INTRODUCTION:

Human Resources Management is the practice of bringing people and organisations together so that their joint objectives are met. In view of the path breaking changes across the world due to liberalization, privatization and globalization, managers were forced to link the human resources objectives with critical organisational objectives in order to improve organisational output and create a culture in an organisation that nurtures and promotes creativity and innovation.

This led to the evolution of the domain of Strategic Human Resources Management (SHRM).

SHRM can be defined as the evolution of steady, associated compilation of practices, procedures and guidelines to aid the accomplishment of the organisation’s key objectives. Thus, HR plays an important role in ‘Strategy Formation’ as well as ‘Strategy Implementation’.

One of the many constructive SHRM initiatives is ‘Employee Engagement’.

Employee engagement (EE) is defined as “the extent to which employees commit to something or someone in their organisation, how hard they work and how long they stay as a result of that commitment.” (Lockwood, 2007)

SIGNIFICANCE OF EE:

All resources can be procured. Even capable employees can be appointed. But EE practices would have strong foundations in the culture of the organisation. It would be virtually impossible for competitors to replicate in their corresponding organisations. Thus, HR policies facilitating EE constitute critical competitive edge in ensuring employee performance and enhancing organisational output.

Evolution of EE:

EE is a challenge for managers and leaders in organisations across the world, as it has been identified as a critical aspect in assessing the levels of their effectiveness, ability to innovate and competitiveness. Prior to 1990 EE was considered largely as a practical consultancy issue.Since then, the concept has been attracting greater attention and focus from scholars in multiple disciplines such as business and management, psychology and organisational behavior. Since it is comparatively new concept that there is a scarcity of vital academic literature on the subject. It has not been easy to define the extent of EE and assess its scope. Each study on employee engagement explores it under a different context. As a result, there is absence of a universal and unanimous definition and measurement of employee engagement.Thus, to get a fuller and clearer understanding of EE, we need to rely on multiple studies on the subject.

Figure 1.1 indicates that between 1990 and 2008 there seem to have been only 3 significant and published conceptual works and only 5 critical empirical studies.

Employee engagement has become a widely used and popular term (Robinson et al, 2004). Yet,a lot of literature is available in practitioner journals based on its practice rather than on empirical research.

As noted by Robinson et al, (2004) there has been surprisingly little academic and empirical research on a topic that has become so popular. Consequently, EE has the notion of being an old construct with a new name.

To make matters worse, EE has been defined in many different ways and thedefinitions and measures often sound like other better known and established constructs like Organisational Commitment and Organisational Citizenship Behavior (Robinson et al, 2004).Most often it has been defined as emotional and intellectual commitment to the organisation or the amount of discretionary effort exhibited by employees in their jobs (Frank et al,2004).

Only 13% of employees worldwide are engaged at work, according to Gallup's new 142-country study on the ‘State of the Global Workplace’ (Lockwood,2007). This implies that one out 8 employees among the roughly 180 million employees in the countries studied worldwide is engaged in their jobs and is making positive contributions to their organisation’s output.

Table 1.1 Percentage of Employees Engaged Worldwide (Lockwood, 2007)

Worldwide, Actively Disengaged Employees Outnumber Engaged Employees by Nearly 2-1
2011-2012 results among employed residents, aged 18 and older in 142 countries and areas
Engagement Status	2009 – 2010	2011-2012
Actively Disengaged	27 %	24 %
Not Engaged	62 %	63 %
Engaged	11 %	13 %

The majority of employees worldwide i.e. around 63% are "not engaged”. Thiswould mean that they might be demotivated and are unlikely to invest their discretionary time, energy and effort in achieving organisational output. The remaining 24% are "actively disengaged," which means they are neither happy nor unproductive at work. They are likely to induce adverse reactions among coworkers. Roughly this translates into 900 million being not engaged and 340 million consciously disengaged employees across the world.

Engaged, Non–Engaged and Disengaged Employees:

· ‘Engaged’ employees are passionate about working efficiently and effectively; they have a sense of deep connect with their group and they support the endeavor for a long-term success of their organisation

· ‘Non-engaged’ employees often while away their time at work without spending any energy of putting much effort in their work. They tend to be always passive;

· ‘Actively disengaged’ employees are depressed; they contribute to many shortcomings in the group and tend to disengage the other team members.

