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Introduction
Organizations around the globe have constantly been involved in evolving themselves to stay in tune with the dynamic business world. The rapid changes in the industry have escalated the need for having the right talent and further engaging and retaining them for the attainment of the organizational goals. However, for years, companies have been struggling with retention and employee engagement (EE) issues at workplace. Gallup, a pioneer organization tracking EE across the globe since 2000, declared a worldwide EE crisis as engagement levels barely increased over the years with only 13% of the working population being engaged globally [1]. With different generations of workforce working together, it becomes all the more challenging for the organizations to rethink their relationship with the employees. As the baby boomers retire and millennials join the workforce, the organizational models for enhancing the employee experience need an overhaul. Today, employees treat their work not merely as an employment but as an experience and for the organizations to deeply understand the expectations of the employees, enhance their experience and further engage them becomes the need of the hour.
The organizations of present times understand that attaining the organizational goals require harnessing the best performance from the employees and with the drastic differences in the expectations of employees from their employment experience, coming up with organizational strategies to enhance employee experience becomes imperative. Employee experience refers to “the employee's holistic perceptions of the relationship with his/her employing organization derived from all the encounters at touchpoints along the employee's journey” (Plaskoff, 2017, p. 137). The quality of employee experiences with the organization has a direct impact on their engagement levels. Managers have to be concerned about how employees think and feel about their jobs and what they are willing to dedicate to the organization. Rather than putting forth a “transactional” HR strategy, the human resource managers are looking out for organizational interventions that are designed to enhance the experience of their employees with the aim of successfully engaging them and capitalizing the positive outcomes of an engaged workforce. Engaged employees not only align their actions with the strategic organizational goals but also willingly extent discretionary efforts for their organization termed as organizational citizenship behavior (OCB).
Organ (1988, p. 4) defined OCB...