Paul Turner

Employee Engagement in Contemporary OrganizationsMaintaining High Productivity and Sustained Competitiveness

Employee Engagement in Contemporary Organizations

Paul Turner

Employee Engagement

in Contemporary Organizations

Maintaining High Productivity and Sustained Competitiveness

Paul TurnerLeeds Business SchoolLeeds Beckett UniversityLeeds, UK

ISBN 978-3-030-36386-4 ISBN 978-3-030-36387-1 (eBook)https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36387-1

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

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To Gail

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Preface

The subject of employee engagement has been a fruitful source of aca-demic research and practice insight. Models and hypotheses have been put forward over a period of thirty years with many attributed outcomes arising from each iteration. A narrative that has emerged is that if an individual is engaged at work, then that person will be more motivated and have a higher level of well-being; in turn, this will have a positive rollover effect on personal, team and departmental business or service performance. Once extrapolated to the whole workforce, employee engagement assumes strategic importance with significant potential ben-efits including higher shareholder returns, operating income, revenue growth, profit margins, creativity and innovation and customer or client satisfaction; higher levels of well-being; lower workforce turnover; and lower levels of absence. It follows that employers want engaged employ-ees because they can deliver improved business performance; employees want the conditions of engagement because of the impact on their over-all state of mind, their performance at work and their career prospects. Given the strength of belief in the power of employee engagement, the subject continues to be compelling to those who lead, manage and work for organisations; and the academics who study organisational behaviour.

Employee engagement transcends any one point of view (such as from a psychological, sociological or economic perspective) and there-fore benefits from a holistic approach; with sense making about the attributional factors, how these relate to the individual and the organ-isation and the possible links between the two. In this assumption, not only are clarity of organisational goals and company vision or mission important, but also the extent to which employees were able to iden-tify with these. Not only is the quality of leadership and management understanding important, but also effective two-way communication, transparency, honesty and constant feedback for employees (e.g. regular performance reviews). And not only are opportunities for development important but also the time and resources to take advantage of them. Factors such as flexible work arrangements, a motivating job role and the opportunity for finding meaning at work, as enablers of employee engagement and the overall employee experience will go hand in hand with the level of resources or complexity of workflow in their signifi-cance. The challenge is how to integrate all of these diverse requirements into a meaningful model that takes account of both the organisation’s and the individual’s needs.

Leeds, UK Paul Turner

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ix

Acknowledgements

Liz Barlow—Palgrave MacmillanLucy Kidwell—Palgrave MacmillanSneha Sivakumar—Palgrave MacmillanRanjith Mohan—Palgrave MacmillanMichelle Fitzgerald—ShawFostine Opiyo OdhiamboPeter GreenanWojciech Zytkowiak-WenzelJon DavidgeXiaoxian ZhuSultan MahmudNiki KyriakidouMahmoud Abubaker

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Contents

1 Employee Engagement and the Employee Experience 1

2 What Is Employee Engagement? 27

3 Why Is Employee Engagement Important? 57

4 A Model for Employee Engagement 85

5 The Psychology of Work and Employee Engagement 113

6 The Sociology of Work and Employee Engagement 141

7 The Organisation of Work and Employee Engagement 167

8 Measuring Employee Engagement 193

9 Engagement Driven Strategic HRM 223

10 Twenty Important Conclusions About Employee Engagement 257

Index 273

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xiii

List of Figures

Fig. 1.1 Supply-push and demand-pull factors for employee engagement 19

Fig. 2.1 The evolution of employee engagement 34Fig. 2.2 Drivers of employee engagement 44Fig. 3.1 Attributed benefits of employee engagement (Sources inter

alia Gelade and Young 2005; Sridevi and Kompaso 2010; Robertson-Smith and Marwick 2009; King’s Fund 2012; Rayton 2012; Rice et al. 2012; Sorenson 2013; Gallup 2016; Garrad and Chamorro-Premuzic 2016; Kaur 2017; Lee et al. 2017; Amah and Sese 2018; Ferreira et al. 2018; Mirvis and Googins 2018) 61

Fig. 4.1 A model for employee engagement—engagement driven strategic HRM 91

Fig. 5.1 The key elements of the psychology of work 115Fig. 6.1 The key elements of the sociology of work 148Fig. 7.1 The key elements of the organisation of work 168Fig. 9.1 A framework for engagement driven strategic HRM 237

xv

List of Tables

Table 8.1 Selected tools and measures of employee engagement against the psychology, sociology and organisation of work 205

