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STRATEGIC HUMAN RESOURCE PRACTICES AND EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT:

A THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVE

Article · September 2019

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ADALYA JOURNAL ISSN NO: 1301-2746

STRATEGIC HUMAN RESOURCE PRACTICES AND EMPLOYEE

ENGAGEMENT: A THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVE

Indulekha K
Research Scholar in Commerce (Ph.D.)
PG and Research Department of Commerce
Maharaja‟s College, Ernakulam, Kerala-682 011
E-Mail: induchaithram1@gmail.com

Dr. Vineeth KM
Assistant Professor, Post Graduate Department of Commerce
Government College, Thripunithura, Ernakulam, Kerala-682 301

J. Gayathri
Assistant Professor, Department of Commerce and Financial Studies
Bharathidasan University, Tamil Nadu.

ABSTRACT
This paper examined the theoretical perspectives of strategic HR practices and
employee engagement. An attempt was made to draw a relationship between strategic HR
practices and employee engagement. The review findings stated that these HR practices
have a positive and significant influence on employee engagement. The study revealed that
it is necessary for organizations to use their human resources effectively in order to make
them engaged in their work. Hence, it is imperative for HR managers to understand the
effectiveness of HR practices strategically designed across their functions such as training,
planning, reward, recruitment, selection and promotion in nurturing a culture of employee
engagement in the organization.
Keywords: Strategic HR Practices, Strategic Human Resource Management, Employee
Engagement.

1. INTRODUCTION
The ultimate goal of every strategy is achieving organizational performance directly
or indirectly. The importance of human capital in the performance of the organization is
justified. When employees individually perform well, better will be the collective results for
the organization. According to the behavioral perspective of Human Resource
Management(HRM), organizations do not perform themselves, but instead use HR practices
to encourage productive behaviors from employees and thus achieve desired operational and
financial objectives (Becker & Huselid, 1998). Human resource practices include
recruitment, training, development, performance appraisal, compensation, trade union

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ADALYA JOURNAL ISSN NO: 1301-2746

management, labor welfare, etc. The HR strategic orientation aims at the congruence between
organizational strategies and human capital. The fundamental assumption of Strategic Human
Resource Management (SHRM) is that the performance of the firm gets influenced by a set
of HR practices.
The relationship between HR practices and organizational outcomes is one of the
essential pursuits of the macro HRM approach. Research has shown that the use of systems of
such practices intended to enhance employees' knowledge, skills, and abilities, motivation,
and opportunity to contribute is associated with positive outcomes such as greater
commitment (Gong et al. 2009: Sigo, M. O. (2019)), lower turnover (Pavithran, A et al.
(2018) & Batt, 2002), higher productivity and quality (MacDuffie, 1995), better service
performance (Chuang & Liao, 2010), enhanced safety performance (Zacharatos, Barling,
& Iverson, 2005), and better financial performance (Huselid, 1995). . Moreover, it is
commonly asserted that HRM may influence the three types of organizational outcomes in
sequence.HR practices are expected to influence HR outcomes first which are followed by
operational outcomes and financial outcomes.
The challenge today is not just retaining talented people, but fully engaging them,
capturing their minds and hearts at each stage of their work lives (Kaye & Jordan, 2003).
Employee engagement has emerged as an essential component of business success. First
conceptualized by Kahn (1990), employee engagement is defined as the “harnessing of
organization members‟ selves to their work roles; in engagement, people employ and express
themselves physically, cognitively, and emotionally during role performances” (Kathiravan.
C.et al. 2018 & 2019).
.

In order to deliver its purported benefits, engagement needs to be explicitly embedded

within an integrated system of HRM policies, practices and procedures (Guest, 2014).
Human resource management practices have to be linked with behavioral outcomes
like employee engagement. There arises need for HRM practitioners to look beyond annual
engagement surveys among employees and to integrate engagement in HR policies and
practices like personnel recruitment, selection, training, and development. The present study
is an attempt to provide integration across the SHRM and employee engagement works of
literature.

