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Introduction
Employee engagement is a matter of concern for leaders and managers in organisations across the globe; they recognise it as a vital element affecting organisational effectiveness, innovation and competitiveness. This concern is evident in findings of the Corporate Communication International survey of US chief corporate communicator opinion on practices and trends. The survey identified employee engagement as one of the three top trends facing organisations ([21] Goodman et al. , 2009). In Europe, a UK Government-sponsored review ([39] MacLeod and Clarke, 2009) found employee engagement to be a cause for concern for leaders in private, public and voluntary sector organisations. This paper aims to make a contribution by considering the role of communication in enhancing employee engagement. Despite its importance for organisation leaders, there is considerable confusion about the meaning of employee engagement. This leads to muddled understandings of the term within organisations, for example, [6] Balain and Sparrow (2009) report a survey which found 20 different models of engagement inside one single organisation. The term employee engagement has its roots in academic work. However, it was largely a business and consultancy issue in the 1990s. Now, the concept is attracting increasing attention from academics, particularly from scholars in business and management, psychology, and organisational behaviour disciplines. These sources have varying conceptions of the term employee engagement, resulting in confusion in the literature. This paper aims to provide a degree of clarity on the concept by identifying stages in its evolution and discussing its definition.
Given global leadership concern about employee engagement, communication professionals involved in internal communication management need an in-depth understanding of the concept so that they can craft strategies and tactics which contribute to building engagement. Internal communication has been posited as an important factor in the development of employment engagement. Surprisingly, corporate communication literature has not yet adequately considered the concept. This may be due to confusion concerning the concept, and to concerns about overlaps with other constructs. This paper tackles the gap in the literature with a proposed model of the role of internal corporate communication in enhancing employee engagement.
Article structure
The paper: first, provides an overview of the evolution of the employee engagement concept, discussing definitional approaches, and highlighting components of engagement; second, it discusses issues arising...