Table 9.1 Engagement driven strategic HRM and engagement characteristics 227

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List of Case Studies

Employee Engagement in Practice 10Employee Engagement in North America 37Employee Engagement in the Asia Region 69Employee Engagement and Social Media 93Employee Engagement in China 126Employee Engagement and Leadership 144The Challenges of Employee Engagement in Africa 181Employee Engagement Through Transfer of Training 201Employee Engagement and Talent Management in the Health Sector 234Employee Engagement and Work-Life Balance 259

1Employee Engagement and the Employee

Experience

Employee Engagement Is a Sourceof Strategic Advantage

An engaged employee achieves above average levels of productivity andcontributes significantly to team effectiveness; an engaged team is asource of unit or departmental efficiency; but an engaged workforceis a potential source of organisation wide competitiveness and strate-gic advantage. Engaged employees are enthusiastic about their work, arecommitted to the organisation’s mission and vision, and willing to goabove and beyond their assigned duties to deliver it (IOSH 2015; Ulrichand Ulrich 2011; Kaplan et al. 2017; Lee et al. 2017b; Amah and Sese2018; Hakanen et al. 2018; Singh et al. 2016, 831; Bakker 2017; Car-rillo et al. 2017). Their collective output can have a disproportionateimpact on the achievement of objectives, the strategies to do so andeffective stewardship and policy in their delivery. The perceived ben-efits of employee engagement (from the work of inter alia Saks 2006,2017; Bakker and Schaufeli 2008; Robertson-Smith and Marwick 2009;Albrecht 2010; Bersin 2015; CIPD 2017) explain why it has been sucha compelling issue over the past thirty years.

© The Author(s) 2020P. Turner, Employee Engagement in Contemporary Organizations,https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36387-1_1

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There has been a good deal of practitioner-based fact finding todemonstrate its effectiveness and the resulting outputs have linkedemployee engagement to better shareholder returns and income; revenuegrowth and higher profit margins on the one hand; and lower absen-teeism and job stress, better health and overall well-being on the other.Meta-analytic studies have shown that organisations with the highest sus-tainable engagement scores had above average one-year operating mar-gins; and those with highly engaged workforces outperformed their peerssignificantly in earnings per share or improved performance outcomes innot for profit organisations. Consultancies and research firms argue thatemployee engagement is closely related to business outcomes becauseengaged employees ‘go the extra mile’ for their colleagues, their organisa-tions and themselves (Schwarz 2012; Gallup 2018b; Willis Towers Wat-son 2018; Akingbola and van den Berg 2019). A nationwide study inthe UK concluded that ‘it is our firm belief that it can be a triple win:for the individual at work, the enterprise or service, and for the countryas a whole’ (MacLeod and Clarke 2009, 6). From a practitioner perspec-tive there appears to be much to commend a greater understanding ofthe concept of employee engagement. A plethora of awards from pro-fessional organisations such as SHRM and the CIPD are testament tothe value and importance attached to it and the diverse nature of theorganisations to whom engagement is such a critical subject. (The lead-ing companies of SHRM’s 2018 ‘When Work Works Awards’ rangedfrom the Navy’s Credentials Program Office/Naval Education and Train-ing; through to the Autumn Group; from Take Flight Learning to iHire;organisation’s shortlisted for the CIPD’s 2019 Best Employee ExperienceInitiative ranged from Companies House to Heathrow Airport; fromNetwork Homes; to the Northamptonshire Healthcare NHS Founda-tion Trust; and HR Asia’s recognition of China Mobile International andHang Lung Properties Limited, Coach Asia Pacific and Haitong Interna-tional, again reflect the diversity of interest in engagement.)

Additionally, an upsurge of academic activity has meant that ‘the fieldhas come a long way in understanding what engagement is, and what itis not, and identifying its drivers and consequences’ (Shantz 2017, 65).Building on ground-breaking work by Kahn (1990), insightful researchby inter alia Harter et al. (2002), Schaufeli and Bakker (2004), Saks

