
concerns the physical energies exerted by individuals to accomplish their roles. Thus, according
to (Kahn, 1990), engagement means to be psychologically as well as physically present when
occupying and performing an organizational role. Most often employee engagement has been
defined as emotional and intellectual commitment to the organization (Baumruk 2004) or the
amount of discretionary effort exhibited by employees in their job (frank et al, 2004).
Although it is acknowledged and accepted that employee engagement is a multi-faceted
construct, as previously suggested by (Kahn, 1990), (Truss, 2006)define employee engagement
simply as passion for work, a psychological state which is seen to encompass the three
dimensions of engagement discussed by (Kahn, 1990), and captures the common theme running
through all these definitions. The existence of different definitions makes the state of knowledge
of employee engagement difficult to determine as each study examines employee engagement
under a different protocol. In addition, unless employee engagement can be universally defined
and measured, it cannot be managed, nor can it be known if efforts to improve it are working
(Ferguson, 2007). This highlights the problems of comparability caused by differences in
definition. Furthermore, whilst it is acknowledged that employee engagement has been defined
in many different ways, it is also argued the definitions often sound similar to other better known
and established constructs such as organizational commitment and organizational citizenship

By: Mahechchha R. Patel

behavior (OCB) (robinson, 2004). Thus (robinson, 2004) defined engagement as one step up
from commitment. As a result, employee engagement has the appearance of being yet another
trend, or what some might call old wine in a new bottle.
(Shashi, 2011) Reinforced the importance of employee communication on the success of a
business. She revealed that an organization should realize the importance of employees, more
than any other variable, as the most powerful contributor to an organizations competitive
position. (Bijaya kumar, 2011) Focused on various factors which lead to employee engagement
and what should company do to make the employees engaged. Proper attention on engagement
strategies will increase the organizational effectiveness in terms of higher productivity, profits,
quality, customer satisfaction, employee retention and increased adaptability. (Siddhanta & roy,
2012) Explored implications for theory, further research and practices by synthesizing modern
'Employee Engagement' activities being practiced by the corporate with the review of findings
from previous researches / surveys. (Singh & Shukla, 2012) Tried to find out what variables are
significant to create an engaged workforce. The study was exploratory in nature and the data has
been collected from a tin manufacturing organization.

Relationship between employee engagement levels and involvement:

According to (Ryam & Deci, 1987) management which fosters a supportive work environment
typically displays concern for employees needs and feelings, provides positive feedback and
encourages them to voice their concerns, develops new skills and solves work related problems.
(Puroell et al, 2003) Highlighted that employee engagement is only meaningful if there is a more
genuine sharing of responsibility between management and employees over issues of substance.
Their study also revealed that involvement in Economic. (seria management volume 16, 2013),
211 decisions affecting the job or work to be an important factor, which was strongly associated
with high levels of employee engagement thus demonstrating it is an important driver (Lucas et
al, 2006) viewed that Employee voice can be defined as the ability for employees to have an
input into decisions that are made in organizations. (Robinson et al, 2004) Highlighted the
importance of, feeling valued and involved as a key driver of engagement. Within this umbrella
of feeling valued and involved there are a number of elements that have a varying influence on
the extent to which the employee will feel valued and involved and hence engaged. (Robinson et

By: Mahechchha R. Patel

al, 2004) Stated that this can be a useful pointer to organizations towards those aspects of
working life that re-quire serious attention if engagement levels are to be maintained or
improved.

Why employee engagement is of importance and interest?

