Employee Engagement in Contemporary Organizations: Maintaining High Productivity and Sustained Competitiveness

292 Pages·2020·4.205 MB·English

by  Paul Turner

Paul Turner
Employee Engagement
in Contemporary
Organizations
Maintaining High
Productivity and Sustained
Competitiveness
Employee Engagement in Contemporary
Organizations
Paul Turner
Employee
Engagement
in Contemporary
Organizations
Maintaining High Productivity
and Sustained Competitiveness
Paul Turner
Leeds Business School
Leeds Beckett University
Leeds, UK
ISBN 978-3-030-36386-4 ISBN 978-3-030-36387-1 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36387-1
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To Gail
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.
vii
viii Preface
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
Acknowledgements
Liz Barlow—Palgrave Macmillan
Lucy Kidwell—Palgrave Macmillan
Sneha Sivakumar—Palgrave Macmillan
Ranjith Mohan—Palgrave Macmillan
Michelle Fitzgerald—Shaw
Fostine Opiyo Odhiambo
Peter Greenan
Wojciech Zytkowiak-Wenzel
Jon Davidge
Xiaoxian Zhu
Sultan Mahmud
Niki Kyriakidou
Mahmoud Abubaker
ix
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
xi
xii Contents
9 Engagement Driven Strategic HRM 223
10 Twenty Important Conclusions About Employee
Engagement 257
Index 273