The term Employee Engagement was coined by William Kahn, Professor of Organizational Behaviour at Boston University. In his 1990 paper Psychological Conditions of Personal Engagement and Disengagement at Work he defined engagement as an employee’s ability to harness their “full self” at work.
An engaged employee, who is able to harness their full self, will display loyalty and ownership. For example, they will tackle tasks without being asked, because they want to, and because they believe that their extra effort will benefit their organisation.
Employees that aren’t engaged fall into two buckets. Disengaged employees could be described as “passive” and won’t apply discretionary effort in the workplace. Actively disengaged employees represent employees that are significantly dissatisfied and less productive at work.
Some employees choose not to disclose gender on the Workday Peakon Employee Voice platform. Although we do track employees that do not identify as either gender, we don’t currently have a representative sample of this identity group that allows us to draw conclusions.
While the parameters that define each generation may vary, for the purposes of our figures we’ve chosen to use the guidelines defined by the Pew Research Center.
The Silent Generation, which spans people born from 1928 to 1945, comprises the tail end of the current workforce. Following them are the Baby Boomers, whose generation spans 18 years from 1946 to 1964. They are succeeded by Generation X, who were born between 1965 and 1980. Millennials, who are expected to make up the majority of the workforce this year, comprise people born from 1981 to 1996. The final generation — known as Generation Z — began in 1997.