Review of Krish Shankar's article, published October 19, 2026

### Critical Review: Is Employee Engagement Being Reinvented—or Merely Repackaged?

Review of Krish Shankar's article, published October 19, 2026

Article: [Getting your workforce fully engaged and motivated so they give their best](https://www.thecrossmentors.com/post/getting-your-workforce-fully-engaged-and-motivated-so-they-give-their-best?utm_source=chatgpt.com)

Your concern is well-founded. Krish Shankar brings together several legitimate ideas from organisational psychology, motivation theory, positive psychology and leadership development. However, the article does not convincingly integrate them into a distinct, testable model of employee engagement.

Its strongest contribution is the proposed emotions lens: managers should think not only about the workplace conditions they create but also about the emotions those conditions evoke.

Its greatest weakness is that it treats engagement drivers, psychological mechanisms, employee experiences and organisational outcomes almost interchangeably.

MY CRITICAL ASSESSMENT

### 7/10

Practical relevance

### 4/10

Conceptual originality

### 3/10

Scientific rigour

### 3/10

Future readiness

Editorial scores, not validated research ratings.

### 1\. What exactly is the author proposing?

Shankar introduces five pillars, abbreviated as TRLPP, and connects them with four positive emotions.

| Engagement pillar | Associated emotions |

| -------------------- | -------------------------------- |

| Team and manager | Compassion, gratitude, happiness |

| Recognition | Pride, gratitude |

| Learning and growth | Pride, gratitude |

| Psychological safety | Happiness, gratitude |

| Purpose | Gratitude, pride |

The four emotions are compassion, pride, gratitude and happiness.

He argues that conventional engagement interventions have been excessively cognitive and rational. Instead, managers should consciously design experiences that generate these emotions.

For example, mentoring an employee should create gratitude, which could encourage discretionary effort and stronger commitment. The Crossmentors

This is an intuitively attractive argument. But an intuitively attractive explanation is not necessarily a scientifically demonstrated causal model.

### 2\. What is genuinely new or exciting?

There are three worthwhile ideas.

First, shifting attention from engagement scores to emotional experiences. Rather than merely asking whether employees are satisfied with their managers, Shankar encourages leaders to consider how their actions make employees feel. This is a useful managerial perspective, although affective engagement and workplace emotions have been studied for decades.

Second, translating positive psychology into management practices. Compassion, gratitude and authentic pride can enrich conversations about team relationships. The article's distinction between authentic and hubristic pride is particularly useful.

Third, linking psychological safety with emotional engagement. The discussion of inclusion, learning, contribution and challenging the status quo introduces a practical developmental perspective.

However, none of these is a new discovery. Psychological safety, intrinsic motivation, social exchange and affective commitment already have substantial theoretical foundations.

The article's contribution is primarily synthesis and managerial interpretation, not a new theory.

### 3\. The seven fundamental problems with the article

### Problem 1: It mixes different levels of analysis

This is exactly where your observation is most compelling.

Consider what the five pillars actually represent:

| Pillar | What it really represents | Primary responsibility |

| -------------------- | ---------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------- |

| Team and manager | Social and leadership environment | Manager, team |

| Recognition | Management practice and reward system | Manager, HR |

| Learning and growth | Job characteristics and career opportunities | Employee, manager, organisation |

| Psychological safety | Shared interpersonal climate | Team, leadership |

| Purpose | Individual meaning and organisational identity | Employee, leadership |

These factors are related, but they are not conceptually equivalent.

For instance, psychological safety is often an emergent team condition, whereas an individual's sense of purpose is a personal psychological experience. Recognition is an intervention, not necessarily an engagement state.

My criticism: The author has created a checklist of desirable workplace conditions and called it an engagement model.

That may be useful for managers, but it does not explain precisely how engagement is produced.

### Problem 2: Engagement is confused with motivation, happiness and commitment

These constructs overlap, but they are different.

* Motivation: Why someone chooses to exert effort.

* Work engagement: How energetically, attentively and meaningfully someone invests in work.

* Job satisfaction: How positively someone evaluates their job.

* Organisational commitment: Their psychological attachment to the organisation.

* Happiness: A broader state of subjective wellbeing.

An employee can be deeply engaged in a challenging assignment without feeling happy every day.

Equally, someone may be happy with colleagues and working conditions but contribute relatively little.

The established Utrecht model defines work engagement through vigour, dedication and absorption, not happiness or gratitude. NCBI Bookshelf +1

This distinction is largely missing from the article.

### Problem 3: The emotional argument risks becoming managerial manipulation

The article suggests that managers can consciously create particular emotions, such as gratitude, through mentoring and supportive behaviour.

There is a subtle ethical problem here.

Should managers mentor employees because development matters, or because they expect employees to become grateful and reciprocate with extra effort?

The second approach risks turning genuine care into an instrument of performance extraction.

Gratitude cannot be reliably commanded. Employees might interpret the same mentoring experience as support, obligation, interference or even favouritism.

The goal should be to create trustworthy conditions, not to engineer desirable employee emotions.

### Problem 4: The model omits fundamental working conditions

Imagine an employee who has a compassionate manager, receives recognition, enjoys learning, feels psychologically safe and believes in the organisation's purpose.

But that employee also faces unreasonable workloads, inadequate staffing, poor tools and unfair compensation.

Would the employee necessarily be engaged?

Of course not.

Shankar's framework underplays work design, resources, workload, role clarity, fairness and physical or psychological energy.

These omissions are especially striking because Gallup's 2026 engagement guidance explicitly identifies compensation, tools, staffing and sustainable workloads as baseline conditions. Gallup.com

In other words, employee engagement cannot be sustainably separated from the actual economics and architecture of work.

