Employee Engagement Concept - a Theoretical and Practical Approach

ABSTRACT.Today, the companies keep searching the best methods that could provide them the competitive advantage on the market. Because of the increased numbers of competitors and the continuous innovation process, this is appreciated as a real challenge. As the employee is the most valuable resource of the company, difficult to be copied, one must give the appropriate attention to that and invest as much as required. Acquiring a high level of employee engagement within the organization can increase significantly the chances of a company to succeed. This being given, the present paper aims to bring into discussion different aspects of the employee engagement concept, from its antecedents to its consequences, discussing inclusively elements related to organizational justice. A practical approach is also shown by the results of a survey taken among 50 employees and the results, which align with the literature, are valuable and meaningful, showing what employees appreciate most, what they need and how they perceive the relationship they have with the organization they are hired in.Keywords: employee engagement, environment, organizational justice, relationships1. IntroductionHie topic regarding the employee engagement level is a very complex one, as it relates to a large extent to psychology. The different types of behaviors and motivations still need to be studied more deep, as the classical approach that aims to determine people to be more committed to the company not always provides the expected results. A paradigm shift in employee engagement is required that moves from the independent/dependent relationship that exists between employer and employee, to a relationship that is interconnected and where accountability exists on both sides.1 Nowadays, the companies are more and more focused on the engagement level, due to the continuous changes within the market, the increased number of competitors, the need for retaining the employees as long as possible, the need for cost reduction and, most important, the need for creating that environment that provides the employees with what they need in order to increase their satisfaction and their quality of work, so that to be able to deliver the best services to the customers. The high level of employee engagement is not only important from the benefits' perspective, but also from the cost perspective - the disengaged employees are not satisfied with the work they perform, are less productive, their quality of work is decreased, are more likely to quit, all these leading to loss.2. Employee Engagement Concept and Elements of InfluenceFirst time the engagement at work was introduced by Kahn (1990)2 and defined as "harnessing of organizational members' selves to their work roles; in engagement, people employ and express themselves physically, cognitively, and emotionally during role performances," but the domain is very complex and many researchers have argued on it. To determine a common definition, Shuck and Wollard reviewed 140 articles that mentioned employee engagement and observed four areas of consistency or inconsistency:3 Engagement is a personal decision, not an organizational decision as implied by some definitions; While early definitions treated engagement as an atomic concept, later definitions divided it into three basic concepts: emotional, behavioral and cognitive engagement. Employee engagement is about the behaviors that meet or exceed organizational goals.The above being given, the authors finally defined employee engagement concept as "an individual employee's cognitive, emotional and behavioral state directed toward desired organizational outcomes. "4 With all these, the most common acceptance of this concept states that it represents the emotional and intellectual commitment to an organization.5 The literature also provides some insights regarding the elements that lead to employee engagement, as well as the consequences they result in, as presented in figure l. …