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(2006), Macey and Schneider (2008), Bakker and Leiter (2010), Trusset al. (2013) and Albrecht et al. (2018) has contributed to a greater the-oretical understanding of the subject. Throughout the research, employeeengagement is consistently portrayed as something given by the employeewhich can benefit both the individual and the organisation through com-mitment, dedication and discretionary effort; as well as utilising talent toits fullest extent. It is argued that engagement occurs when people bringin or leave out their personal selves during their work and is characterisedby physical, cognitive and emotional factors enabling engaged employeesto contribute in a way that is psychologically beneficial leading to appre-ciation, affirmation, respect and greater meaningfulness in work (Trusset al. 2013; Geue 2018). When a member of the workforce is clear aboutwhat is expected of them, is confident in having the knowledge and skillsfor the chosen role and has a positive attitude and behaviour; when theywork in an organisation where leaders communicate clearly a vision forthe future and who recognise individual contribution towards it; whenvalues are lived, creating a sense of trust and integrity; and where there isa channel for the workforce to voice their views and concerns, then thepossibilities of engagement are high (Brown et al. 2015; ACAS 2018).The passion surrounding the subject means that, for some, the study

of employee engagement has become a ‘movement;’ or an ‘imperative’because contemporarily the talent and commitment of employees is aprimary source of competitiveness, framed in the link between peopleand performance at multiple organisational levels. As a result, some 85%of executives have identified engagement as a priority for their organisa-tions (Samara 2016). It is important in both conceptualising and mea-suring ‘the impact of human capital in organisations and in the integra-tion of many different aspects of HR – employee satisfaction, commit-ment, motivation, involvement and the psychological contract, as well asfeatures such as job design and total rewards’ (McBain 2007, 16). Thecontext within which organisations operate and the possible impact onthe workforce is an important starting point for both its antecedents andoutcomes.

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Employee Engagement at a Timeof Disruptive Innovation and ContinuousChange

Employee engagement takes place in a contemporary environment thatis being transformed at an exponential rate. In addition to intense com-petition, organisations are increasingly faced with disruptive innovationand continuous change in the social and economic context within whichthey operate or compete. As such, organisations seek new strategies ‘tomake their service delivery more sustainable at the economic, environ-mental and psychological levels’ and the concept of engagement of isseen as both compelling and necessary in this quest (Graffigna 2017).For some, a convergence of forces, especially those embodied in the con-cept of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, has created boundless opportu-nity to engage in both traditional and innovative ways. For others, wheretwenty-first century reality butts up against twentieth century organisa-tion; and where employment is an increasingly personalised affair, trans-formation and change are challenging and traumatic processes. But forall, best practice, best fit or best principles in how to structure the organ-isation, how to shape work- flow and patterns, how to lead and man-age and how to engage the workforce in the face of the ultra-dynamiccontext have rarely been more important. In such an environment, theconcept of ‘VUCA’ meaning volatility, unpredictability, complexity andambiguity—influential in management thinking since being introducedfrom the annals of US military planners—explains part of the challenge.But additional powerful, disruptive, technological, social and economicforces and polarised political viewpoints have coalesced to shape a newdirection for society and the workplace whilst creating contradictorypoints of view about their impact. At a macro level, consensus about thebenefits to the world economy, from globalisation and multinationalism(previously seen as job and wealth creating developments) or the posi-tive impact of technology on growth and prosperity, are no longer theonly or dominant narratives. Positive perceptions about these and otherrecent phenomena are often shaded by a tone couched in the languageof inequality and underdevelopment; of decline in traditional businesses

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and social disruption. And when this filters through to the organisationallevel it often means creating a new strategic narrative out of challengingstrategic choices, primarily of transforming an existing business modelwith the expectation of maximising future potential.The effect of these changes can be dramatic, as reflected in employee

engagement levels. Gallup’s 2018a study, whilst finding that 34% ofworkers were engaged, also found 13% who were actively disengaged;and the remaining 53% were ‘not engaged’ i.e. they were generally sat-isfied but not cognitively and emotionally connected to their work andworkplace. Aon Hewitt’s global survey found that 24% of all employeesfell into the Highly Engaged category but that engagement levels couldfluctuate (Hewitt 2018). It would appear that there is both a necessityand potential for building sustainable models for employee engagement.The challenge is how to do so.

