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The purpose of this study is to summarize recent commentary and research about employee engagement. It offers information on practices and suggestions aimed at helping human resource specialists and general managers to stimulate opportunities for employees to become more engaged in their work.

Discusses employee engagement based on an extensive literature review of recent research and commentary regarding the concept.

Advances the view that, depending upon one’s organizational culture, work tasks and employee characteristics, there are many practical opportunities for managers to help employees to become more engaged in their work and organization.

Explains how employee involvement can help to improve product quality, cut costs, bolster employee retention and boost organizational performance.

Argues that employees have to find personal meaning in their work to be engaged.

Serves as a refresher for those interested in the concept of employee engagement. Offers practical suggestions for human resource specialists.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the behaviour of leaders that enhances employee engagement (EE) in organisations. It locates the importance of EE and the role leaders play within the public sector in a developing country and finds answer to the question on the behaviour of the leader that causes employees to be engaged.

The paper uses qualitative method to identify the behaviour of leaders that causes and enhances employees to be engaged. It proposes a framework outlining what the leader does to ensure EE.

Based on results of data analysed, six behaviours of leaders were identified: seeking employee welfare and caring; openness and information flow; conscientiousness; good and cordial relationship; fairness and trust and lastly involvement in decision making.

Limitation of the study was that it did not focus on the entire public sector but was carried out in only one company. It is therefore recommended that further studies could be carried out with focus on other public sector organisations to confirm the leader behaviour identified. Again, a comparative study between public and private sector organisations could be carried out to ascertain if there are differences in the behaviour of the leaders that cause employees to be engaged in these two different sectors.

The study develops a framework outlining behaviour which leaders within organisations could exhibit to enhance EE and thus organisational success.

The paper provides a framework that shows leader behaviour that causes EE in organisations in a developing country. This framework will be helpful to leaders in organisations to behave in specific ways to enhance EE and for researchers who want to conduct research in this field of study.

The purpose of this paper is to enhance the readers’ understanding of the domain of talent management and employee engagement, and how the former culminates in the latter, specifically as a tool for retention of employees. The paper also attempts to probe and aid readers in understanding of the domain of talent management and employee engagement, specifically as a tool for retention of employees.

The paper is based on secondary research in the areas of talent management practices, employee engagement and talent retention. The authors have reviewed the existing body of work on these topics in order to arrive at an analysis of the practice of talent management and employee engagement and to successively measure its impact on the retention of employees. In order to aid the endeavor to bring some clarity to and explore the trends in talent management, the authors have based this paper on a systematic review of the existing literature which seeks to examine the modern thought process and evidence. Current examples are drawn from many leading companies and their practices are emphasized for better understanding. Various drivers responsible for engaging and retaining talent are studied by reviewing the existing literature. After analyzing the existing literature, the authors have arrived at talent retention and engagement practices that may aid and assist industry practitioners and policy makers in designing and implementing successful talent management initiatives. The authors have proposed a model for arriving at improved retention from talent management practices.

One of the most effective tools in ensuring that employees stay engaged and committed to their work is talent management. This sense of engagement or commitment toward their work ensures in turn that these employees stay with the organization in the long run. As the authors have begun analyzing the costs associated with recruitment, selection and the opportunity cost related to attrition, organizations have been concentrating their talent management efforts in the direction of retention. The paper concludes that a synchronization of talent management practices and employee engagement initiatives leads to improved talent retention and proposes a model to this end.

Owing to the fact that the paper is conceptual, the model and hypotheses the authors arrive at must be empirically tested by relevant stakeholders in the organization, specifically the stakeholders specializing in the area of talent management, in order to add further weight to the literature.

Derived from an extensive study of current and impending talent management strategies, the findings may aid organizations and policy makers to develop and refine talent management practices in order to engage human capital, with the ulterior aim of talent retention – a concern that plagues most contemporary organizations.

Preempting or preventing attrition is a priority in several organizations, and more often, in some industries as a whole. The authors examine how talent management practices can contribute to the efforts in preempting or preventing attrition in organizations. Adding to the existing literature on talent management, the paper explores the areas of talent management which directly affect employee engagement and in turn make a difference in talent retention. This link connecting talent management practices with retention deserves a greater amount of investigation, which the paper explores.

