What Really Is Employee Engagement? - Long Version

Employee engagement seems to be an area of intense interest these days. A quick search of the term on Google shows over 450 million results. Interest has been growing vigorously among organizational development practitioners over the past couple of decades (Mackay et al.; Markos & Sridevi; Saks; Shuck et al.). Employee engagement has had a strong position with human resource management (HRM) practitioners for much of that time, but similar interest is now growing quickly among human resource development (HRD) professionals (Valentin et al.). Some research indicates there is a good reason for all this interest in employee engagement, with fewer than 15% of us fully engaged (Gallup). There is, however, a severe lack of understanding by most managers of what exactly employee engagement is and what it looks like. Without understanding the construct, it is very difficult to know what to do about it.

This is the first of a short series of posts that will look at the phenomenon of employee engagement. I will present an analysis of some of the current research, both academic and commercial, as well as some suggestions of what to do about employee engagement. I will also present some of my original research into the dynamic between employer and employee when it comes to highly engaged individuals.

Problem

The first problem with employee engagement is defining what it actually means. This includes a little about what it is not. Everyone who works has some idea in their heads of what employee engagement is and how it affects production in their environment. Although many have tried to define engagement, so far there is no universally accepted definition of the construct (Fletcher; Markos & Sridevi). As a primarily commercial concept, organizations seem to have assumed a link with job performance, employee well-being, and, hence, organizational success, positive shareholder returns, and competitive advantage (Kwan & Park; Mackay et al.; Saks). HR professionals are looking to employee engagement as a “compilation of attitudes [deemed] to be the cornerstones of a highly performing workforce” (Mackay et al., 2017, p. 108) and is at the heart of many talent development initiatives (Kwan & Park). The problem is, this is a moving target, very difficult to conceive, let alone develop programs around that will tackle the issue.

Research

Recent research (Gallup) suggests that more people are actively disengaged from their work (24%) than people who are fully engaged (less than 15%). Disengaged workers generate significantly less revenue than their fully engaged colleagues (Seijts & Crim) perhaps costing US organizations hundreds of billions annually in lost productivity (Saks; Valentin et al.). These data suggest there is a reason to be concerned and interested in employee engagement. First, though, we need to define what engagement means.

There are various definitions of what employee engagement is. Despite a couple of decades of popularity, employee engagement has not gained a clear, single definition (Shuck & Wollard). Definitions have wavered between theory and practice and from psychological construct to practical productivity tool (Zigarmi et al.; Shuck & Wollard). There remain questions about whether employee engagement actually exists as a unique concept or if it is simply the repackaging of currently accepted work-related constructs (Knight et al.; Kwan & Park; Macey & Schneider; Mackay et al.; Shuck & Wollard). Additionally, some researchers question if employee engagement is nothing more than a “passing fad” (Shuck & Wollard).

The beginnings of Employee Engagement

William Kahn coined the term in 1990. He defined “employee engagement” as “the harnessing of organization members' selves to their work roles…[in which] people employ and express themselves physically, cognitively, and emotionally during role performances” (Kahn, p. 694). Role performance is interpreted to mean formal role, and not voluntary or extra-role behavior, such as behaviors defined in organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) (Saks; Shuck & Wollard). Kahn also spoke of both utilizing and displaying what he termed a “preferred self” that would encourage positive connections to both individuals in the organization and to the tasks required of the work. According to Kahn, engagement requires more than the accomplishment of tasks, but a full and active participation within the organization, including a full presence, physically, cognitively, and emotionally. In essence, engagement is an individual’s responsibility to invest his or her complete self in their applicable work roles (Rich et al.).

Since Kahn’s initial definition of employee engagement, others have developed additional layers to the construct. The Gallup Organization likens engagement to an employees’ positive emotional attachment and commitment to the organization (Gallup). Some researchers have called employee engagement a positive emotional state workers direct toward their organization, their coworkers, and their job tasks, characterized by being committed and fascinated by their work, showing vigor, dedication, and absorption (Bakker et al.; González-Romá et al.; Martin-Kniep; Schaufeli et al.). These positive feelings are believed to lead to feelings of fulfillment, dedication to their organizations, and higher productivity (Bakker et al.; González-Romá et al.; Marathe et al.; Rock & Tang; Schaufeli et al.). Many see engaged employees as those who are cognitively aware of business needs and have a heightened desire to see their organization meet desired outcomes (Gallup; Markos & Sridevi; Shuck & Wollard; Thomas). Engagement in this sense seems to go beyond motivation. It appears to be something the employee offers freely to the organization and cannot be forced on employees. The employee has responsibility and control over their engagement (Rock & Tang). Organizations may be interested in understanding what employees bring and how organizations can support the “factors that can lead to and sustain positive human behaviors and the related positive consequences of those behaviors” (Anthony-McMann et al., p. 165).

