What Do We Really Know About Employee Engagement?

• Published date: 01 June 2014
• Author: Alan M. Saks,Jamie A. Gruman
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/hrdq.21187
• Date: 01 June 2014

HUMAN RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT QUARTERLY, vol. 25, no. 2, Summer 2014 © Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) • DOI: 10.1002/hrdq.21187 155

INVITED FEATURE ARTICLE

What Do We Really Know About

Employee Engagement?

Alan M. Saks, Jamie A. Gruman

Employee engagement has become one of the most popular topics in

management. In less than 10 years, there have been dozens of studies

published on employee engagement as well as several meta-analyses.

However, there continue to be concerns about the meaning, measurement,

and theory of employee engagement. In this article, we review these

concerns as well as research in an attempt to determine what we have

learned about employee engagement. We then offer a theory of employee

engagement that reconciles and integrates Kahn’s (1990) theory of

engagement and the Job Demands–Resources (JD-R) model (Bakker

& Demerouti, 2007). We conclude that there continues to be a lack of

consensus on the meaning of employee engagement as well as concerns

about the validity of the most popular measure of employee engagement.

Furthermore, it is diffi cult to make causal conclusions about the

antecedents and consequences of employee engagement due to a number of

research limitations. Thus, there remain many unanswered questions and

much more to do if we are to develop a science and theory of employee

engagement.

Key Words: employee engagement, burnout, job resources, job demands,

personal resources

There are few constructs and areas of research that have captured the interest

of both researchers and practitioners alike in such a short period of time as

employee engagement. The past decade has seen an explosion of research

activity and heightened interest in employee engagement among consultants,

organizations, and management scholars. Perhaps this is not so surprising

given the many claims that employee engagement is a key factor for an orga-

nization’s success and competitive advantage (Macey, Schneider, Barbera, &

Young, 2009; Rich, LePine, & Crawford, 2010).

156 Saks, Gruman

HUMAN RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT QUARTERLY • DOI: 10.1002/hrdq

To put this in perspective, consider this: The fi rst major article to appear

in the management literature on employee engagement was Kahn’s (1990)

article based on his ethnographic study of personal engagement and disen-

gagement which was published 24 years ago. However, according to Google

Scholar, the article was seldom cited during its fi rst 20 years but now has over

1,800 citations, most of them in the past 5 years. Thus, the engagement litera-

ture remains relatively new and was practically nonexistent just 10 years ago.

Since the emergence of employee engagement in the management litera-

ture, two key themes have emerged. First, employee engagement has been

lauded by many writers as the key to an organization’s success and compe-

tiveness. In fact, claims have been made that organizations with engaged

employees have higher shareholder returns, profi tability, productivity, and

customer satisfaction (Crawford, LePine, & Rich, 2010; Harter, Schmidt, &

Hayes, 2002). Second, it has been reported time and time again that employee

engagement is on the decline and there is a deepening disengagement among

employees today (Bates, 2004; Richman, 2006). According to some fi ndings,

half of all Americans in the workforce are not fully engaged or are disengaged.

This apparent problem has been referred to as an “engagement gap” that is

costing U.S. businesses billions of dollars a year in lost productivity (Bates,

2004; Johnson, 2004; Kowalski, 2003).

At the same time, research on employee engagement has been and con-

tinues to be plagued by two issues. First, numerous defi nitions of employee

engagement exist and there continues to be a lack of agreement and consen-

sus on what engagement actually means. In fact, researchers can’t even agree

on a name for the construct. Some argue that it should be called employee

engagement, while others suggest it should be called job engagement (Rich et

al., 2010) or work engagement (Schaufeli & Salanova, 2011). Second, numer-

ous instruments have been developed to measure employee engagement, and

there continue to be questions about how to measure engagement as well as

the validity of existing measures. In addition to these two ongoing concerns,

there is no generally accepted theory of employee engagement.

With so much research activity and worldwide attention, you would

think that we know a great deal about employee engagement. But what have

we learned over the past decade and what do we really know about employee

engagement? In this article, we take a close look at the engagement literature

and try to decipher what we know about employee engagement and what

we must still learn. First, we discuss the meaning of employee engagement

and then describe several theories of employee engagement. Next, we dis-

cuss the measurement of employee engagement followed by a brief review of

engagement research fi ndings. In the fi nal section of the article, we provide a

theory of employee engagement that integrates existing models and theories

and includes several types of employee engagement. Throughout the article

we will use the term employee engagement or engagement to refer to the engage-

ment construct unless we state otherwise.