For decades organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) has been of interest to scholars and practitioners alike, generating a significant amount of research exploring the concept of what citizenship behavior is, and its antecedents, correlates, and consequences. While these behaviors have been and will continue to be valuable, there are changes in the workplace that have the potential to alter what types of OCBs will remain important for organizations in the future, as well as what types of opportunities for OCB exist for employees. In this chapter we consider the influence of 10 workplace trends related to human resource management that have the potential to influence both what types of citizenship behaviors employees engage in and how often they may engage in them. We build on these 10 trends that others have identified as having the potential to shape the workplace of the future, which include labor shortages, globalization, immigration, knowledge-based workers, increase use of technology, gig work, diversity, changing work values, the skills gap, and employer brands. Based on these 10 trends, we develop propositions about how each trend may impact OCB. We consider not only how these trends will influence the types of citizenship and opportunities for citizenship that employees can engage in, but also how they may shape the experiences of others related to OCB, including organizations and managers.

The purpose of this paper is to examine an employee's unique experience of being engaged in their work.

Following Yin's case study design method, researchers collected documents, conducted semi‐structured interviews and recorded observations at a large multinational service corporation ranked as one of the best places to work. Post data collection, content analysis is used to interpret engagement efforts and experiences. Work by Kahn and Maslow are integrated as conceptual frameworks.

Post analysis, three themes emerged: relationship development and attachment to co‐workers, workplace climate and opportunities for learning. Findings highlighted the development of relationships in the workplace, the importance of an employee's direct manager and their role in shaping organizational culture and the critical role of learning in an engaged employee's interpretation of their work. Scaffolding and discussion of an emergent model is provided.

Three propositions for human resource development (HRD) research and practice are presented: first, environment and person interact to create engagement or disengagement; second, an employee's manager plays a critical role in developing engagement; and third, personality can effect engagement, however, everyone can engage. An integrated model is proposed as a synthesis of findings providing HRD researchers and practitioner's opportunity to re‐examine current engagement efforts. Specific action steps are outlined to spur further theory building and organizational practice.

The objective of the emergent model is to provide researchers and practitioners a new framework to consider, grounded in both early and contemporary theories of engagement. The emergent model could serve as the basis for new strategies and structures related to engagement development and could shed new light on how employees interpret the experience of engagement in work. This research is the first known qualitative study of employee engagement in the HRD literature, second only to the original qualitative research by Kahn.

Keeping both employees and customers highly engaged has become a critical issue for service firms, especially for high-contact and highly customized services. Therefore, it is essential to engage employees and customers during service interactions for better service outcomes. However, past research on employee and customer engagement has primarily focused on brands and organizations. Little research has concentrated on service interactions as the objects of engagement. To fill this research gap, this study aims to clarify and define service engagement behaviors (SEBs), identify various employee and customer SEBs and develop a model to investigate the relationships between these behaviors.

A theoretical framework was developed based on social contagion theory and service-dominant (S-D) logic to explore the effects of employee SEBs on customer SEBs through customer perceptions of relational energy and interaction cohesion. Dyadic survey data collected from 293 customer-employee pairs in various high-contact and highly customized service industries were examined through structural equation modeling.

Results show that employee SEBs (service role involvement, customer orientation behavior and customer empowerment behavior) positively influence relational energy and interaction cohesion, which in turn affect customer SEBs (service exploration behavior and service coordination behavior).

This study represents pioneering research to conceptualize SEBs. Different from the extant literature on engagement, SEBs capture the proactive and collaborative engagement behaviors of employees and customers in service interactions. Various employee and customer SEBs were identified and an empirical model was proposed and tested to investigate the effect of employee SEBs on customer SEBs through relational energy and interaction cohesion.

