Engagement Basics

All companies require and expect employees’ cooperation. However, engagement goes beyond cooperation: engaged employees are those that are willing to go above and beyond formal job requirements. Engagement is essential in competitive rapid changing environments in which margins are pressured and productivity is critical, and is associated with ‘‘feelings of persistence, vigor, energy, dedication, absorption, enthusiasm, alertness, and pride’’ on the part of employees (Masson, Royal, Agnew & Fine, 2008).

Namely, in the fast-changing environments it becomes more difficult to precisely specify roles and responsibilities across a diverse set of jobs: the proactive direction of employee’s initiative in ways that are consistent with organizational objectives is therefore crucial (Masson, Royal, Agnew & Fine, 2008). Engaged employees consequently tend to be more productive and maintain a higher commitment level leading to the higher customer satisfaction (Mehta & Mehta, 2013).

Furthermore, Masson, Royal, Agnew & Fine (2008) note millennials especially are increasingly cobbling together careers that involve a series of moves across traditional organizational boundaries, looking for environments where they can be engaged and feel that they are contributing in a positive way to something larger than themselves.

Millennials have a reputation for not being attached to organization, for being “job hoppers”. But Gallup (2016) points out that 55% of this group is in fact just not engaged at work: they are “checked out” and not passionate at their jobs. Adkins (2016) claims millennials are searching for a job that feels worthwhile and they will keep looking until they find it. Actually, they don’t want to switch jobs, they are just searching for a compelling reason to stay: millennial workers want to be emotionally and behaviourally connected to the job.

So why does millennial worker’s engagement matter? Because the competitive strength of a company depends on what millennials, which now represent 50% of the global workforce (PwC, 2011), can accomplish. If millennial workers are not engaged, companies’ profitability, productivity and innovation suffer.