Engagement and energy levels

Employee engagement is often discussed as a single state: either one is engaged or one is not. When Kahn originally described employee engagement, he defined disengagement as its opposite. If engagement is people expressing their full selves in-role performance, disengagement is the withdrawal of preferred dimensions of one’s self. Those who are disengaged in this sense are those who essentially sleepwalk their way through their day, showing up, doing some form of work, but not bringing their full selves. Another view is to look at three levels of engagement: those who are engaged, those who are not engaged, and those who are actively disengaged (Anitha). Those who are actively disengaged are those who go out of their way to disrupt their work and that of those around them. They can be toxic in a work environment.

Despite the various definitions of engagement, most researchers agree that engaged employees display high levels of energy toward the tasks they perform (Bakker et al.). Personal role engagement is full, deep, and immersive, capturing an “authentic and complete expression of ones’ preferred self,” which takes a large amount of an individual’s energy (Fletcher, p. 6). That opens up a different way to look at engagement. Employee engagement may be conceptualized as being on a continuum, understanding that one may not have the energy it takes to be fully engaged 100% of the time (Bakker et al; Kwan & Park; Macey & Schneider; Valentin et al.). This view opens the possibility that employees are aware of their position on the continuum at any point in time. This also opens the possibility for individuals to develop strategies to reengage for times when they wander out of full engagement. We will examine that possibility in a future post.

What employee engagement is not

Some researchers have questioned whether employee engagement is nothing more than a new name for job satisfaction, job involvement, or organizational commitment (Mackay et al.). Job satisfaction is really a state of fulfillment and does not elicit the levels of dedication to one’s work or the energetic expressions of behavior, cognition, and emotion, as does employee engagement (Kwan & Park; Markos & Sridevi; Shuck et al.). Others have taken job satisfaction to be a component of engagement, though job satisfaction may be manifested as nothing more than a transactional relationship with the organization (Markos & Sridevi).

Engagement is also not the same as job involvement. Job involvement is a cognitive judgment of the need to satisfy task conditions and ties into self-image. This is not the same as the ebbs and flows of the emotional and psychological connections to the work and the organization one experiences with engagement (Kwan & Park; Saks). Remember, employee engagement is about “how individuals employ themselves in the performance of their job” (Saks, p. 602).

Organizational commitment also differs from employee engagement. Engagement is not an attitude toward an organization, rather it is an employee’s perception of and total absorption in the performance of his or her primary organizational roles (Bakker et al.; Kwan & Park; Saks). Commitment may be a part of engagement or may lead to engagement, or it may be a completely different construct (McBain).

In addition, engagement is not the same as organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) in that OCB focuses on informal and extra-role behaviors, where employee engagement focuses on formal role performance (Saks; Shuck & Wollard). Finally, engagement is distinguished from workaholism and type-A behavior. Engaged workers are balanced in their efforts and lack a compulsive drive. “For them work is fun, not an addiction…Engaged employees work hard because they like it and not because they are driven by a strong inner urge they cannot resist” (Bakker et al., 190).

Alternative views

There exist some alternative views on how and why employees engage. These deserve mention in this context, although they all have purposes outside of understanding and explaining employee engagement. These concepts include SCARF, work passion, and high performing employees (HPE).

SCARF (status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, fairness) is based on neuroscience and claims engaged workers experience positive rewards in the brain, while disengaged workers experience high levels of threat (Rock & Tang). SCARF addresses only the motivations to engage or disengage and does not provide a complete model of full engagement. Work passion was proposed as a reframing of employee engagement that focuses on factors that influence an employee’s full presence in the workplace (Nimon et al.) and may even be considered a “higher-order form of engagement” (Valentin et al., p. 185). Work passion emphasizes a state of well-being through constant appraisals of the situations that bring about full engagement (Zigarmi et al.). Although it contains a strong emphasis on the role of the individual to be and remain engaged, work passion is no different than employee engagement and appears to be simply a reinterpretation for commercial purposes (Shuck and Wollard). HPE is defined differently than employee engagement. HPEs are defined by behavioral factors broken into categories such as personality traits, decisiveness, teamwork, basic skills, and innovation (de Wall & Oudshoorn). Engagement, on the other hand, has both state-like and trait-like components (Zigarmi et al.).

Another alternative view is regulatory focus theory which describes motivation as striving to meet set goals by either focusing on a reward (promotion focus) or by trying to avoid negative consequences or punishments (prevention focus). These systems act to regulate behaviors depending on which of the systems ranks higher in the view of the individual and the circumstances (Voight & Hirst). Regulation focus theory, then, describes the motivation which causes an internal state of arousal, which thereby sets or changes one’s behaviors (Neff). Although engagement is about adapting behaviors to meet or even exceed organizational goals, according to, regulatory focus theory does not go far enough to explain aspects of employee engagement, including being fully engaged when rewards and punishments are non-existent or are not clearly defined (Shuck and Wollard).

