Article Summary

Student Name: Mel Marie Joy P. Ang Article 12 of 14

Student Number: 2015-30836

1) Title: Exploring Employee Engagement – A Way to Better Business Performance

2) Author: Gupta, Neha
Sharma, Vandna
3) Name of Journal: 2016
4) Year of Publication: Global Business Review

Rationale and Objective of the Study:

The research aims to provide an exploratory study on employee engagement, its concepts and definitions, the
factors or drivers affecting it and measures the importance for better business outcomes. The article also
investigates the different dimensions of employee engagement through the review of selected literatures that
include academicians and practitioners approach towards employee engagement and to develops a conceptual
model based on the identified factors or drivers of employee engagement and its outcome.

Research Question:

There are four research questions for this article:

1) What is employee engagement and how it is different from other pyschological concepts?
2) What is the difference on perception of employee engagement from academicians and practitioners
point of view?
3) What are the individual and organizational outcomes of employee engagement?
4) What are the factors and drivers of employee engagement that lead to positive consequences for
employees and the organization?

Contribution of the Article:

The concept of employee engagement is an integration of different behavioral components like (cognitive,
affective and behavioural)., involvement, attachment (rational and emotional), discretionary effort profound
connection, energy, positive attitude and psychological presence (attention and absorption).

According to Seijits and Crim 2006, the leaders engage employees’ heads, hearts, and hands through the 10 C’s:
1) connect
2) career
3) clarity
4) convey
5) congratulate
6) contribute
7) control
8) collaborate
9) credibility
10) confidence
Also, employee engagement is generally compared or correlated with the following constructs;
1) organizational commitment
2) organization citizenship behaviour
3) job involvement and flow
4) attitude or behaviour
5) job satisfaction

According to Robinson, Perryman and Hayday 2004, engagement contains many of the elements of both
commitment and OCB but is by no means a perfect match with either. In addition, neither commitment nor OCB
reflect sufficiently two aspects of engagement; its two way nature, and the extent to which engaged employees
are expected to have an element of business awareness.

Here are some of the illustrations shown in the article that illustrates the factors leading to employee engagement.

Relevant Literature Used:

Employee engagement was defined as:

 Shuck and Wolland 2010 – as an individual employees’ cognitive, emotional and behavioral state
directed towards desired organizational outcomes. Employee engagement can be personified by the
energy, dedication and passion of employees who have to contribute their best to serve the customers to
achieve the goals of their organization.

 Saks 2006 and Kahn 1990, Wager and Harter 2006 – it is all about the readiness, willingness and
capability of employees to give discretionary effort in achieving organization success. Employees who
areengaged, exhibit attentiveness, and mental absorption on their work and display a deep, emotional
connection towards their workforce.

 Macey and Schneider 2008 and Barbera & Young 2009 – employee angagement is a dominant source of
competitive advantage ang thus, have been recognized by its reported ability to solve challenging
organizational problems such as increasing workplace performance and productivity during widespread
economic decline.

 Macey and Schneider 2008 – engagement shows the emotional commitment of an employee not only
towards the individual goals but also in achieving the organizational goals. They also suggested that
employees with a proactive and autotelic personality, high level of conscientiousness and trait positive
affect should be highly engaged in their ork,

 Luthans and Peterson 2002, Vance 2006, Wagner and Harter 2006 – fostering an engaged workforce in
the field of human resource is very important because researches have shown that an engaged workforce
helps the organizations in reaping the benefits, such as increased efficiency, managerial efficacy, higher
level of customer satisfaction, higher productivity and lower turnover rates.

According to Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) Report, employee engagement is
considered to have three core facets:

1) entellectual engagement – thinking intensicely about the job and continuous improvement in it
2) affective engagement – feeling positive about their job
 3) social engagement – ready to take opportunities to discuss the matters of improvement in work with
others

Methodology:

There is no common methodology used in the study. The research has adopted the structured leterature review
technique that uses structured steps of analysis for locating factual information in the literature. Most of the
literatures on engagement were considered for classification review from 1990 onwards. A total of 450 peer-
reviewed articles were examined and out of which 149 were selected on the basis of its relevance for the study. A
classification framework was also used to integrate the whole database which was divided into four groups; the
definition and conceptual issues of employee engagement, theoretical matters, measurment issues and factors or
drivers and outcome issues.

On the content analysis, it carried out to recognize and organize the variables because it helps to determine the
specific wirds by analyzing the presence, meaning and relationship of such concepts within text or sets of texts.
Concept mapping was also used to represents the concept mapping in the graphic form that shows the direction
of relationship and interrelationship among variables. The collected information in the concept mapping were
sorted out into three groups; the factors or drivers of employee engagement, the outcomes and the processing of
employee engagement.

Empirical Results:

After conducting such extensive literature review, it is clear that employee engagement is a psychological state,
trait amd behaviour which shows employee-positive behaviour towards the organization and its value. As a
result, an organization shoul give utmost attention to recognize the contribution of an employee towards the
organization and their needs and expectations. Despite of several meaning and definitions of employee
engagement, there are three things which are very clear; that it is measurable, it can be correlated with business
performance and it varies from highly-engaged to disengaged. On the other hand, there is still lack of study
which shoes cost and benefits analysis to evaluate the engageent decisions without any bias. Therefore, it is high
time for academicians and researchers to explore the construct profoundly and come up with crystal-clear
definitions and diensions to measure engagement and justification of its significance in the corporate world.

Why did I choose this article?

At first, I became interested in the article because of the employee performance involvement. I became interested
on what the article may contribute to me. Being an employed individual, I also want to know what are the key
factors that lead to employee engagement. As a common employee in an organization, one must know the
different ways on how to involve himself and how to contribute on the success of the organization. There are
several factors that are being discussed in the article but in the reality, employee engagement was not a big thing.
Most of the companies were very focused only on their success not knowing the effort and hardship of their
employees behind the success of the organization. The credits were always based on themselves not involving the
contribution of the others.