Employee Engagement and the Futureof Work

In all geographies, employee engagement is bound up in the future ofwork; the transformation in how people work, where they work, whatthey expect from work and what is expected from them at work. Butinterpretations about the implications of change vary considerably. Onthe one hand it is ‘regularly portrayed either as one of total novelty- theend of the post war pattern, the end of trade unions, the end of careers,the end of manufacturing, the end of male domination at work, the endof the working class, the end of the factory, the end of going to work.’But on the other ‘one of untold possibilities; the end of drudgery…’(Grint 2005, 355). Whatever point of view is taken, there is little doubtof significant and far reaching changes on the horizon, many of whichhave been grouped together under the catch all phrase of the ‘FourthIndustrial Revolution.’ This represents a combination of cyber-physicalsystems, the Internet of Things and the Internet of Systems into newways of living and working, where technology becomes embedded inevery aspect of work and life. In this scenario, new technologies combinethe physical, digital and biological worlds impacting on economies and

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business sectors with knock on effects on identity, privacy, ownershipand consumption patterns. The drivers of this revolution are often por-trayed as a combination of high-speed mobile internet; artificial intelli-gence and other significant technological developments; socio-economictrends driving opportunity through the spread of new technologies, theexpansion of education and the move towards a greener global economythrough new energy technologies. Applications of artificial intelligenceand cloud technology are expected to increase affluence, education andnumbers in the middle classes and the potential for economic growthis high. However, one of the contradictions is that the very factors con-tributing to positive growth may also have an impact on negative out-comes such as increasing protectionism and limits on talent migration;the potential for more cyber threats by applying the same technologyinstrumental in economic growth; or the potentially deleterious effectsof artificial intelligence on the traditional workplace (WEF 2018, 7).From one perspective, applications of new technology will create a revo-lution where intelligent technology meets ‘human ingenuity’ to shapethe future workforce—in the USA it is forecast that in the next fewyears Artificial Intelligence will eliminate 1.8 million jobs; but it will cre-ate 2.3 million; and revolutionise not just job numbers but job content(Wright 2017; Shook and Knickrehm 2018). These positive outlooksare balanced by a view that the state of flux created by change ‘is causingconsiderable anxiety—and with good reason. There is growing polari-sation of labour-market opportunities between high- and low-skill jobs,unemployment and underemployment especially among young people,stagnating incomes for a large proportion of households, and incomeinequality’ (Manyika 2017; Schwab, 2016; Yeoh 2017, 9; WEF 2018,vii). How to engage a workforce in these circumstances is a challenge,consisting of creating and delivering a model that on the one hand takesfull advantage of new developments and on the other ensures that theworkforce responsible for their successful delivery or implementation isfully committed to their success. And as the World Economic Forum hasnoted:

As technological breakthroughs rapidly shift the frontier between thework tasks performed by humans and those performed by machines and

1 Employee Engagement and the Employee Experience 7

algorithms, global labour markets are undergoing major transformations.These transformations, if managed wisely, could lead to a new age ofgood work, good jobs and improved quality of life for all, but if man-aged poorly, pose the risk of widening skills gaps, greater inequality andbroader polarization. (WEF 2018, vii)

Lessons or perceptions from experience in this context vary consider-ably and for many organisations the new environment presents largelyuncharted territory. For the optimists, it has been interpreted as a periodof growth and opportunity where companies harness new and emergingtechnologies to reach high levels of efficiency; access new markets andcreate new products. To do so, employers need workers with new skillsto retain a competitive edge for their enterprises and to expand produc-tivity (WEF 2018, 9). Because many jobs in advanced economies may beautomated due to digitalisation and robotization—in logistics, accoun-tancy, transport, manufacturing work and healthcare, amongst others—itis not difficult to agree with the conclusion that many of today’s jobs willdisappear or change dramatically. For the less optimistic, therefore, largenumbers of the workforce ‘are experiencing a rapidly declining outlookin a range of job roles traditionally considered “safe bets” and gatewaysto a lifetime career’ interpreted as a future of uncertainty and insecurity(CIPD 2016; Eberhard et al. 2017; WEF 2018). There is an existentialchallenge to achieve and maintain high levels of employee engagementand indeed the whole employee experience in such an environment.

Employee Engagement; an UnparalleledChallenge; an Unparalleled Opportunity

In response, governments and organisations around the world havesought ways to harness potential to increase the efficiency of workand raise productivity. Public policy and private initiatives range fromadvanced manufacturing programmes in the USA, the quest for cut-ting edge technology in Germany; sector-based initiatives in France; toan action plan for accelerating informatisation and industrialisation inChina. In the UK, Industrial and Digital Strategies cover infrastructure,