Definition of Employee Engagement as per Consulting Organisations:

As on date, there is no unique and widely established definition of the term EE. This is obvious when one looks at the definitions forwarded for the term by three well-known consulting organisations in HR. These are:

Perrin’s Global Workforce Study (Markos and Sreedevi, 2010) uses the definition “employees’ willingness and ability to help their companies succeed, largely by providing discretionary effort on a sustainable basis”. According to their findings, EE is influenced by many aspects which comprise both emotional and rational factors connected to work and the overall work experience.

Development Dimensions International (DDI) (Markos and Sreedevi, 2010) uses the definition “The extent to which people value, enjoy and believe in what they do”. DDI also states that its measure is similar to employee satisfaction and loyalty.

Gallup organisation defines EE as the involvement with and enthusiasm for work (Lockwood,2007). Gallup as cited by Dernovsek (2008)) likens employee engagement to a positive employees’ emotional attachment and employees’ commitment.

Key Research Paradigms:

The concept of EE is relatively new. It was initiated by W.A. Kahn (1990) the father of EE, who defined and developed the concept of ‘Personal Engagement’. Three conditions, viz. ‘Psychological Safety’, ‘Psychological

Meaningfulness’ and ‘Psychological Availability’, have a strong associationwith personal engagement which lead to EE.

Long before EE was conceptualized by Kahn (1990), Csikszentmihalyi and Thomas (1982) expressed the ‘Flow’ concept. Flow is anoverwhelming level of activity which employees experience when they are totally involved in their work. It may seem logical to link the two. However more research needs to be done to establish a connect between the two constructs.

For more than ten years after 1990 there was no major development of the concept. The next decade was significant for arriving at a definition of EE by researchers and ensuring it was distinct from other concepts such as Job Satisfaction (JS), Organisational Citizenship Behavior (OCB) and Job Involvement (JI) (Harter et al, 2002), (Schaufeli et al, 2002)and (Robinson et al, 2004). Maslach et al (Schaufeli et al, 2002) developed a theory of EE which was an antithesis of ‘Burnout’.

May et al,(2004) undertook the first empirical testing of Kahn’s concepts of “Psychological Meaningfulness, Psychological Safety and Psychological Security”.

It was Saks A.M.(2006) who initiated and completed the first academic research on ‘Antecedents’ and ‘Consequences’ of EE and identified three distinct drivers viz., ‘Cognitive’, ‘Emotional’ and ‘Behavioral’. The above research paper of Saks A.M. (2006) suggests the EE canbe divided into two major components viz., ‘Job Engagement’ and ‘Organisation Engagement’ which can befurther subdivided into the following sub-components:

Sub-components of Job Engagement:

· Absorption (Cognitive), Dedication (Emotional) and Vigor (Physical)

· Commitment.

· Discretionary Effort

· Efficient

· Effective

· Energy

· Enthusiasm

· Focus

· Going the extra mile

· Hard work

· Harnessing of Self – Self direction, Active self-management of one’s work, Willingness

· to invest in oneself.

· Involvement

· Innovative

· Loyalty

· Motivation

· Ownership

· Passion

· Productive

· Talented

Sub components of Organisation Engagement:

· Organisational pride

· Organisational purpose

· Alignment with organisational goals

· Promote connections towards work and other employees

· Sensitive to other employees

Work Engagement as Part of EE:

According to Schaufeli et al (2002), engagement can be defined as a positive, fulfilling and work-related state of mind that is characterized by ‘vigor’, ‘dedication’ (efficacy) and ‘absorption’. ‘Vigor’ is that enhanced energy level, driven by employees’ career aspirations that enables them to overcome work stress and be willing to put in more effort in their work. It also facilitates mental resilience and persistencein overcoming challenges faced while doing their work.It also pertains to the amount of mental effort or mental strength that employees can put in while doing their work.

‘Dedication’refers to one’s feeling of motivation, challenge, eagerness,importance, effectiveness and honor. Dedication also refers to the emotive side of work engagement and the enthusiasm of people to expend substantive time and effort in doing something purposeful.

‘Absorption’ refers to the reflective aspect where individuals are intensely concentrating on something and undergo a high level of involvement while executing a task.

