EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT: A PROGRESSIVE REVIEW OF LITERATURE

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1 International Journal of Marketing and Human Resource Management (IJMHRM) Volume 8, Issue 2, April June 2017, pp , Article ID: IJMHRM_08_02_007 Available online at IJMHRM &VType=8&IType=2 ISSN Print: ISSN and ISSN Online: X Journal Impact Factor (2016): (Calculated by GISI) IAEME Publication EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT: A PROGRESSIVE REVIEW OF LITERATURE Manish Bhalla Jagannath University, Jaipur, Rajasthan, India Dr. Vaishali Sharma Jagannath University, Jaipur, Rajasthan, India ABSTRACT Though frameworks for understanding engagement vary, the concept is commonly understood to capture levels of commitment and discretionary effort exhibited by employees. In a world that is changing both in terms of the global nature of work and the diversity of the workforce, engaged employees may be a key to competitive advantage. To improve employee engagement and to give full play to the employee potential ability is a magic weapon to obtain success. Employee engagement is a relatively new but extremely popular concept in the field of Human Resource Development. It has been discussed by many of HRD practitioners lately because it is believed to have positive impacts toward performance, work attitude and work behavior. It has become a topic of immense interest in the organizational literature in recent years and has also been acknowledged as a vital factor contributing to organizational success and could have positive implications in all aspects of any business. It combines elements of belonging, commitment, motivation, readiness and productivity. We theorize that engagement, conceptualized as the investment of an individual s complete self into a role, provides a more comprehensive explanation of relationships with performance than do well-known concepts that reflect narrower aspects of the individual s self. Employee engagement is a strategic approach for driving improvement and encouraging organizational change. Organizations have the potential to gain considerable benefits from incorporating engagement into their culture. Engaged employees contribute to the foundation line of any business and their engagement is echoed in their services to clients and customers. This paper makes an attempt to study the different theoretical dimensions of employee engagement with the help of review of literature. This can be used to provide an overview and references on some of the conceptual and practical work undertaken in the area of the employee engagement. Through this paper, we also aim to provide a comprehensive account of how employee engagement needs to be 67 editor@iaeme.com

2 Manish Bhalla and Dr. Vaishali Sharma integrated within the HRM fabric of an organization if engagement is to yield sustainable competitive advantage. Key words: Commitment, Behavior, Performance, Discretionary Effort, Involvement. Cite this Article: Manish Bhalla and Dr. Vaishali Sharma, Employee Engagement: A Progressive Review of Literature. International Journal of Marketing and Human Resource Management, 8(2), 2017, pp IJMHRM /issues.asp?jtype= IJMHRM &VType=8&IType=2 1. INTRODUCTION Employee engagement is a concept that has become increasingly mainstreamed into management thought over the last decade. It has been the focus of growing interest in recent years as research in positive organizational phenomena has expanded. Employee engagement is a positive, enthusiastic, and affective connection with work that motivates an employee to invest in getting the job done, not just well but with excellence because the work energizes the person. It is generally seen as an internal state of being physical, mental and emotional that brings together earlier concepts of work effort, organizational commitment, job satisfaction and flow (or optimal experience). Typical phrases used in employee engagement writing include discretionary effort, going the extra mile, feeling valued and passion for work. Employees are considered to be engaged, when there is an optimistic attitude towards the work and also a higher degree of commitment. An organization can acquire most of assets similar to its competitor but cannot copy the skill and talent of the human resources of the competitor. Employee Engagement is an important area that an organization should concentrate to be productive and to get effective, loyal, and committed work force. Employee engagement should be a continuous process of learning, improvement and action. Employee engagement is linked with the emotional, cognitive and physical aspects of work and how these factors integrated. Employee s engagement is a long term process and linked to core tenants of the business like as, values, culture and managerial philosophy. As the literature notes, employees can be motivated and committed to their jobs, without necessarily engaging with the overall strategies and objectives of the organization, or without really feeling the wider impact of their efforts. The term employee engagement is rooted in academic research, though it was considered largely as practical consultancy issue till 1990s. Literature across disciplines lacks congruence in defining engagement. Also numerous, often inconsistent, definitions of engagement exist in the literature. What is common to these definitions is the active use of cognition, emotions, and behaviors in engagement. Kahn (1990) found that a person s level of engagement was a function of the experience of three psychological conditions: psychological meaningfulness, psychological safety, and psychological availability. Kahn s three conditions seem especially relevant and important for newcomers for understanding how to engage. He found that work that is experienced as challenging, clearly delineated, varied, creative, and autonomous is most likely to be associated with the experience of psychological meaningfulness. He also found that psychological safety was influenced by interpersonal relationships, group and intergroup dynamics, management styles and processes, and organizational norms. Lastly, he found that psychological availability was negatively influenced by depletion of physical, emotional and psychological resources required to invest one s self in the performance of the role. Engagement is about passion and commitment-the willingness to invest oneself and expand one s discretionary efforts to help the employer succeed, which is beyond simple satisfaction with the employment arrangement or basic loyalty to the employer (Macey and Schnieder, 2008). Macey and Schneider (2008) defined engagement in three levels: trait engagement (disposition and cognition), physiological state engagement (affection and emotions), and behavioral engagement 68 editor@iaeme.com