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skills, rules and ethics of big data use, cyber security, supporting the tech-nology sector, the digitisation of industry, and digitisation of government(Hancock 2017; Białon and Werner 2018, Liao et al. 2018). India hasrecognised that the revolution has the potential to reduce poverty andimprove lives with applications across sectors—ranging from medicine tocriminal justice, to manufacturing, to finance… from cross-border dataflows to the future provision of government services and natural resourcemanagement (Brende 2018). The objective for all of these initiatives is tomaximise the potential of the Fourth Industrial Revolution as it impactson national economies. At organisational level the challenge is to find away through the maelstrom that is best fit to capability. For some, theseforces present significant opportunity with new business models and newtechnologies providing the basis for strong competitive or market posi-tions. For others they have been sources of trauma and deep reflection.Whilst Amazon becomes a trillion-dollar company for example, many ofits bricks and mortar retail competitors struggle to cope; in turn reshap-ing the concept of traditional high streets in towns and cities. For mostorganisations, pace, agility and the ability to transform appear to havereplaced continuity as desirable strategic objectives:

the emerging contours of the new world of work in the Fourth IndustrialRevolution are rapidly becoming a lived reality for millions of workersand companies around the world. The inherent opportunities for eco-nomic prosperity, societal progress and individual flourishing in this newworld of work are enormous yet depend crucially on the ability of allconcerned stakeholders to instigate reform in education and training sys-tems, labour market policies, business approaches to developing skills,employment arrangements and existing social contracts. (WEF 2018, v)

Not only do organisations face an economic and technological strategicchallenge, but also one covering almost every aspect of how they engagewith and manage their human workforces.

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Sense Making of and Adapting to ComplexEnvironmental Forces

As industrial and commercial transformation either filter through orsmash into the workplace, both organisational outlook and their valuesystems are being reshaped; and dealing with these complex issuesrequires considerable and elevated ‘sense making’ on the part of lead-ers, sense making on the part of managers and sense making on thepart of individual members of the workforce across all sectors. The ques-tions to be addressed, in the absence of best practice guidelines, are howcan organisations thrive in the face of often contradictory messages (forexample job growth and job reduction simultaneously because of theapplication of artificial intelligence); and what is the impact on organ-isational design and development, workforce structure and workforceengagement? The answers vary across the globe. In China for example, asolution to complexity was seen as ‘organisational ambidexterity’ in oneof three ways; sequential ambidexterity where an organisation ‘focuses onone of the competing objectives after another; structural or simultaneousambidexterity implies that an organisation allocates different tasks to dif-ferent sub-units of the organisation; and the contextual type of ambidex-terity is defined as a situation where each member of the organisationcan switch between the competing tasks of exploitation and explorationas the demand or opportunity arises’ (Du and Chen 2018, 44). In theUSA, resiliency, or the ability to bounce back from a negative situation;and adaptability—the ability to change or correct course—were put for-ward as responses to the ‘VUCA Whiplash factor’ (Macarthur 2016).Whilst in India ‘dynamic capabilities’ were critical to leverage disruptivetechnology (Pandit et al. 2018). The similarity in these different geo-graphic contexts is advocacy of the ability to respond, change or eventransform in the face of discontinuity or disruption. Whilst such anapproach makes strategic and economic sense, it is rarely a formula forstability in organisational design or dynamic and as such there are signifi-cant consequences for workforce management. The question is therefore,how do organisations engage their workforces in times of transforma-tion, change and instability? On the one hand there are the conventionalsolutions envisaged by such national studies as the MacLeod review in

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the UK which advocated leadership that give a strong strategic narra-tive about the direction of the organisation; line managers who motivate,empower and support their employees; employee voice throughout theorganisation that involves employees in decision making and organisa-tional integrity with stated values embedded into culture (MacLeod andClarke 2009). On the other, there are more radical ones involving ‘piv-oting’ the workforce or upskilling; or creating new high-quality jobs andvastly improving the job quality and productivity of the existing workemployees; (WEF 2018) or moving the spotlight from jobs to the natureof the work itself, prioritising new skills, reconfiguring work betweenmachines and humans and creating new roles to break with tradition(Shook and Knickrehm 2018, 16). In these scenarios conventional solu-tions to employee engagement—leadership, employee voice, organisa-tional integrity—coexist with radical, innovative ones—agility, reskilling,redefining work. This is important because of ‘fundamental human needsto create, to learn and develop skills, to apply strengths and capabilities,and to progress towards goals that we believe are valuable. The benefitof having this spans personal and organisational goals since meaningfulwork benefits workers in their well-being and benefits the businesses theywork for, through increased employee motivation and effort and reducedstaff turnover’ (CIPD 2018).

