ABSTRACT
Employee engagement is an important concept for researchers, practitioners and managers for various reasons. First, interest in employee engagement emerged with the shift in focus in psychology from weaknesses, malfunctioning and damage towards happiness, human strengths and optimal functioning (Seligman and Csikszentmihayi, 2000). Second, the needs of businesses to maximise the inputs of employees have contributed to the interest in engagement. Studies have shown that employee engagement predicts productivity, job satisfaction, motivation, commitment, low turnover intention, customer satisfaction, return on assets, profits and shareholder value (Bakker, Demerouti and Schaufeli, 2003; Bakker, Schaufeli, Leiter and Taris, 2008; Harter, Schmidt and Hayes, 2002; May, Gilson and Harter, 2004; Schaufeli and Bakker, 2004). Third, engagement affects the mindset of employees, and relates to personal initiative and learning (Sonnentag, 2003). Furthermore, it fuels discretionary efforts and concerns for quality (Salanova, Llorens, Cifre, Martinez and Schaufeli, 2003).
