What is employee engagement

Employee engagement is a crucial topic that has been gaining attention from business leaders in recent years. It’s a term that’s often used in the workplace, but not always well understood. In this blog post, we’ll dive into the definition of employee engagement and what it means for organisations. We’ll explore the various definitions that exist and help you understand the difference between employee engagement and other related concepts, such as employee satisfaction.

Engagement definition

There’s a lot of confusion and disagreement over what the employee engagement actually means. Back in 2009, David MacLeod found over 50 different definitions of engagement! One of the earliest, proposed by William Kahn, focused on the internal state of being that employees bring to their work - things like discretionary effort and going the extra mile. Later definitions, however, have been more closely related to job satisfaction and have looked at various aspects of organisational life. For example, many consultancies use measures like Gallup’s Q12 questionnaire, which covers things like job clarity, resources, and recognition. But these measures can be problematic because they make it hard to distinguish engagement from other concepts.

Due to lack of consensus in what the engagement is, it was heard to measure it and give advice on how to achieve it. But CIPD has been working to make sense of the existing literature on the topic. As a result, it was suggested to break engagement down into two categories:
1. Employee engagement is a broader term that covers a range of related concepts, like organisational identification, motivation, and commitment.
2. Work engagement, on the other hand, specifically refers to the state of vigour, dedication, and absorption that employees experience in their work. This construct is the most commonly studied and provides the strongest evidence base for understanding engagement.
Both terms of engagement are all about the psychological state of being that employees bring to their work.

Engagement vs satisfaction

It’s important to note that employee engagement is not the same as employee satisfaction. While employee satisfaction refers to how happy an employee is with their job and working conditions, engagement is about the emotional connection an employee has to their work and the organisation they work for. Engaged employees are more likely to go above and beyond in their roles, while satisfied employees may simply be content to do the minimum required. Besides, engagement term is not used to describe management activity, that is considered as a factor that affects employee engagement, as well as job quality, that describes criteria of a “good work” when employees are fairly rewarded, have means to securely make a living, opportunities to develop skills and a career, etc.

Overall, understanding of what employee engagement is will help managers to leverage its drivers and maximise the benefits it can bring to the organisation.