Employee engagement is an emerging approach for organizational success as well as holding talented employees. Engagement contributes extensively to an organization’s performance, leading to improvement in profitability, customer satisfaction and long-term financial results. It also helps the employees to make a noteworthy contribution to their organization. Lack of consensus among the academicians, research scholars and management consultants on the definition of engagement has created an academic and research gap. A majority of reviewed conceptualizations shared a multidimensional nature of employee engagement. This paper is based on quantitative content analysis of employee engagement. The purpose of the study is to determine the frequency of different dimensions employed to define engagement. The results illustrate that psychological investment and work-role performances are the most counted dimensions to measure employee engagement.

In the academic literature, employee engagement was conceptualized as the harnessing of the selves of the members of an organization to their roles: in engagement, people employ and express themselves physically, cognitively, emotionally and mentally during role performances (Kahn, 1990, p. 694). Kahn further suggested that engaged employees identified with their work and therefore put more effort into their work. Maslach and Leiter (1997) defined employee engagement as the direct opposite of burnout dimensions (p. 34). They suggested that engagement involves three main factors—root energy, involvement and efficacy, whereas in burnout, state these three change into exhaustion, cynicism and ineffectiveness respectively. Schaufeli et al. (2002) defined employee engagement as a positive state of mind characterized by vigor, dedication and absorption (p. 74). Schaufeli and Bakker (2004) also viewed employee engagement as the positive antithesis of burnout. They measured burnout and engagement on different predictors and different possible consequences. Engagement is also noticed in terms of effort. Schaufeli and Bakker (2010) defined work engagement as the psychological state that accompanies the behavioral investment of personal energy (p. 22). Academicians tend to define employee engagement in terms of roles and tasks, business outcomes, opposite of burnout, discretionary effort and the state of flow. On the other hand, practitioner definitions tend to add a strong focus on engagement with the organizational culture and its financial outcomes such as customer satisfaction, profitability, high retention and low turnover. The variety and range of definitions of employee engagement present a challenge when reviewing employee engagement research. The present study therefore aims to define engagement in a way that encompasses all the key definitions used in both academic research and HR practitioners.

Organizational Behavior Journal, Introspection of Employee, Emerging approach, Organization’s performance, Research scholars and management, Psychological investment.