The 'What' and 'Why' of Employee Engagement Research Paper

The 'What' and 'Why' of Employee Engagement - Research Paper Example An engaged employee is aware of the business and works closely with the peers to improve the organizational performance (Buchanan and Huczynski, 2010). Scope of the study The present study has been confined in order to analyze the key issues related to the topic of employee engagement as well as to explore the importance of the employee engagement. The study also looks to identify the key factors influencing the level of employee engagement (Sekaran and Bougie, 2009). Over the course, the research study conducted by Dale Carnegie and MSW research has been referred in order to find out the importance of the employee engagement in the context of the organizational performance as well as to find out the key factors influencing the employee engagement programs in an organization ((Mullins, 2010). Add to this, in order to get a more holistic view, various employee engagement programs undertaken by various major organizations round the globe has also been referred to (Buelens, Sinding, Wal dstrom, Krietner and Kinicki, 2011). Research Question What is Employee Engagement and what is the importance of employee engagement in the context of the organizational performance? Literature Review Employee engagement overview Engagement at work place has been conceptualized by Kahn as the harnessing of the organizational member or employees with respects the roles and responsibilities towards the organization (Boselie, 2010). In case of engagement, the people may actually employ and express the feelings towards the workplace cognitively, physically and also emotionally (Boxall and Purcell, 2007). Another related construct to employee engagement happens to be the notion of the flow mentioned by Csikszentmihalyi (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990). According to Csikszentmihalyia flow is the state in which there are very little distinction between the individual and the overall organizational environment (Simons, 2011). In this way employee engagement can be defined as the level of involvemen t and commitment that an employee exhibits towards the organization and the values of the organization (Bowditch and Buono, 2001). An engaged employee is always aware of the business perspective of the organization and work closely with the colleagues to improve individual, team as well as organizational performance (Redman and Wilkinson, 2006). Therefore the organization must look to nurture and develop engagement which needs a two way relationship between the employee and the employers. In this way it can be said that employee engagement is actually a barometer that shows the level of association of a person with the organization (Bhattacharya, 2009). Employee engagement is quite closely related to the existing structure of the job involvement. Job involvement can be described as the degree to which the job situation is matching the individual and his or her personal identity. Some researchers actually believed that the job involvement is a cognitive state of the psychological rec ognition. Job involvement depends upon both job satisfaction and saliency (Senscombe, 1998). The HR practitioners feel that engagement has a lot do with what the employees feel about the work. The engagement is also related to the way the employees are being treated in an organization (Alderfer, 1972). There would always be the presence of people who would not give the best effort