Employee Engagement and Its Role during Crisis Management: A Conceptual Model

Abstract

The field of crisis management, business continuity and resilience is part of discussion in many important forums around the world. Is there any paper discussing the importance of people continuity and employee retention in the recent years? Yes many organizations are concerned about losing their talents and will have to do quite a lot in the coming years to improve their employee commitment and employee engagement. This paper is looking into the importance of building employee capabilities and employee engagement in organizations that can transform employees – the powerful resource of organizations into heroes and heroines during crisis scenarios. The paper builds a model based on employee engagement that can facilitate effective crisis management for organizations. The existing literature on employee commitment, employee engagement and employee crisis management capability building is discussed to develop a model and the model is validated using a case study of Taj Hotel Mumbai employee initiatives during the terrorist attack on the hotel. The article elaborates on how building of efficient staff becomes the building block that can save companies during crisis and the importance of investing on employees through learning and development , having right leaders, and team building to harness their powers for organization sustainability and growth.

Key words: employee engagement, crisis situation, hospitality employees, bottom line, discretionary behavior