EFFECT OF PRIMARY DIMENSIONS OF WORKFORCE DIVERSITY ON EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT: A LITERATURE REVIEW

This paper presents a critical review of the theoretical basis for the popular practitioner idea that there are generational differences in engagement levels. Workforce diversity and employee engagement are two important factors that play a major role in realizing organizational outcomes. The objective of the paper is to review the literature only relating to the fields of workforce diversity and employee engagement for the period of 1990 to 2017. Through the review of previous studies the author's attempt to identify the impact of dimensions of diversity on employee engagement and whether the levels of engagement vary with reference to each dimension. The review indicated that majority of studies were done on the impact of age or generational differences followed by gender and other dimensions. Age both chronological and generational differences had a significant association with engagement whereas gender and other variables did not have any significant impact. The study concluded that the primary dimensions of workforce diversity like age; gender, etc need to be studied keeping in mind the inherent diversity that is present in the Indian Context. The future scope of the study is to analyse the impact of age, gender etc on employee engagement in the Indian context with the help of structured questionnaire of an estimated sample size of 320.