Case Study: Employee Engagement in Practice

Wojciech Zytkowiak-Wenzel, PhD

Employee engagement is a subject that is gaining in popularity and assuch there is a need for more informed and evidence-based decisionsregarding engagement among HR professionals. This approach couldbenefit from understanding more about what it is and what it isn’t andoutlining the possible benefits from an engaged workforce. A startingpoint is to reach a definition of employee engagement as it works inpractice.

It is key to understand that engagement doesn’t mean happiness. Andthat it also doesn’t only mean job satisfaction. We can be satisfied with

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our jobs without really being engaged. Satisfaction is about contented-ness regarding specific facets of one’s job and its context while engage-ment is all about emotional connection and commitment that impactshow we behave. Engagement is the driving force behind our discretionaryeffort, the desire to go the proverbial extra-mile to achieve companygoals. The obvious implication is how we, HR professionals, approachthe question of engagement surveys. It’s important to understand whatwe want to measure and not simply tune the old satisfaction survey whilerebranding it as ‘the engagement survey.’

Gallup’s Q12 survey is a good example of a useful practice-basedapproach. It distils engagement into 12 questions that measure the mostimportant elements of it. The questions convey the very essence of whatdrives engagement, or on the contrary, can create disengagement if nothandled with care. They are powerful questions. While being very sim-ple, they have a positive impact on the quality and direction of our think-ing. For instance—At work, do we have the opportunity to do what wedo best every day?—In the last seven days, have we received recognitionor praise for doing good work? When confronted with these the per-son immediately starts to grasp the practical side of what engagementis. These can thus be used to not only to survey our workforce but alsoto explain the concept and define the critical touch points as a startingpoint to come up with not only organizational but also individual action-plans. Engagement may seem as an elusive concept, but on a daily basis,driving engagement comes down to several very simple things.

Having said that it must be observed that driving engagement is a verycomplex undertaking especially considering that recent research showsthat despite the influence of contextual drivers of engagement, how wefeel about our organisations may varies as a function of our charactertraits. In other words, two individuals may carry two dramatically dif-ferent levels of engagement even if their job context is exactly the same.One meta-analysis provides estimates of the relationship between eightpersonality traits and employee engagement. The results indicate thatthese personality traits explain nearly 50% of the variance in engage-ment. Positive affectivity is reported to be by far the strongest predic-tor of engagement, followed by proactive personality, conscientiousness,and extraversion (Young et al. 2018). The big question remains as to

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whether efforts to build an engaged workforce should be focused onusing personality assessments to select more “engageable” candidates.Chamorro-Premuzic et al. (2018) reasonably argue that being positiveindeed makes individuals being more resilient to flawed management.The authors observe, however, that while it may be helpful for individualemployee engagement, it is also in position to damage the organisationalperformance in the long term. Frustrated employees can be a warningsign of broader managerial and leadership issues affecting well-being andengagement which the organisation must address. Consequently, if HRturns employee optimism into a key hiring criterion, over time it willfind it much harder to spot (and fix) things that need fixing.

A further relevant point is how the concept of engagement is inter-twined with that of generational differences. This is particularly impor-tant because by 2025, Millennials will comprise three-quarters of theglobal workforce. Is the organisational culture and the values that theorganisation places at the centre of its DNA compatible with what Mil-lennials want from work? Is the way of doing things sustainable or doesthe organisation need to evolve on a much profound level? These are justsome of the questions HR leaders in charge of people & culture shouldask themselves and their colleagues on different levels of their organisa-tions. Finally, we should always try to capture the value of engagement.It translates into items such as increased productivity or improved reten-tion, but also is said to have positive effects on candidate attraction.To sum up. The professional domain is full of situations where deci-

sions are taken based on opinions that could benefit from more evidencein hiring and operational management decisions. It is my view that tal-ent and engagement management should be handled with due care. Thevalue it can create or, on the contrary, the detrimental effect it may haveon organizational performance is too high. We are living in times of warfor talent. As such we don’t want to fray the fragile fabric of employeeengagement just because we don’t know enough about what it is andwhat can or cannot be done to improve it. An evidence based approach,using data analytics is a possible direction for HR professionals. Theimportance of employee engagement justifies such a development.

