Literature Review : Employee Engagement

Copy three important passages (minimum of 3 sentences each); and then respond to these passages. Why do you think they are important? How do they help the author create his purpose?

Employee Engagement: It’s a known perception that an engaged workforce provides many intangible benefits that is linked directly to retention. HR policies should focus on employee engagement initiatives that stimulate motivation levels of employees to perform better and bond with organisation. This process should be initiated right from induction and continue throughout their tenure by opening channels of continuous communication and encouraging interpersonal relations. HR is responsible to incorporate methods to measure engagement and at regular intervals track engagement contribution to company’s success.

Engagement is a sign of satisfaction and loyalty to the firm which can be incurred by increasing job resources

Employee Engagement is a measurable degree of an employee's positive or negative emotional attachment to their job, colleagues and organisation which profoundly influences their willingness to learn and perform at work. Thus engagement is distinctively different from employee satisfaction, motivation and organisational culture.

Blessing white from the division of GP strategy defines employee engagement as “ the intersection of maximum contribution for the organization and maximum satisfactory for the individual,” (Blessingwhite.com,

1.2 Analyse the three principle dimensions of employee engagement (the emotional, the cognitive and the physical)

Aon Hewitt (2012) indicates that the business success is critical regarding company’s performance on employee engagement. Engaged employees have a clear understanding of their roles in business strategy and deliver greater performance; they get more involved as well as having a strong connection and commitment to the company and strive to go above and beyond in their jobs (Aon Hewitt, 2012). Aon Hewitt (2012) also mentions that engagement is about measuring the state of emotional and intellectual involvement or commitment of the workforce. It goes beyond satisfaction (“how much I like things here”) and commitment (“how much I want to be here”) to engagement (“how much I want to, and actually do, improve the business results”) (Forde, 2014).

Wefald, A. J. & Downey, R. G. (2009). Job engagement in organizations: fad, fashion, or folderol? Journal of Organizational Behavior, 30, 141-145.

The key to engagement are managers that include the workforce in making their jobs interesting. Mangers that truly care about what is in the hearts and minds of each individual, are successful in giving the employee a feeling of value in the organizations. Dignity and respect that are given by leaders towards subordinates creates high retention and morale within the organization.

The developmental physiology is heavily affected by the culture, gender and the age of the subject. All three of these factors takes a huge role in developing an individual. Fist the age of the individual is very important. The age affects how much the individual is affected by the outside world, giving the nature and nature more effect on a younger individual then say an older individual. This reasoning has led to many of the theories in developmental phycology to be based around early adolescence, as this is the time of their lives that they can be most easily manipulated and changed depending on their surroundings. During this crucial time in the development of the individual, the gender and culture aspects of the child’s life has a large effect on the developmental phycology, the cultural aspect affect the development as different cultures have different parenting styles, which can either have a positive or negative effect on the child, as well as racial stereotypes possibly leading to detrimental effects of the child’s development.

Employee satisfaction doesn’t necessarily mean employees are engaged. Employees can be happy, show up for work daily, but that doesn’t mean they are being productive or mindful of patient’s needs. When employees are engaged, they care. Examples would be a hospital employee making eye contact with visitors and patients, another would be a night shift worker being aware of quiet time during their shift. (Kruse, 2015) Leaders need to know what drives employees’ engagement. Leaders that behave consistently with the organizations core values and show a sincere interest in the employee’s well-being have been a link to improving employee engagement.

Predictors of employee engagement are satisfaction with leadership, employee development, communication and innovation (Persson, 2010). Job demands and job resources foster contradictory psychological processes, one connecting to burnout and the other to employee engagement (Persson, 2010). Burnout is a process that occurs when job demands causes weakening of health and depleted energy as the negative outcome (Bakker & Demerouti, 2007; Persson, 2010). Employee engagement develops from a motivational process dependent on job resources (Persson, 2010). The Intrinsic and extrinsic reasons that motive employees are feeling of belonging, competency, autonomy, financial compensation and benefits. These reasons are shown to enhance employee engagement, whereas the absence will weaken engagement and result in frustration and failure to achieve company objectives (Bakker & Demerouti, 2007; Persson, 2010).

Robinson and Hay (2003) mentioned employee engagement as an evolution of past research which focuses on employee satisfaction, motivational approaches and commitment. This is a modernized version of job satisfaction. According to Robert J. Vance (2006), employees who are engaged in their work and committed to their organizations give companies crucial competitive advantage- including higher productivity and lower employee turnover. Now-a-days the companies’ objective is to retain the best talents and manage their performance for increasing company’s productivity and revenue.

Employee engagement is a major issue for most of the organization even today, which needs to be resolved immediately. Employee engagement is fundamentally a

Employee Engagement is made up of two words, Employee and engagement. In simple words, it can be defined as an engagement or commitment of an employee towards its organization. It is not entirely clear when the term “engagement” was first used in relation to work, but generally the Gallup Organization is credited for coining the term somewhere in the 1990s( Schaufeli, 2013 p.2).