A Queerer Approach to Employee Engagement: Disrupting Normative Assumptions for Improving Human Resource Development

Abstract: The way employee engagement is constructed in the literature is assumed, implicitly, to be based on heteronormativity and cisnormativity that privileges a masculine ideal, where LGBTQ+ employees are rendered as subordinate and devalued. Leveraging insights of queer theory, the purpose of this integrative literature review was to scrutinize the underpinnings of heteronormativity and cisnormativity within employee engagement frameworks. By queering the employee engagement literature, the findings identify conventional gendered binaries of male/female and masculine/feminine are pervasive in the selection of study participants, development of definitions, and framing of employee engagement construct. This review offers implications for HRD researchers, scholars, and practitioners to support erosion of gendered norms within the employee engagement literature and practical applications through inclusion of LGBTQ+ perspectives to advance employee engagement for all workplace identities.