This includes being happily engrossed in one’s work, so that time seems to pass quickly and one has difficulties in detaching oneself from work (Coetzer and Rothmann, 2007). Work Engagement refers to the binding of organisation members to their work roles in such a way so that they apply their minds totally on the job and express themselves physically, cognitively and emotionally during role performances. Work engagement is a subset of ‘job engagement’.

Definition of EE for academic research:

For purposes of academic research,EEcan be defined as ‘a distinct and unique construct that consists of cognitive, emotional, and behavioral components that are associated with individual role performance’. Furthermore, engagement is distinguishable from several related constructs, most notably ‘Organisational Commitment’, ‘Organisational Citizenship Behavior’, and ‘Job Involvement’.

Researchers have pointed out the criticality of definition of EE as well as related constructs like

Task Engagement, Job Engagement, Work Engagement, Group and Team Engagement and

Organisational Engagement.

i) Task Engagement is the engagement associated with specific tasks. Usually a job comprises numerous tasks. (Saks and Gruman, 2014)

ii) Job Engagement is the engagement associated with job centric factors such as sustainable workload, feelings of choice and control, appropriate recognition andrewards, a supportive work community, fairness and justice and meaningful and valued work. (Saks, 2006).

iii) Work Engagement is defined as a person’s involvement in his or her job. It has two dimensions namely ‘Vigour’ and ‘Dedication’. (Rothmann and Jordaan, 2006), (Saks and Gruman, 2014)

iv) Group/Team Engagement is the engagement of an employee associated with group/team activities. (Saks and Gruman, 2014).

ii) Organisational Engagement is the engagement of the employee in exchange for the economic and socioemotional resources received from the organisation like ‘Perceived Organisational Support’ (POS) and ‘Procedural Justice’ (Saks, 2006), (Saks and Gruman,2014)

Linking these constructs leads us to what can be classified as ‘Hierarchy of EE’.

Figure 1.2 – Hierarchy of EE

Significant findings and trends:

Kahn’s (1990) pioneering research aimed to examine the psychological conditions of Personal Engagement and Disengagement at work.He assumed that people use varying degrees of their selves, physically, cognitively, and emotionally, in work role. He used a qualitative study method and found that Personal Engagement depended on three factors viz., ‘Psychological Safety’, ‘Psychological Meaningfulness’ and ‘Psychological Availability’. Thereafter, Saks (2006) was the first to provide a framework indicating the linkages between ‘Antecedents, EE and Consequences’ based on social exchange theory. He assumed antecedents led to EE which in turn facilitated consequences beneficial to organisations.He also classified different types of engagement such as ‘Job Engagement’ and ‘Organisational Engagement and their ‘Consequences’.Nature of industry domains was not mentioned and generational differences were not considered.

According to Rothmann and Jordaan (2006) ‘Job Resources’ and Job Demands are two factors which have a strong influence on the ‘Vigor’, ‘Dedication’ and the ‘Absorption’ levels of employees which in turn facilitates enhanced ‘Work Engagement’.

Bhatnagar (2007) examined the impact of EE on ‘Retention’ of young employees, in a young industry such as Information Technology Enabled Services (ITES) in India, using the ‘Gallup Workplace Audit’. She found that EE depended on three factors viz., ‘Organisational Culture’, ‘Career Planning’ and ‘Organisational Support’. Study was limited to ITES employees (BPO Sector). Joseph Cezar L. Deligeroand Jake M. Laguador, (2014) studied Work Engagement among Employees and its Relationship with Work Units’ Performance of a Higher Education Institution and found that there is significant difference in work engagement between different age groups.

Vibhash Kumar, (2013) in his doctoral thesis ‘Employee Engagement: A Study of Select Organizations’ has examined EE in three industries in the National Capital Region (NCR) of India, viz., the IT Industry, the Banking industry and the Education Sector and concluded that education sector employees are more engaged than the IT and Banking sector employees.

EE forGen Y:

Gen Y or ‘Millennials’ as those born in the late seventies are known, have generated a lot of academic research interest of late, as they would form the most significant cohort in workplaces across the world for the next two generations. It is expected that a better understanding of this generation would enable appropriate formulation of HR policies and facilitate SHRM. It is in this context that EE for Gen Y becomes critical.