Employee engagement has become a heavily discussed topic in recent years. However, there is
still ambiguity within the academic literature as to how employee engagement can be influenced
by management. There has been significant interest in employee engagement, but this has been
coupled with a good deal of misunderstanding. According to (Kular et al, 2008), this
misunderstanding can be partly attributed to the fact that there is no definitive definition,
resulting in engagement being operationalised and subsequently measured in varying ways.
Organizations fight to recruit and train their talent, so they need to do their best to keep hold of it.
Organizations need to strike the right balance between fostering and enhancing employee
engagement levels while at the same time not compromising their competitive position. The
connection between the attitudes and behaviors of employees and the link to the organizations
bottom line was first successfully displayed 19 years ago by US retail company Sears. Sears
advocated employee engagement in the form of the employee-customer-profit chain. The
results which Sears attained from this initiative were astounding. In one year, Sears transformed
its biggest loss making 4 division (merchandising) from a $3bn loss to the company into a
$752m revenue generating division (De vita, 2007) As a result of the immense impact employee
engagement had on Sears, HR consultancy firms began to work with organizations to develop
metrics in order to quantify employee attitudes and behaviors and there resulting impact on
customer satisfaction and organizational performance. According to Jim Crawly, a principle at
HR research and consultancy company Towers Perrin, while previously anyone would
intuitively have said there is a link between people being well disposed towards an organization
and the likelihood of that organization being successful, now there is evidence to prove it (De
vita, 2007).
According to (Buchanan, 2004) the increased discretionary effort displayed by employees
produced on average, a 20% increase in individual performance and an 87% reduction in desire
to leave the organization. According to (Sirota Mischkind & Meltzer, 2005), from the analysis of

By: Mahechchha R. Patel

their research on employee attitudes, which was based on never before-published case studies
and data from 920,000 employees from 28 multinational companies over four years, resulted in
the generation of hard data to prove that the share price of organizations with highly engaged
employees increased on average by 16% in 2004 in comparison to the industry average of 6%.
Similarly, the stock price of organizations with high 5 morale had superior performance to
comparable companies in the same industry by a ratio of 2.5:1 during 2004. Conversely the stock
price of companies with low morale underperformed in relation to the industry competitors by a
ratio of 5:1. According to (Sirota Mischkind & Meltzer, 2005) Morale is a direct consequence of
being treated well by the company, and employees return the gift of good treatment with higher
productivity and work quality, lower turnover (which reduces recruiting and training costs), a
decrease in workers shirking their duties, and a superior pool of job applicants. These gains
translate directly into higher company profitability. Satisfied employees lead to satisfied
customers, which results in higher sales. Satisfied customers and higher sales, in turn, result in
more satisfied employees who can enjoy the sense of achievement and the material benefits that
come from working for a successful company. Its a virtuous circle the best of all worlds.
Kahns study started with the work of (Goffman, 1961), as well as looking across disciplines
such as psychology (Freud, 1922), sociology (Merton, 1957) and group theorists (slater 1966
Smith & Berg 1987) who all documented the natural resistance of an individual, concerning
becoming a member of on-going groups and systems. The individual seeks to prevent total
isolation or engulfment by being in a constant state of flux towards and away from the group
(Kahn, 1990). Kahn named 6 this forward and backward flux as, personal engagement and
personal disengagement. The cognitive aspect of employee engagement deals with the
employees beliefs about organization factors such as, how it is led, by whom and the working
conditions which exist within the organization. The emotional element deals with how the
employee feels about each of the three aforementioned factors and if they possess a positive or
negative attitude towards the organization and its leaders. The physical aspect of Kahns
definition relates to the physical energies employed by individuals in order to carry out their
organizational role(s). The literature concerning employee engagement poses a challenge due to
the fact that there is no one universally applied definition to cover the topic of employee
engagement. According to (Baumruk 2004) employee engagement has been defined within the
confines of emotional and intellectual commitment to the organization or the quantity of
By: Mahechchha R. Patel

discretionary effort, defined by (Yankelovich and Immerwahr, 1984), as the voluntary effort
employees provide above and beyond what is required by employees in their job (frank et al,
2004). From Kahns definition it is clear that employee engagement is a multi-faceted paradigm.
The multi-dimensional approach to looking at engagement comes from the perspective that Kahn
took on the individuals working experience (Kahn, 1990)argued that the work of (Goffman,
1961) only concentrated on momentary face-to-face meetings, whereas an altered concept
needed to be developed which would transcend appropriately into organizational life, which is,
according to (Diamond & Allcorn, 1985), on-going, emotionally charged and psychologically
complex. (Truss et al, 2006), define employee engagement as a passion for work, which
encompasses the three 7 elements of engagement, previously discussed by (Kahn, 1990) in one
psychological state. Due to the varying definitions of employee engagement, the results of
different studies become difficult to examine. This is because each study may look at the subject
of employee engagement through a different lens, depending on the definition they decide upon.
According to (Ferguson, 2007), with a universal definition of employee engagement lacking, it
cannot be accurately defined and thus it cannot be measured and thus managed.

By: Mahechchha R. Patel