Factors Influencing the Engagement on Managers on the Job: A Dissection of Psychosocial Imperatives

Abstract

In a major boost to the 'Make in India' initiative, in the medical, automotive and telecom clusters the Government has received 57 investment proposals. Over Rs 19,000 crore (US$ 3.05 billion) of which 30 proposals worth INR 6,500 Cr.(US$ 1.04 billion) have been approved by the Union Ministry. There is an ambitious plan to locally manufacture as many as 181 products. While the corporate world is upbeat with these proposals, there is a clarion call for the management professionals to examine and reset the resources in the organizations to embrace the challenges ahead. Human Resources play a vital role in making use of all other resources in a productive manner to achieve organizational efficiency. It has proven beyond doubt that the people in organization are the prime movers who can manage money, material and methods in an efficient way and bring in more productivity of each of the resources. In order to get people contribute their best, we need to ensure that they are engaged on the job and not just employed in an organization.

Therefore it is important to improve people side of the management, the current people spectrum is typically tend to be large hierarchies with multiple layers of management in which a manager at middle level is with a profit/cost responsibility and also has the people responsibility. Managers can play a crucial role in translating organizational policies and strategies into practice and action. They have the potential to contribute significantly to the quality of implementation of organizational plans and promote excellence. Therefore their engagement on the job is significant to realise the plan. Employee engagement has become one of the most popular topics in the management science. In the last 10 years, there have been a number of studies published on employee engagement as well as on the factors influencing the engagement of managers in the job. But there is a debate on the factors influencing the engagement. However, there is unanimity on the view that among various factors, psychosocial factor which are intrinsic and extrinsic in nature playsa significant role in engaging the managers on the job. The premise is on this theory is propounded isbasically that the psychosocial factors is fundamental to formation of value system which transcends as behavior of "do” and “act” in other words it is performance of the individual. The interest in the studies is mainly due to the belief that the engaged employees will contribute disproportionately for success of the organization when compare with the others in the organization and also they go extra miles in delighting the customer. However, there are continued debate on the factors, meaning, measurement, and theory of employee engagement. In this article, we review certain factors such as personal/demographic, value preference, wellbeing and relationship and its possible influence on employee engagement.