3 Employee Engagement: A Progressive Review of Literature (behaviors). Positive affectivity echoes existing definitions of employee engagement and thus represents a central component of the engagement construct (Kang, 2010). Alfes et al. (2013) showed a positive association between perceived HRM practices and employee engagement in two independent samples. Overall, however, only a limited number of studies have linked such organizational contextual level variables with engagement and more research is required. Defining employee engagement is no easy task. There are multiple conceptions of engagement, and numerous similar concepts such as commitment, employee empowerment, organizational citizenship behavior, and motivation (Shuck & Wollard, 2010). 2. METHODOLOGY This literature review provides an overview of employee engagement and discusses how the concept has evolved through the literature, which enables definitions of employee engagement to be drawn out. This literature review presents several definitions of employee engagement in chronological order and therefore helps in understanding the extent and progression of the concept. Relevant literature has been reviewed and expressed clearly and understandably. This literature review examines the general sentiment of the literature and the evidence available across academics in terms of its definition and historical development. Methodology for the literature review has been structured in three phases as follows: I. A literature search to uncover references to engagement. II. Screening and analysis of identified literature. III. Documentation process through which the literature was schematically organized. 3. EVOLUTION AND DEFINITIONS The evolution of employee engagement lies in work on employee organizational commitment and organizational citizenship behavior. Though it is related to and encompasses these concepts, employee engagement is broader in scope. Looking back at how the concept has evolved would help identify past and present states as well as provide a depth of understanding, context, and insight. The purpose of this section is to review what employee engagement means in the literature in order to identify if a clear and common idea of what engagement is can be drawn out. The literature on employee engagement builds on earlier research and discussion on issues of commitment and organizational behavior, but means more than what these terms encapsulate. Kahn (1990) referred to engagement as a situation where people express themselves physically, cognitively and emotionally during work role performance. Schaufeli and Bakker (2003) described employee engagement as A sense of energetic and effective connection of employees with their work activities and they see themselves as able to deal well with the demands of their job. Measure (2004) defined employee engagement as a level of commitment and involvement of employees towards their organization and its value. The primary behavior of engaged employees is speaking positively about the organization, coworkers, potential employees and customers, having strong desire to be the member of organization and exerting extra effort to contribute to organization success. Stairs (2005) stated that employee engagement may be defined as the degree of commitment to a particular job. According to Stairs commitment is further divided as rational and emotional where rational commitment is driven by self-interest of getting some financial rewards and emotional by deeper beliefs in the job or organization. Shaw (2005) defines employee engagement as translating employee potential into employee performance and business success and thus changing the way employees perform by utilizing the tools in the armory of internal communication professionals. Vance (2006) defines employee engagement is the extent to which employees put discretionary effort into their work, beyond the required minimum to get the job done, in the form of extra time, brainpower, or energy editor@iaeme.com