The Equal Pay Act 1970 (which came into operation on 29 December 1975) provides for an “equality clause” to be written into all contracts of employment. S.1(2) (a) of the 1970 Act (which has been amended by the Sex Discrimination Act 1975) provides:

Based on attribute research in marketing, importance-performance analysis (IPA) provides a useful analogy to examine employer branding concepts. The purpose of this paper is to use IPA to evaluate employees’ perceptions of important employer value proposition (EVP) attributes and their corresponding psychological contract fulfillment scores. IPA is applied to 40 EVP attributes and their corresponding EVP dimensions – “Economic Value”, “Development Value”, “Social Value”, “Work Value” and “Employer Reputation.” Further, the paper examines the difference between highly engaged and less engaged employees in their relationship to importance and fulfillment of the five EVP dimensions.

Data were drawn from information technology-business process management employees (n=520) in India through a questionnaire survey. The IPA matrix was used to plot the importance and fulfillment scores. Independent samples t-test was used to assess the difference between high and low engagement scores.

The results indicate that several EVP attributes fall within the “Concentrate Here” quadrant that requires more focus. With respect to EVP dimensions, social value needs focus; economic value received “Low Priority”; and work value and employer reputation are identified as “Potential Overkill.” The findings also suggest that, organizations should engage employees across all dimensions, by both prioritizing and fulfilling their obligations promptly.

The study highlights the need for HR practitioners and academicians to draw insights from attribute research in marketing to effectively devise the employer branding strategy of individual organizations.

This paper is the first of its kind to apply IPA to EVP attributes, which contributes to the growing literature on employer branding.

Guided by social exchange, broaden and build and conservation of resources theoretical perspectives, this study explores the moderated mediating role of supervisory support (SS) on the relationship between job meaningfulness (JM) on job performance (JP) through employee engagement (EE).

Field data were collected from two hundred and nineteen executives and their thirty-eight supervisors of a large paint manufacturing industry through a time-lagged research design and was analyzed with partial least squares based structural equation modeling.

Findings of this study indicate that JM mediated by EE contributes to JP, which means if an employee finds one's job meaningful, she/he is likely to be more engaged emotionally, psychologically and cognitively to deliver better JP. SS is also found to be salient as it moderates both direct and indirect relationships between JM and JP through EE.

Generalizability of the findings of this study should be done with caution. Though the study has time-laggard data from two different sources but missing longitudinal data restricts causality of relationships/findings.

These findings are relevant for organizations given that organizational leaders can create a context, by appropriate job design and engaging work context that motivates employees to perform better in their jobs. Insights of this study will be useful for organizations to curate meaningful jobs for their employees and also groom leaders with requisite skills and competencies to help subordinates perform up to their potential.

This study is an attempt toward a better understanding of the interplay of JM, work engagement and SS on JP in a manufacturing set-up in India, which has not been hitherto examined in Indian context.

The purpose of this paper is to explain why companies with an exclusive focus on individual engagement miss the opportunity to nurture the collective engagement that is the key to high performance. It aims to report findings from the authors' research on the essential conditions for collective engagement and explain how leaders can create and sustain a mutually engaged workforce.

The research is based on a comprehensive survey of 1,367 full‐time employees of large US companies across a range of industries carried out in July 2008, as well as an in‐depth case study of a large, global organization operating in the manufacturing and services sector. In addition, the authors' extensive experience with hundreds of companies across a variety of industries informs the conclusions presented here.

There are three essential conditions for collective engagement. Meaningful work and career opportunities and support for employee effort and recovery are crucial for inspiring employees to fully engage at work. To translate individual engagement to collective engagement – companies must also cultivate a culture of trust and respect.

This study introduces a framework for studying the essential organizational conditions for engagement, as well as the process of collective engagement. While the authors believe the conclusions to be relevant for the majority of companies, the research findings may be most applicable to large organizations. The survey sample was limited to employees of large US‐based companies (at least US$50 million in revenues) and the case study was conducted in a large global company.

Fostering collective engagement begins by engaging one team, one workgroup and one workforce at a time. The authors suggest ways for companies to begin the journey.

This paper is based on original research conducted at the Accenture Institute for High Performance. It introduces the concept of collective engagement and explains how companies can create and sustain a highly engaged workforce.