UNEVEN ENGAGEMENT: HOW DIGITAL HR TECHNOLOGY, FLEXIBILITY, LEADERSHIP AND INCLUSION DIFFERENTIALLY SHAPE EMOTIONAL, COGNITIVE AND BEHAVIOURAL ENGAGEMENT AMONG MID-LEVEL BFSI PROFESSIONALS

Abstract

Post-pandemic organisational research has largely treated employee engagement as a single composite outcome and HR practices as a uniformly positive influence upon it. This study departs from that convention by decomposing employee engagement into its emotional, cognitive and behavioural dimensions and testing whether six post-pandemic HR practices – flexible work arrangements, employee well-being support, digital HR technology, performance management systems, leadership support, and diversity-equity-inclusion (DEI) climate – influence these dimensions uniformly or differentially. Primary data were collected from 126 mid-level professionals across banking, insurance and non-banking financial company (NBFC) organisations in India. Multiple regression, one-way ANOVA and moderation analysis reveal that the six HR practices do not uniformly predict engagement: digital HR technology is a significant negative predictor of emotional engagement, DEI climate is a significant negative predictor of cognitive engagement and of overall engagement, while none of the six practices significantly predicts behavioural engagement once the others are controlled for. Work mode significantly moderates the digital-HR-technology–engagement relationship, with the association turning more negative for remote workers than for hybrid or onsite workers. Overall engagement did not differ significantly by designation, experience, organisation type or work mode. These findings caution against treating HR practices and engagement as monolithic constructs and suggest that digital and inclusion-oriented interventions in BFSI organisations may carry engagement trade-offs that are dimension- and context-specific rather than universally positive.