Employee Engagement: Understanding the ‘Personal’ Dimension of Engagement

Abstract

Kahn’s ‘personal engagement’ (PE) concept centres on the ways which ‘people employ and express themselves physically, cognitively, and emotionally during role performances’ (1990, p.694). However, engagement has been viewed through a predominantly positivistic, unitarist framework (Sambrook, 2021; Shuck, Kim & Fletcher, 2021) that has ‘bent’ engagement through its appropriation to managerialist agendas, and ‘stretched’ in its meaning away from being an individual state of mind (Truss et al., 2013). This study explores Kahn's (1990) original framing of engagement as a deeply personal experience, considering what PE is and how it is understood and experienced by individual employees. This considers engagement as a deeply subjective experience and phenomenon (Shuck, Kim & Fletcher, 2021). It addresses the lack of research into the individual employee’s unique, lived experience (Shuck, Rocco & Albornoz, 2011; Sambrook, 2021; Truss et al., 2013) of their engagement. Drawing on an extensive literature review and semi-structured interviews with employees from a range of organisations, this study applies an interpretivist analytical approach to explore employee understandings and experiences of engagement. It addresses the lack of qualitative and interpretivist studies of engagement (Bailey et al., 2017a). Findings broadly indicate that existing understandings of engagement are divergent from Kahn’s concept. Further, engagement experiences are nuanced according to individual perspectives and the contexts in which the experience takes place. This study’s key contribution is that it extends Kahn’s (1990) engagement framework through the development of a new conceptual model to consider two potential versions of being engaged as a person and engaged as an employee, represented by ‘performative’ and ‘authentic’ expressions. This develops knowledge relating to the active part the individual has in the processes that contribute towards expressions of engagement, identifying engagement as an active, conscious choice and unique, subjective individual phenomenon. The model supports Kahn’s (1990) conceptualisation of engagement as an individual’s behaviours, feelings, values and psychological state of mind while at work, the extent to which they harness themselves to their work roles, and the ways in which they bring in or leave out their personal selves during work role performance. This study also develops understanding of engagement in relation to individual and personal dimensions, including employee perceptions and experiences of engagement, identifying some common understandings, experiences, and influences on engagement. It confirms the impact of the organisation on engagement, including consideration of the range of social, cultural, and structural factors that contribute to organisational context, power dynamics, managerial control and interventions and opportunities for individual agency and choice. Findings are developed to highlight practical implications and areas for future research.