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2. OBJECTIVE
The objective of this review is to understand the concepts of strategic HR practices
and employee engagement and thereby identify the relationship between them from the
available literature.
3. METHODOLOGY
This is purely a review paper to elicit the influence of strategic HR practices on
employee engagement. Literature in SHRM and employee engagement are integrated to
derive the underlying relationship among the two.
4. CONCEPT OF STRATEGIC HR PRACTICES
HRM is slowly growing strategic all across the world. When HRM is linked with
strategic management processes of the firm, it turns to SHRM. Which is the act of managing
people in organizations for effective implementation of competitive strategy. It ensures the
contribution of human capital to the achievement of business objectives.
Strategic HR practices are those HR practices theoretically or empirically related to
organization performance. They are unique HR practices based on the firm‟s strategy. Human
resource practices employed strategically would lead to sustainable competitive advantage.
Employees are valued as essential assets and core partners in creating competitive advantage
in the organization. Human resource policies and practices aimed at increasing the
motivation, satisfaction, commitment, and welfare of employees. Strategic HR practices
enable the organization to achieve the optimization of resources, efficiency and effectiveness,
and continuous improvement in realizing its goals. They are intended to identify, develop,
and retain the talents of employees.
5. CONCEPT OF EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT
Employee engagement means complete absorption of self into the work role.
Employee engagement is a workplace approach resulting in the right condition for all
members of an organization to give of their best each day, committed to their organization‟s
goals and values, motivated to contribute to organizational success, with an enhanced sense
of their own well-being. It is a multidimensional motivational concept that explains the
investment of an individual‟s physical, cognitive, and emotional energy in employment at the
same time. Employee engagement is a positive attitude held by the employee towards the
organization and its value. An engaged employee is defined as one who is fully absorbed by
and enthusiastic about his work and so takes positive action to further the organization‟s
reputation and interests. They are more likely to work harder through increased levels of

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discretionary effort than are those who are disengaged. An engaged workforce is more open
to new information, more productive, and more willing to go the extra mile.
6. REVIEW OF LITERATURE
At present, it is frequently accepted that employees establish a significant source of
competitive advantage for firms (Barney, 1991; Pfeiffer, 1994). As a result, it is important
for a firm to adopt HRM practices that make the best use of its employees. An effective HRM
and SHRM framework can always be instrumental in sustaining a competitive advantage in
the market which in turn to the organizational performance (Barney, 1991). Strategic Human
Resource Management (SHRM) is used to explicitly link HRM with the strategic
management processes of the organization and to emphasize coordination or congruence
among the various human resource management practices (Schuler & Jackson, 1987;
Wright & McMahan, 1992).
Strategic HR practices aim at directing human resources towards desired
organizational performance Chinnadurai, K et al. (2017). Huselid (1993 & 1995) assessed
the simultaneous use of multiple sophisticated HR practices and concluded that the HR
sophistication of an organization was significantly related to turnover, organizational
productivity, and financial performance. Delery and Doty (1996) identified seven practices
that are consistently considered as strategic HR practices. These are internal career
opportunities, formal training systems, appraisal measures, profit sharing, employment
security, voice mechanisms, and job definition. Collins and Clark (2003) explored the black
box between strategic HR practices which include training, performance assessment, rewards,
and performance of the firm.
Employee engagement is a relatively new term in HR literature. Kahn, who can be
credited with conceptualizing as well as theoretically deriving the dimensions of employee
engagement in organizational studies, held that an employee can be physically, emotionally
or cognitively engaged. He defined employee engagement as the “harnessing of organization
members‟ selves to their work roles; in engagement, people employ and express themselves
physically, cognitively, and emotionally during role performances”. Employee engagement is
a mental state of operation in which a person in an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of
energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity. It is a positive
attitude held by the employee towards the organization and its value; an engaged employee is
aware of the business context and works with colleagues to improve performance within the
job for the benefit of the organization. An organization must work to develop and nurture
engagement, which requires a two-way relationship between the employer and employee

