What Do We Really Know About Employee Engagement?

Abstract

Employee engagement has become one of the most popular topics in management. In less than 10 years, there have been dozens of studies published on employee engagement as well as several meta‐analyses. However, there continue to be concerns about the meaning, measurement, and theory of employee engagement. In this article, we review these concerns as well as research in an attempt to determine what we have learned about employee engagement. We then offer a theory of employee engagement that reconciles and integrates Kahn's () theory of engagement and the Job Demands–Resources (JD‐R) model (Bakker & Demerouti, ). We conclude that there continues to be a lack of consensus on the meaning of employee engagement as well as concerns about the validity of the most popular measure of employee engagement. Furthermore, it is difficult to make causal conclusions about the antecedents and consequences of employee engagement due to a number of research limitations. Thus, there remain many unanswered questions and much more to do if we are to develop a science and theory of employee engagement.

Exploring the Relationship Between Exclusive Talent Management, Perceived Organizational Justice and Employee Engagement: Bridging the Literature

“…Employee engagement, regarded as crucial for an organization's success (Rich et al 2010), has seen a surge of interest in human resource development (HRD) circles and has been the subject of extensive research in recent years (Ghosh et al 2014;Roof 2015;Saks and Gruman 2014). With the importance of discretionary effort in the attainment of organizational goals (Thomas and Rowland 2014), employee engagement has become an important organizational measurement, with implications for competitive performance.…”

“…Saks and Gruman (2014) highlight two influential definitions of engagement in the academic literature, from Kahn (1990) and Maslach et al (2001). Maslach et al (2001) define employee engagement as 'an energetic state of involvement with personally fulfilling activities that enhance one's sense of professional efficacy ' (Maslach et al 2001, p. 498), with engagement characterized by 'energy, involvement, and efficacy'.…”

“…Engaged employees are fully committed to and motivated by contributing to and achieving organizational goals, but importantly they also achieve self-satisfaction and feeling of worth in a reciprocal relationship with the organization (Ashforth and Humphrey 1995;Kahn 1990;Maslach et al 2001;Saks and Gruman 2014;Schaufeli et al 2002;Shuck 2011). The importance of employees' self-satisfaction and feeling of worth in a reciprocal relationship with the organization is reflected in employee engagement and perceived organizational justice, as explained through SET and equity theory.…”

How can personal development lead to increased engagement? The roles of meaningfulness and perceived line manager relations

“…Meaningfulness is not just a key antecedent of engagement; it is also proposed to be a core psychological process that connects perceptions of the wider work environment with 8 engagement (Kahn, 1990;Saks & Gruman, 2014). This is because meaningfulness acts as a motivational pathway that transforms the value and purpose derived from the work context into a positive and fulfilling personalized experience (Shuck & Rose, 2013).…”

“…Over recent years initiatives to improve employee engagement have become widespread because of their potential to leverage organizational success through harnessing the motivation and spirit of its employees (Saks & Gruman, 2014). As HRM practitioners are often responsible for leading organizational change initiatives that seek to improve employee engagement through human resource (HR) practices (Arrowsmith & Parker, 2013;Reissner & Pagan, 2013), and given that a recent evidence synthesis shows that employee perceptions of development are associated with engagement (Bailey, Madden, Alfes, & Fletcher, 2015), it may be particularly useful for HRM researchers to examine the psychological processes that underpin the relationship between personal development and engagement in more depth.…”