Coetic

Engagement at Work

Published: 2017-09-25

Engagement at Work

Photo Credit: Alex Ware, unsplash.com

Employee engagement has been a hot topic of organizational research since 1990, with leaders and HR teams scrambling to build more of it. Here’s what the research says…

1. When people are engaged, we bring our “whole selves” to work.

Engagement is a positive, fulfilling work-related state in which we bring our whole selves to work, invest personal energy, and experience an emotional connection with work.

Engagement has three components:

2. Engagement varies across people and within people.

Is engagement variable over time? Yes. Engagement can fluctuate within a person over time and can vary in response to situations we’re in. Therefore, it’s important to try to continuously cultivate engagement.

Is engagement relatively stable over time? Yes. Generally speaking, some people are more engaged than others. Like personality or abilities, each of us seems to carry a range of work engagement that we’ll tend to be in most of the time6,7,8.

3. Engagement can increase job performance above and beyond other work attitudes.

The biggest research debate about employee engagement is whether it’s really different from other work attitudes that have been researched for decades (i.e., job satisfaction, organizational commitment).

A recent meta-analysis (a statistical summary that combines data from multiple studies) found that measures of engagement added to the picture on top of other job attitudes including satisfaction and commitment:

Since research supports engagement as variable and as contributing to positive work outcomes, it’s worth considering how to improve engagement specifically1,2,.

Watch Jeff Havens describe engagement:

4. Engagement affects much more than job performance.

Engaged employees report:

Engaged workers are also:

5. Personality traits can predict potential engagement.

As mentioned earlier, people differ in ranges of engagement.

People who tend to be more engaged typically are also:

Whiteboard guide from author Ed Muzio about thinking through engagement with a person:

6. Leaders and managers can influence team member engagement.

Transformational leadership improves engagement.

Transformational leaders inspire and motive people by:

Being a transformational leader is not the only path to improve engagement. In more basic day-to-day management and supervision interactions, keys to increased engagement include:

In this interview, Doug Conant, former president & CEO of Campbell Soup Company, reflects on key engagement actions he took with thousands of employees globally:

Author Daniel Pink discusses Autonomy & Management:

7. Job characteristics matter too.

Characteristics of the job or team context can also improve engagement:

References
  1. Bakker, A. B., Demerouti, E., & Sanz-Vergel, A. I. (2014). Burnout and work engagement: The JD–R Approach. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 1(1), 389–411. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-orgpsych-031413-091235
  2. Christian, M. S., Garza, A. S., & Slaughter, J. E. (2011). Work engagement: A quantitative review and test of its relations with task and contextual performance. Personnel Psychology, 64(1), 89–136. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1744-6570.2010.01203.x
  3. Kahn, W. A. (1990). Psychological conditions of personal engagement and disengagement at work. Academy of Management Journal, 33(4), 692–724. https://doi.org/10.2307/256287
  4. Mäkikangas, A., Schaufeli, W., Tolvanen, A., & Feldt, T. (2013). Engaged managers are not workaholics: Evidence from a longitudinal personcentered analysis. Revista de Psicología Del Trabajo y de Las Organizaciones, 29(3), 135–143. https://doi.org/10.5093/tr2013a19
  5. Saks, A. M. (2006). Antecedents and consequences of employee engagement. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 21(7), 600–619. https://doi.org/10.1108/02683940610690169
  6. Schaufeli, W. B., & Salanova, M. (2007). Efficacy or inefficacy, that’s the question: Burnout and work engagement, and their relationships with efficacy beliefs. Anxiety, Stress, & Coping, 20(2), 177–196. https://doi.org/10.1080/10615800701217878
  7. Schaufeli, W. B., Salanova, M., González-romá, V., & Bakker, A. B. (2002). The measurement of engagement and burnout: A two sample confirmatory factor analytic approach. Journal of Happiness Studies, 3(1), 71–92. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1015630930326
  8. Sonnentag, S. (2003). Recovery, work engagement, and proactive behavior: A new look at the interface between nonwork and work. Journal of Applied Psychology, 88(3), 518–528. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.88.3.518