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Revolution in Work; Reevaluationof Employee Engagement

The impact of the Fourth Industrial Revolution on jobs continues tofoster debate and speculation; and hence addressing employee engage-ment is treading unchartered waters; ‘while just over half of all employ-ers acknowledge that getting human–machine collaboration right is crit-ical to achieving their goals, few have adopted a systematic approach tounlock the value that lies at the intersection of people and intelligentmachines’ (Shook and Knickrehm 2018, 16). Understanding the pre-cepts of employee engagement is perhaps a useful starting point in howto unlock this value. Although conceptualizations of engagement vary(Patel et al. 2017), there is support for the assertion that ‘those whofind meaning at work are more competent, committed and contribut-ing; in turn competence, commitment and sense of contribution lead toincreased customer commitment; in turn customer commitment leadsto better financial results for the company’ (Ulrich and Ulrich 2011). Inpractice, employers want employees who will do their best work or ‘gothe extra mile,’ which means that employees want jobs that are worth-while and that inspire them. As a result, organisations are looking fora win-win solution that meets their needs and those of their employeesi.e. an engaged workforce (CIPD 2018). The concept resonates at oper-ational level, as outlined above and at a strategic level, where academicresearchers and practitioners have evidenced employee engagement as asource of competitive advantage (Lee et al. 2017b; Albrecht et al. 2018).It is for these reasons that employee engagement is so important inthe fields of human resources, organisational psychology, organisationaldynamics, strategy, talent management and leadership.

However, although researchers have made some progress in clarify-ing the meaning of employee engagement, ‘scholars are ambivalent as towhether employee engagement is distinct from other constructs relatedto the employee–organisation relationship… clearly, there remains roomfor scholarly examination and exploration of the topic of employeeengagement’ (Eldor and Vigoda-Gadot 2017). Indeed, selected stud-ies were found to use the terms employee engagement, work engage-ment; and engagement and even though some empirical studies use the

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same term, they may define engagement differently (Lee et al. 2017a).Amongst the areas for examination are a coherent, consistent defini-tion; clarity about the benefits of employee engagement; identificationof its key features and attributes; understanding how these are trans-lated into practice; and insight into the most effective ways of measur-ing employee engagement in a meaningful way. In response to some ofthese questions, research of the past two decades has raised the possibil-ity of twin streams covering the various facets that make up employeeengagement. The first stream is based on individual experiences andin this, employee engagement is a function of the ebbs and flows ofwork. Specifically, studies show that work engagement fluctuates fromday to day, and even from performance episode to performance episode.Whereas the specific drivers of engagement vary as a function of the typeof work, occupational sector, and organisation, work engagement peakswhen employees are confronted with positive events and daily interestingjob demands—particularly when they simultaneously have access to suf-ficient job resources (Bakker 2017). Autonomy at work is important withemployees taking on broader roles with many competing tasks and goals(Parke et al. 2018, 300). In this area, concepts such as job crafting, i.e.‘how employees shape their jobs in order to align them with their ownabilities, needs, and preferences’ has the potential to increase employees’psychological capital, contribute to meaningfulness, and have an impacton performance (Hakanen et al. 2018). All of these need to take accountof the fact that, as organisations strive to enhance employee engagement,they must do so with a workforce that is becoming increasingly educatedand ‘researchers must also seek to understand the conditions in whichthese employees use their education-related resources to be engaged intheir work’ (Patel et al. 2017). The fact that employee engagement isn’t astatic entity offers encouragement to practitioners who are keen to takeadvantage of its many benefits.

A second stream that is emerging is that of a strategic perspectiveof employee engagement and its relationship with business outcomes,organisational design and development, strategic workforce planning andtalent management. The relationship recognises that there was a strongconnection between processes and structures in the organisation, imply-ing that engagement could not just be related to individual actions. There

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are direct linkages between the mission and goals and the role of cen-tral management in delivering them; how these translated in to organi-sational life through workload, control mechanisms and reward and howthese were subsequently reflected in the energy, involvement and effec-tiveness of the individual (Maslach and Leiter 1997, 104). So, whilstmuch employee engagement research has been concerned with individualfactors or job characteristics, there is also a focus on how individual fac-tors and contextual factors interact. The psychology of work, the sociol-ogy of organisational design and dynamics, the organisation and cultureof the working environment, leadership and management will be impor-tant factors in influencing the level of engagement (Lee et al. 2017b).Furthermore, the role of Strategic Human Resources Management willbe meaningful at the point of convergence of the dynamics of psy-chology, sociology and organisation of work. Engagement driven strate-gic HRM and agile HR provide the foundations on which employeeengagement initiatives can be built and the overall employee experienceenhanced.