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(Robinson, Perryman, Hayday, 2004). It is the measure of an employee‟s willingness to

spend discretionary effort to help the employer (Erickson, 2005).
Employee engagement is seen connected with various constructs. According to
Borman and Motowidlo (1993), employees who fill their work roles with enthusiasm,
energy, passion have high contextual performance. The positive relation between engagement
and organizational performance reflected in revenue growth, productivity, customer
satisfaction, loyalty, employee retention, etc. (Coffman, 2000). Hannah and Iverson (2002)
noted that HRM practices are viewed by employees as a „personalized‟ commitment to them
by the organization which is then reciprocated back to the organization by employees through
positive attitudes and behavior. In order to assess the impact of HRM, the entire system of
HRM practices rather than individual practices should be taken into account (Wright &
Boswell, 2002). A consensus is emerging that high-performance HRM practices are broadly
focused around three areas (Conway, 2004; Wright & Boswell, 2002): (1) employee skills,
including selective recruitment; (2) motivation, including such practices as performance-
based rewards; and (3) empowerment, including participation mechanisms (Snape &
Redman, 2010). Blizzard (2003) demonstrated that effective interpersonal relationships
between employees and managers raised engagement levels. Robinson, Perryman, and
Hayday (2004) showed how increased opportunities for upward feedback led to higher levels
of engagement. Studies of engagement, like those of high-performance HRM practices, draw
on social exchange theory to suggest that employees will become engaged with their work
when antecedents are in place that signal to them that they are valued and trusted (Rich et al.,
2010; Saks, 2006). Kathiravan, C et al. (2019) & Gallup organization (2007) identified a
higher link between earnings per share and levels of engagement in workplace.
Some relational constructs had been discovered as predictors of employee
engagement. According to Agarwal et al. (2007), employees who have positive job
satisfaction, organizational commitment, and job involvement and demonstrate discretionary
behavior, will be highly absorbed in their work and will experience a higher degree of
engagement. They may also coexist with employee engagement.
Engagement can also act as a mediator variable. Work engagement mediates between
distal antecedents like work context, demographic factors and job performance (Christian,
Garza and Slaughter, 2011). Engagement partially mediates the influence of empowerment
on affective commitment (Albrecht, 2010).
Truss et al. (2013) recently proposed that employee engagement may finally provide
the key to understanding how effective HRM practice can lead to higher individual and

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organizational performance. Nonetheless, the conceptual and empirical links between HRM
practices and employee engagement, and between engagement and performance, are not well
established (Guest, 2014; Sparrow, 2014; Kathiravan, C et al. (2018), Sparrow and
Balain, 2010). Given that employee engagement is fundamentally a motivational construct,
further integration of the engagement and HR literature is clearly warranted (Albrecht et al.,
2015). To deal with the competition, organizations need to develop their internal strength,
which can be developed with the help of strategic human resource practices (Adnan et al.,
2016).
7. DISCUSSION
As evident from the above review, it emerges that strategic HR practices can garner
conditions for employee engagement. HRM can play a significant role in inducing employee
engagement. HR practices which endeavor to align with organizational strategies without
igniting the full potential and talent of the employees are unlikely to achieve sustained
competitive advantage. It is this aspect of the human resources which makes them inimitable
and difficult to substitute. In this context, traditional mechanisms are not fully effective in
measuring the effectiveness of HR practices. Employers should go beyond organizational
productivity measures, satisfaction index or HR audit scores and need to focus on well-
designed strategic HR practices to keep employees engaged cognitively and emotionally.

8. CONCLUSION
The paper establishes that Strategic HR practices and employee engagement are two
important constructs gaining strength in academic and practitioner literature. These
constructs are closely related. Strategic HR practices appear to be the key antecedent of
employee engagement. Empirical studies can be conducted to test their relationship. Based
on a literature review we propose that employee engagement and human resource practices
need to be looked at as an integrative whole.
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