A Conceptual Model of Employee Engagement – From the perspective of Manufacturing Industry

The concept of employee loyalty has changed in the 21st century in the backdrop of the modern workforce. Today, employers see loyalty in terms of employees’ attitude, behavior and work performance rather than the length of the service that one has rendered. Engendering loyalty from the employees is more crucial in the current knowledge economy where the human talent is the deciding factor in creating market differentiation and competitive advantage. High levels of engagement in global and domestic firms foster customer loyalty, promote retention of talent, and improve organizational performance, enhance productivity and stakeholder value. The Indian economy is currently poised as the third largest economy of the world based on Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) and the sixth on the basis of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Currently 12% of the country’s total workforce and 50% of the total export contributed by manufacturing sector. About 100 million jobs and 25% of India’s GDP are expected from manufacturing sector by 2022. This country also diverse in the form of demographic and human capital. That’s why it is more important to understand the engagement drivers of employees closely and formulate strategies to create and retain engaged employees. This study tried to capture the all the possible drivers of engagement, required engagement environment, attributes which acts as facilitators of engagement, Signs of engagement and the derived outcomes from the perspective of Indian manufacturing sector.