Employee Engagement—Waves of Evolution

Each iteration of employee engagement research and practice has addedvalue to understanding of the definition and scope of engagement, itsantecedents and outcomes; its relationship to other people managementconcepts—such as job satisfaction and motivation—and its contributionto the body of knowledge of academia and practice. By 2017, the UKChartered Institute of Personnel and Development were able to con-clude that ‘employees who have good quality jobs and are managed well,will not only be happier, healthier and more fulfilled, but are also morelikely to drive productivity, better products or services, and innovation.This “mutual gains” view of motivation and people management lies atthe heart of employee engagement’ (CIPD 2017). Employee engagementis increasingly recognised as a contributor to positive outcomes at bothindividual and organisational level. But agreeing the dimensions of thesubject is more problematic.

16 P. Turner

Bringing together many of the identified concepts, Saks (2006) mul-tidimensional approach sought to clarify engagement into job engage-ment—performing a role in the workplace—and organisational engage-ment—performing the role as a member of the wider organisation.Kaur’s (2017) extensive literature review concluded that employeeengagement was a distinctive and exclusive concept different from com-mitment and job satisfaction; and that it united three parts, these beingphysical, involving physical labour during work and displaying positiveenergy; emotional whereby an employee can connect individual ‘self ’ anddedication with organisational objectives; and cognitive which includesawareness, experience and skills. Further research summarised the devel-opment of the concept in terms of evolutionary waves characterised by apsychological state that is both dynamic and changeable (Welch 2011).The groundwork has been laid and the evidence gathered for the formu-lation of a sound theory of employee engagement and how to developthis in practice. However, whilst accepting that employee engagement isa work-related state of mind characterised by feelings of vigour, fulfil-ment, enthusiasm, absorption and dedication, ‘scholars are still ambiva-lent about its theoretical contribution to explaining the employee–organ-isation relationship’ (Eldor and Vigoda-Gadot 2017, 526). There is morecertainty in practice-based studies of employee engagement though theresults raise a multitude of questions since there are often low levels ofengagement and its proxy indicators such as low levels of employees rec-ommending their company as a place to work; employees being over-whelmed by information and activity and unfulfilled expectations aboutcareer development. The subject remains high on the corporate agendasuch that ‘the issues of retention and engagement have risen to No. 2 inthe minds of business leaders, second only to the challenge of buildingglobal leadership’ (Bersin 2015, 1). Sense making of the wide numberof definitions and approaches to employee engagement and identifyinghow to create an environment that will contribute to positive employeeengagement continues to tax both academics and practitioners.

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Employee Engagement—Contentand Context

Context is therefore an important factor. Aon Hewitt’s global survey(2017) found that employee engagement fluctuated year on year butin 2017 fell such that ‘the two-point drop of engaged employees nearlyoffset the three-point rise seen in the 2016 Trends in Global EmployeeEngagement Report. Just 24 percent of all employees fall into the HighlyEngaged category and another 39 percent can be categorized as Moder-ately Engaged, putting the global engagement score at 63 percent com-pared to 65 percent the previous year.’ Each of the three elements inthe Aon Hewitt engagement index dropped slightly. The first or ‘Say’component, which measures employee advocacy, went from 69 percentof employees to 68 percent. The second element referred to as ‘Stay,’which measures the likelihood that employees will remain at their currentemployer, went from 60 percent of employees to 59 percent. The thirdelement or ‘Strive’ component, which assesses willingness to give extraeffort, also dropped by one point, from 64 percent to 63 percent. Twoglobal regions—Latin America (+3 pts) and Africa (+2 pts)—improvedover the previous year, but Europe fell by two points and North Americadropped one point with Asia showing a three-point decline- reversed inthe following year by a marked upwards change (Hewitt 2017, 7; 2018).Research into different industry sectors including finance education andhealth (Kaur 2017), found some commonality in the influencing factors.For example, reward and recognition, employee development, job satis-faction, organisational climate, work-life balance, relationship with peersand supervisors and the working environment were important, albeitwith different emphases in each sector. Nevertheless, despite the accel-eration of cultural convergence due to globalisation, national culturaldifferences remained with their effect on attitudes and behaviours in theworkplace. ‘Indeed, people perceive differently their job characteristics,organisational conditions, and well-being across countries and there isalso evidence for cross-national differential effects of working conditionson wellbeing’ (Medrano and Trógolo 2018, 70). The geographic contextshowed that engagement factors in North America included job charac-teristics, relationship with peers and supervisor, reward and recognition;