144 People management processes Introduction The concept of employee engagement, crudely defined as `going the extra mile', has attracted a lot of attention recently. It has become a new manage- ment mantra. Reilly and Brown (2008) noted that the terms job satisfaction, motivation and commitment are generally being replaced now in business by `engagement' because it appears to have more descriptive force and face validity. Everyone believes that engagement is a good thing but many, although they think they know it when they see it, are vague about what it really is. Perhaps this is because the concept of engagement is defined in so many dif- ferent ways. It is often used loosely as a notion which embraces pretty well everything the organization is seeking to do with regard to the contribution and behaviour of its employees in terms of job performance, discretionary effort, organizational citizenship and commitment. Furthermore, it is not clear where the concept of motivation fits in. Is it just an aspect of engage- ment or is it something that needs to be treated separately? The vagueness of the term is illustrated by the difficulty of answering the question `Engagement to what?' Are employees engaged with their job, their career or their organization ­ or all three or any two of them? Some definitions avoid this dilemma by referring to engagement as a con- dition which is solely related to the jobs people do. Others define it as, in effect, identification with the purposes and values of the organization. Only Saks (2006) and, following him, Balain and Sparrow (2009) make a clear distinction between the two. This distinction is important because without it the development of programmes for enhancing engagement which deal with the job aspects of engagement as distinct from the organizational aspects will be difficult. Faced with this confusion, David Guest (2009) suggested that the concept of employee engagement needs to be more clearly defined or it should be abandoned. But the notion of employee engagement seems to excite managers, HR practitioners and academics. It is here to stay. This chapter therefore begins with an attempt to clarify its meaning and define its significance. This leads to an assessment of the drivers of engagement and a discussion of one of the key notions associated with it ­ that of discretionary effort. The chapter ends with a review of approaches to engaging employees. The meaning of employee engagement Kahn (1990), one of the earliest writers to consider engagement, regard- ed it as a psychological state experienced by employees in relation to their work, together with associated behaviours. A definition based on research by Maslach et al (2001: 74) referred to engagement as: `A positive, fulfilling,