Employee engagement as the opposite of burnout

The fact there is no common agreement on how to define employee engagement has not prevented researchers from speculating on its opposite. Some researchers believe the roots of current research on engagement comes from prior research on burnout (Bakker et al.). According to burnout research, employee engagement is characterized by the opposites of the three dimensions of burnout. Burnout is characterized as exhaustion, cynicism, and ineffectiveness, whereas engagement is characterized by vigor, dedication, and absorption (Bakker et al.; Bakker et al.; González-Romá et al.). Several researchers (Bakker et al.; González-Romá et al.; Schaufeli et al.) found burnout and employee engagement to be antipodes that are, at least to a moderate degree, negatively sharing a significant amount of their variance (Schaufeli et al., p. 87). Some researchers found questionable the claim that burnout and employee engagement are independent constructs (Knight et al.), but should be seen as polar opposites when measured along their core dimensions (González-Romá et al.; Saks).

Despite the perceived relationships between employee engagement and burnout, some burnout researchers admit the two constructs are independent and should be measured with separate instruments (Bakker et al.; Schaufeli et al.). The two constructs seem to be negatively related, though not perfectly (Langelaan et al.). One school of thought is that engagement exists to fill the voids left by feelings of burnout (Bakker et al.). Some researchers pointed out that high levels of engagement may lead to burnout (Macey & Schneider). Similarly, high levels of burnout may negatively affect engagement (Anthony-McMann et al.). Some research found extroversion and neuroticism to be opposite measures for burnout, yet only extroversion played a role in engagement, therefore indicating employee engagement and burnout to be interrelated, yet independent constructs (Langelaan et al.).

Kahn’s definition did not use burnout as its opposite. Kahn rejected burnout as being on the same continuum as engagement (Anthony-McMann et al.). Although engagement is about energy, energy is not always projected outwardly. One may exhibit the symptoms of burnout and yet still be fully engaged in the tasks at hand. Although engagement may be measured on a continuum, burnout may not be at the opposite end of engagement. It may just be that individuals cannot be fully engaged 100% of the time (Valentin et al.).

Three Suggestions

• It might be obvious by now, but my first suggestion is to develop an understanding of what employee engagement actually is and what it is not. For example, do not waste time developing job satisfaction programs if you want to increase engagement. Not that job satisfaction doesn’t play a role. It does. But just understand what you are trying to affect. Many people are satisfied with their jobs even though they are not engaged. And the opposite is also true. Some employees are dissatisfied with their jobs, but their internal drive remains and they are fully engaged.

• Find a safe way to gauge the levels of engagement in your organization. Although pulse and enterprise surveys are popular ways to gauge employee engagement, most of them are designed around the wrong constructs. I will address a few surveys in a later post that may come in handy for getting at the root of engagement in your organization. Again, this is not to say there is no value in surveys, you just need to understand what you are measuring and why.

• Finally, do not despair, even if surveys suggest low levels of engagement. If Gallup is correct, less than 15% of employees worldwide are fully engaged. Lifting that number one or two percent, though, can make a very big difference. It can also help you identify programs that work for your organization as you attempt to raise engagement levels.

Conclusion

Employee Engagement appears to be an elusive construct that defies a single universally accepted definition (Anthony-McMann et al.; Fletcher). Some question the existence of employee engagement as a stand-alone construct (Knight et al.). Employee engagement is a high-order concept, supported by emotional, behavioral, and cognitive factors (Shuck et al.). Perhaps it is the “bottom-up” development of the construct that makes engagement remain unclear and opens it to misconceptions by the general practitioner population (Macey & Schneider; Shuck & Wollard). Most researchers characterize engagement as being about putting one’s full energy and passion into the accomplishment of work tasks, to the point of going beyond the call of duty (Markos & Sridevi; McBain; Seijts & Crim). Employee engagement may provide insights into how effective employees are on the job, including contextual and focal performance, absenteeism, and turnover intent (Mackay, et al.). Commercial researchers appear to focus on the performance aspects of employee engagement and the unlocking of human performance (Gallup; Kelleher), indicating that engagement might be a determinant of organizational performance (Markos & Sridevi). Engagement may be influenced by an organization’s culture (Kwan & Park), but some claim it is really an individual construct (Kahn; Rich et al.) and relies on individual decisions to be engaged. Engagement is not the same as job satisfaction, nor is it the same as organizational behavior. Although some researchers have pointed to engagement as the opposite of burnout (González-Romá et al.), others indicate that there is not a perfect correlation between the two and employee engagement should be viewed as an independent construct (Langelaan et al.). Where some see large gaps between the various definitions, especially between researchers and practitioners, leading to disjointed understanding and poor development of practices (Shuck & Wollard; Zigarmi et al.), others find analogs in the conceptualizations, definitions, and attributes of employee engagement (Kwan & Park). If you intend to use the concepts of employee engagement to develop programs to better engage your workforce, you need to first determine what you mean by engagement. Only after taking careful stock of your organization’s needs will a definition of employee engagement be meaningful and useful in creating workforce interventions that will develop better engagement. Don’t give up. Keep engaged in raising engagement.

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