4 Manish Bhalla and Dr. Vaishali Sharma Pritchard (2008) described employee engagement in terms of Say, Stay, Strive where say means how employees talk about their organization with others whereas stay stands for commitment and loyalty of employees and strive means employees are willing to do anything for their organization. Macey and Schneider (2008) Engagement has variously been conceived as a psychological or affective state (e.g. commitment, involvement, attachment, etc.), a performance construct (e.g. role performance, effort, observable behavior, organizational citizenship behavior etc.). Markos and Sridevi (2010) described employee engagement as a harmonious and positive relationship between employer and employee, where employee is emotionally committed towards organization and work with zeal. Their study concluded that employee engagement is a totally distinct and a broader concept than job satisfaction, employee commitment and organization citizenship behavior. Organizations are therefore putting special efforts to enhance the level of engagement among their employees. Rich, Lepine and Crawford (2010) says in engagement, organization members harness their full selves in active, complete work role performances by driving personal energy into physical, cognitive and emotional labors. Engaged individuals are described as being psychologically present, fully there, attentive, feeling, connected, integrated, and focused in their role performances. They are open to themselves and others, connected to work, and focused in their role performance. Shuck and Wollard (2010) defined employee engagement as an individual employee s cognitive, emotional and behavioral state directed towards desired organizational outcomes. Litten et al (2011) says employee engagement is a complex and dynamic process that reflects each individual s unique, personal relationship with work. Cook (2012) define engagement as how positively the employee thinks about organization, feels about the organization and is proactive in relation to achieving organizational goals for customers, colleagues and other stakeholders. Truss et al (2013) suggested that engagement may constitute the mechanism through which HRM practitioners impact individual and organizational performance. 4. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS Despite the lack of cohesion in the literature there are some general conclusions that can be drawn about the concept of employee engagement. It is concluded there is no universal definition on employee engagement however literature review is more or less consistent in its positive view of employee engagement. A number of authors have tried to define and explain the term employee engagement in different manner. Definitions of engagement largely focus on commitment, motivation, satisfaction, and communication. Academic definitions of engagement pay more attention to the psychological state of engagement. They describe engaged employees as being fully involved in their task, absorbed, charged with energy, vigor and focused, so much so that they lose track of time at work. A recurring theme in the literature is the idea that engagement involves employees going the extra mile, and exerting discretionary effort over and above what is normally expected. From the definitions, it is clear that there are numerous ways to define employee engagement which creates vagueness in academic world. Macey and Schneider (2008) also disagreed that there is consensus in the understanding of employee engagement and argued the meaning of employee engagement is ambiguous among both academic researchers and among practitioners who use it in conversations with clients. The reason for the ambiguity and confusion might draw from the multi-faceted nature of employee engagement as both an internal mental state (as in feelings of satisfaction) and a behavioral component. Exploratory studies in this arena may be fruitful for the policy makers and decision takers to harness optimum benefits from employees hidden talents editor@iaeme.com

5 Employee Engagement: A Progressive Review of Literature REFERENCES [1] Kahn, W. A Psychological Conditions of Personal Engagement and Disengagement at Work. Academy of Management Journal. 33, [2] Schaufeli, W., & Bakker, A Utrecht Work Engagement Scale, Utrecht University, Preliminary Manual, Ver. 1. [3] Measure, S. 2004, Significance of Employee Engagement. Compensation and Benefits Management. 8, 4, [4] Stairs, M Work Happy: Developing Employee Engagement to Deliver Competitive Advantage. Selection and Development Review. 21, 5. [5] Shaw, K Employee engagement, how to build a high-performance workforce. Melcrum Publishing Limited, ISBN: ltextarticle/articles/ html#b15 [6] Vance, R. J Employee engagement and commitment, A guide to understanding, measuring and increasing engagement in your organization. Society for Human Resource Management, [7] Pritchard, K Employee Engagement in the UK: Meeting the Challenge in the Public Sector. Development and Learning in Organizations. 22, 6, [8] Macey, W.H., & Schneider, B The meaning of employee engagement. Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 1 (2008), 3-30 [9] Kang, M Toward a model of engaging publics: Trust, satisfaction and identification, and the mediating role of public engagement between organization-public relationships and supportive behaviors. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY. [10] Markos, S., & Sridevi, S. 2010, Employee Engagement: The Key to Improving Performance. International Journal of Business and Management. 5, 12. [11] Rich, B., Lepine, J., & Crawford, E Job engagement: antecedents and effects on job performance, Academy of Management Journal 53(2): [12] Shuck, B., & Wollard, K Employee engagement and HRD: A seminal review of the foundations, Human Resource development Review, Vol. 9, No. 1, pp [13] Litten, J.I., Vaughan, A.G., & Wildermuth, C.D The Fabric of Engagement: The Engagement and Personality of Managers and Professionals in Human and Developmental Disability Services, Journal of Social Work in Disability and Rehabilitation, Vol. 10, pp [14] Cook, S The essential guide to employee engagement. Kogan Page. [15] Truss, C., Shantz, A., Soane, E., Alfes, K., & Delbridge, R Employee engagement, organizational performance and individual well-being: exploring the evidence, developing the theory, The International Journal of Human Resource Management, Vol. 24 No. 14, pp [16] Sivasubramanian and Rupa. An Empirical Study on Employee Engagement with Reference to it Sector in Chennai. Journal of Management, 4(1), 2017, pp [17] Philcy Philip and Alice Mani, Connect Among Employee Engagement and Three Key of Organisational Commitment Level An Empirical Exploration AMID Techs. International Journal of Mechanical Engineering and Technology, 8(3), 2017, pp [18] Dr. A. Selva Rani, K. Punitha, A Study On Employee Engagement in Chettinad Cement Corporation Limited, Puliyur, Karur. International Journal of Management (IJM), 6(1), 2015, pp [19] B. Veerabramham, Nagaraju Kolla, Antecedents of Employee Engagement: An Empirical Study. International Journal of Management (IJM), 5(3), 2014, pp editor@iaeme.com