In the next twenty years there would be at least four cohorts in the work place. These are:

Traditionalists – Those were born before 1946.

Baby Boomers – Those who were born from 1946 to 1964.

Gen X – Those who were born from 1965 to 1978

Gen Y – Those who were born from 1979 to 1994.

Gen Y is also known by many other names listed in Table 1.1.

Table 1.2 – Other names for Gen Y (Brack, 2012), Srivastava (2013)

S. No	Name
1	Baby-on-Board Generation
2	Digital Natives
3	Dot-Coms
4	Echo-Boomers
5	Face bookers
6	Generation D(digital)
7	Gen - Next
8	iGeneration
9	Me Generation
10	Millennial
11	MySpace Generation
12	Next Generation
13	Nexters
14	Screenagers

Some literature uses the term “Millennial” to refer to those people born between 1982 and 2000 and whereas “Generation Y” and “Millennial” constitute the two most common nomenclatures, for this group of youngsters.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics by 2020, nearly half (46 percent) of all U.S. workers will be Millennials (Lynch, 2008). The large numbers of Gen Y coupled with the shrinking numbers of Gen X and the ongoing superannuation of Baby Boomers suggests that organisations will be faced with leadership crises.

Millennials would be expected make up for these gaps. (Brack, 2012).

The situation in India is expected to be a few steps ahead. 65 % of the Indian population is below the age of 35.Gen Y population of India is 25.47 % of the world population, (Alley and Shah, 2011). According to Singh (2012) 33 % Indian population is expected to be Gen Y in 2020.

Implications for SHRM:

Employee Engagement has generated a lot of attention and interest of late warranting considerable research especially in today’s context of Liberalization, Privatization and Globalization.

“EE is vital contributor in enhancing organisational output. Advanced levels of engagement in local, national and domestic and international firms, champion retention of talent, encourage customer loyalty and boost organisational performance and stakeholder value. A composite construct, EE is influenced by many factors—from organisation’s culture, company communication and leadership to trust, respect, managerial styles and company esteem. For today’s multi-generational workplace, training opportunities, career prospects, balance between work and life and authorization to make decisions are important.

Thus, to foster a culture of engagement, HR leads the way to design, measure and evaluate proactive workplace policies and practices that help attract and retain talent with skills and competencies necessary for growth and sustainability.” (Lockwood, 2007).

It seeks to achieve the most desirable results from people by obtaining their unwavering participation. It is the art of acquiring, establishing and retaining a capable workforce to achieve the goals of an organisation in a productive and competent manner.

As already posited by Saks (2006), ‘Antecedents’ facilitate EE which in turn result in valuable ‘Consequences’ which have the capacity to enhance organisational output and performance.

EE for Gen Y is likely to be the next big challenge faced by organisations in India as well as across the world as they would constitute the largest cohort for the next twenty years. An understanding of the antecedents and consequences of Gen Y EE would enable contemporary as well as futuristic HR polices and initiatives to ensure meaningful EE of Gen Y employees. In the next twenty years and even later this could prove to be the most competitive advantage for the organisations to meet the challenges posed by globalization and the international war for talent.

Baba et al (2014), examining the Organizational Attributes and Engaging Generation Y in the Banking Sector, concluded that ‘Culture’ of the company has the maximum impact on Gen Y EE in the Banking industry in Malaysia. Study was limited to the Malaysian Banking industry.

In view of the paucity of research on Gen Y EE this is a potential area of research.

4. CONCLUSIONS:

There have been attempts to define EE from the year 1990 to the year 2000.Hencethere were not many empirical research papers during this period. Thereafter, there are some research papers on some service industries. An area which does not seem to have been well researched is the impact of EE on employees belonging to different age groups such as Gen Y.

EE levels across the world are still quite low at 13% as mentioned by Lockwood (2007).

5. AREAS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH:

Some of the areas for future research are as follows:

1 Study of antecedents which facilitate EE.

2 Generational differences in EE.

3 Examination of EE across different domains and sectors.

4 Study of EE across different cultures and geographies.

5 Developing a conceptual model linking ‘Antecedents, EE and Consequences’.

6. REFERENCES:

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Received on 10.11.2017 Modified on 25.11.2017

Asian Journal of Management. 2018; 9(1):673-679.

DOI: 10.5958/2321-5763.2018.00104.X