1: Introduction
The term "engagement" was introduced in 1990 (Kahn) and was soon applied to various aspects of human resource management: employee engagement, job engagement, role engagement, work engagement, and so on. There was the sense that it had something to do with the level of enthusiasm that makes people proactive, enthusiastic, happy, and loyal - but the precise definition of the state of engagement remained vague.
(EN: My sense is that the notion existed long before. Management would speak of "employee morale" or "job satisfaction" or "the right attitude" in equally vague terms - and it has always seemed to be a dodge for poor leadership. That is, a manager who could not inspire his people gladly embraces these concepts as a way to make it the employees' fault that they are not enthusiastic.)
Little progress seems to be made, largely because of the vagueness of the concept. Employee engagement is defined and measured in a variety of ways - and firms that claim to have high engagement or have made significant improvements often simply changed the definition or metrics. He also suggests that firms often take a faddish approach to engagement, wanting to compare well to their competitors, but not quite knowing why it is important. To that end, he suggests five basic questions ...
- Who (specifically) cares about employee engagement?
- Why is employee engagement important to your organization?
- What kind of policies, strategies, or initiatives have you implemented to improve it?
- What are the most important factors that contribute to engagement in your organization?
- Based on the previous answers, what does employee engagement mean to your organization?
(EN: Even this seems nebulous to me. A better approach would be to monetize it. The turnover rate of employees yields cost of recruiting and training. Customer acquisition and retention can also be linked to engagement, particularly of sales/service staff. Convincing decision-makers to take it seriously, and invest real dollars in improvement, often requires showing financial consequences.)
Types of Employee Engagement
The concept of "engagement" itself is vague and general, so there have been various attempts to subdivide and categorize it. Some distinguish between engagement with the organization versus engagement with the role versus engagement with the task. Others distinguish between engagement as a behavior and as a characteristic.
In terms of the nature of engagement, there are some who separate it into affective, behavioral, and cognitive components. Others suggest engagement is a combination of vigor, dedication, and absorption.
All of this points to the same core problem: without a specific idea of what the term "engagement" means, firms can only have a vague and general enthusiasm for something they do not clearly understand.
Neither does the term seem to be very well understood in the academic community. Little research has been done on the topic - and again, because of the variety of definitions that are attached to the concept, it is difficult to draw any firm conclusions. When considering the results of any study, it is also necessary to consider what was actually studied.
He mentions a specific article (Bakker 2008) that suggested that there were 42 components to employee engagement , such as employees having sufficient autonomy, getting enough coaching, being optimistic about the future, etc. Many of them seem like plausible contributors to employee engagement, but the multitude of factors makes it difficult to draw a direct correlation between "engagement" and organizational performance.
Conceptual Model of Employee Engagement
Much of the debate about what engagement means or how it should be considered is entirely academic. The author suggests a basic model that links antecedents (factors) to impacts (outcomes) to create specific, actionable, and measurable metrics. For example, having adequate authority reduces the cost of handling complaints, reducing turnover decreases recruiting and training costs, etc.
It is also noted that the factors that are identified may themselves be secondary symptoms rather than root causes. It is generally not possible to address absenteeism or turnover directly, but the causes of these symptoms must be diagnosed and addressed.
It's also suggested that each organization may need a customized model of engagement, as the factors that create certain outcomes in one organization may not be as influential in another. There is no single engagement program that can be the solutuion to everyone's problems.