### Problem 5: Psychological safety is not the same as happiness

The author associates psychological safety with happiness and gratitude.

That association is too narrow.

Psychological safety permits disagreement, experimentation, speaking up and challenging authority.

Those behaviours may produce uncomfortable emotions: anxiety, frustration, embarrassment or tension.

A psychologically safe workplace is not necessarily emotionally pleasant. It is one where people can take interpersonal risks without unreasonable fear of punishment or humiliation.

This matters particularly in innovation, restructuring and organisational transformation.

### Problem 6: The framework lacks causal validation

A scientific engagement model should answer questions such as:

* Which factors predict engagement most strongly?

* Do emotions mediate the relationship between working conditions and engagement?

* Are the five pillars independent, or do they substantially overlap?

* Do the relationships differ by occupation, age, culture or employment type?

* Do improvements in engagement produce measurable changes in performance, retention or wellbeing?

The article does not provide empirical testing, sample sizes, effect sizes or a validated measurement instrument for TRLPP.

The author's experience is valuable, but practitioner observation alone does not establish causality.

### Problem 7: The generational argument is insufficiently supported

The author suggests that a workforce dominated by Millennials and Gen Z requires a new engagement approach.

That is plausible as a question, but not established as a conclusion.

Age, career stage, organisational tenure, job type and economic circumstances can all influence expectations.

A 26-year-old software engineer, a 26-year-old factory supervisor and a 26-year-old frontline salesperson may experience engagement very differently.

Grouping them under Gen Z can obscure more meaningful differences.

### 4\. How much of this was already known?

| Established framework | Relevant ideas already covered |

| ---------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- |

| William Kahn, 1990 | Meaningfulness, psychological safety, psychological availability |

| Self-Determination Theory | Autonomy, competence and relatedness |

| Job Demands–Resources | Work demands, resources, energy and burnout |

| Gallup Q12 | Recognition, development, relationships, purpose, expectations and resources |

| Utrecht Work Engagement Scale | Vigour, dedication and absorption |

| Positive organisational psychology | Gratitude, compassion, pride and wellbeing |

Kahn's 1990 framework already included cognitive, emotional and physical engagement. His work also addressed meaningfulness and psychological safety. Wiley Online Library

Gallup's Q12 incorporates many of the same practical drivers that Shankar presents, including recognition, relationships, development and purpose. Gallup

Therefore, I would not describe TRLPP as a major conceptual advance over existing engagement research.

It is better understood as an accessible combination of established ideas, with a greater emphasis on positive emotions.

### 5\. What would a genuinely future-ready engagement model look like?

A more useful model would separate the causes, mechanisms, experience and outcomes of engagement.

### A clearer causal architecture

An alternative conceptual framework, not a validated psychometric model

1\. Conditions of work

Job design • Workload • Fairness • Resources • Autonomy • Leadership • Team climate

2\. Psychological mechanisms

Meaningfulness • Trust • Competence • Belonging • Perceived fairness • Psychological availability

3\. Employee engagement

Vigour • Dedication • Absorption

4\. Outcomes to evaluate

Performance • Innovation • Retention • Service quality • Sustainable wellbeing

Relationships can be reciprocal, and individual circumstances influence every stage. Arrows represent hypotheses to test rather than proven universal causation.

This model makes it possible to distinguish between what organisations can change, what employees experience psychologically, and what businesses hope to achieve.

For 2026 and beyond, I would also expect a genuinely futuristic engagement framework to address AI-enabled job redesign, human–AI collaboration, algorithmic management, employment insecurity, skill obsolescence and the psychological consequences of rapid technological change.

Those issues are conspicuously absent from an article claiming future relevance.

### 6\. Five questions I would put to Krish Shankar

1\. Conceptual clarity: Is TRLPP a model of employee engagement, a model of its antecedents, or a framework for managerial interventions? These are three different things.

2\. Originality: How does the framework meaningfully advance beyond Kahn's psychological conditions, Self-Determination Theory or Gallup's engagement drivers?

3\. Emotional causality: What evidence establishes that compassion, gratitude, happiness and pride mediate engagement more effectively than autonomy, fairness, competence or psychological availability?

4\. Measurement: How would you validate the five pillars, isolate their relative contributions and demonstrate predictive validity beyond existing engagement instruments?

5\. Future relevance: How does the framework account for AI-mediated work, workforce restructuring, employment uncertainty and employees whose primary concerns are workload, compensation or career survival?

These questions challenge the conceptual framework without dismissing the author's practical experience.

### 7\. My overall conclusion

I agree with your central criticism, with one important qualification: the factors are not unrelated; they are insufficiently differentiated.

Employee engagement is inherently multidisciplinary. It would be unreasonable to insist that work design, leadership, psychology and organisational practices be studied independently.

The problem arises when a model combines them without identifying their distinct roles or demonstrating the relationships between them.

Shankar's article succeeds as a reflective leadership essay. It encourages managers to become more sensitive to employees' emotional experiences, which is valuable.

But it is much less convincing as a new scientific model, and weaker still as a futuristic one.

The most important missing insight is that employees do not become engaged simply because managers cultivate positive emotions. Engagement also depends on whether the work is meaningful, fairly organised, adequately resourced and psychologically sustainable.

My central takeaway: Employee engagement should not become another management initiative designed to make people feel good so that they work harder. It should be an outcome of designing work, relationships and organisational systems in which people can contribute effectively without sacrificing their wellbeing.

That distinction is far more consequential than adding another acronym to the engagement literature.