How To Help your Team Engage, Perform and Thrive

Gallup’s 2024 State of the Global Workforce Report surveyed 128,000 people and shows that in best-practice organisations there’s 78% less absenteeism, 10% greater customer loyalty, 23% more profitability and 68% higher wellbeing. ?Their reports are always worth a look due to their size, global scope and regional analyses: watching the trends can be insightful.

Engagement remains a critical indicator of the health of an organisation linking so clearly as it does to performance. Worker engagement is of critical importance to organisations, yet it remains challenging to achieve. One of the additional challenges to engagement is the increasing use of hybrid work practices, which is testing everyone’s adaptability. This newsletter is devoted to outlining the critical factors that maintain and/or increase engagement, and how they play out in different working conditions.

Thankfully, there’s a strong evidence base about the factors that are important to increase engagement and well-being that can guide leaders and HR in their efforts. How they translate into the hybrid world remains to be seen: the trick is to keep the principles in mind and experiment with on-the-ground practices that suit your context.

Why a focus on engagement continues to matter

Amongst the Gallup findings, reports of worker stress increased (41%), and 20% of people experience daily loneliness. A third consider themselves to be thriving at work, almost two thirds are struggling and 8% suffering. There’s room for improvement. ?

In a similar survey by Slack last year 25% across all worker generations and geographies didn’t feel trusted at work. Workers who aren’t trusted are twice as stressed and have four times less sense of belonging. On the other hand when they feel trusted they are four times more likely to feel satisfied and are twice as focused and productive.

When people feel bad at work, both people and work suffer.

When managers are disengaged the problem compounds. Gallup’s survey showed only 30% of managers are engaged and that has a flow-on effect to their whole team. According to Slack, managers who don’t feel trusted are twice as likely to express doubt about the work ethic and commitment of their direct reports. Again, the result of disenfranchisement among line managers compounds to their teams.

Gallup rightly says that social relationships are one of the keys to shifting both engagement and people’s experience of struggle at work. Good quality working relationships between people who work together are critical.

Self-esteem and social connection are our two most fundamental human needs and good relationships help us to feel worthiness and belonging. They matter just as much at work as in the rest of our lives.

What do you need to know about engagement to help your team thrive?

Engagement will be easiest when it taps into these two fundamental needs. What does that mean for leadership practice? First, understand what engagement means at the lived, experiential level, second, understand the practices that are going to have the most impact on how people feel about and engage with their work, and third, explore what that means within whatever hybrid work context you operate.

1. What the experience of work engagement is:

Work engagement is “a positive, fulfilling, work-related state of mind that is characterized by vigor, dedication, and absorption.”

2. What practices have the most positive impact on work engagement:

Managing the delicate balance of job demands versus resources needs to be the priority for leaders. It also helps to understand the concept of Psychological Capital and how it can be noticed, measured and impacted on a day-to-day basis. Both of these rely on job autonomy.

3. How to keep engagement high with hybrid work

On the one hand, hybrid work arrangements help cater to people’s desire for autonomy and flexibility, yet they also interfere with building strong work relationships. Acknowledging this tension and creating value from it is the big challenge.

Read on for more information and examples on these three areas.

What is it like to feel engaged at work?

In summary, worker engagement is a combination of devoting energy to work, feeling a sense of significance through work and being absorbed by the experience of working.

Engaged workers love their work. They are attracted to work, motivated to use their energy and skills at work, and feel a sense of pride and accomplishment in what they achieve. Engaged workers are more likely to take initiative and to go above and beyond what is expected. They are committed to their organisation and team, and less likely to leave. They are more likely to learn, to improve their skills and performance, to be innovative and to make fewer mistakes.

When people have autonomy over the tasks they are to perform, are able to use their skills and get positive feedback from others around them, they feel engaged.

When our basic needs are satisfied at work, then we function at our best. That doesn’t mean it’s all down to us; it’s about the characteristics of our work and job as well as our own skills and personality.

If we think of work engagement then as an end state, what’s the best way to get there?

Why job demands and resources need to be balanced

The level of demand or challenge that people feel is strongly affected by how much support they receive/have access to, and this is the key to work engagement. In the diagram below, taken from the work of Arnold Bakker and his colleagues, you can see how it works.

When job demands and resources are out of balance, it leads to exhaustion, and if this continues over time, people can self-undermine: this is a negative cycle to avoid. The positive cycle is the one that leads to high work engagement: people's need for resources or support is affected greatly by their own ability to cope with the demands they face, not just by the resources provided to them. Depending on a range of factors such as their personality, home-life circumstances and organisational context, different people may respond positively or negatively to job demands. Understanding people's differences will help identify what resources you need to provide to them.

Individual cycles of loss or gain occur because people have different resources and coping mechanisms, yet the surest way to interrupt the loss cycle is make sure that:

• Job demands and job resources are well-balanced – the greater and more challenging the demands, the greater the resources, even for the smartest and most resilient people in the team
• The organisational context is positive – job design is clear, the work climate is psychologically safe, and there are good practices to support people and their well-being
• Leaders manage the job demands of their team members proactively, stay attuned to people’s levels of well-being, and show they care
• Teams are set up to support each other, with conflict well-managed
• Individuals are empowered to engage in ‘proactive work behaviours’ – self-initiated behaviours that allow them the autonomy to change the situation or themselves to manage demands effectively
• Leaders are attuned to well-being indicators and don’t expect people to go it alone.

Job demands and resources aren’t subjective interpretations by people, they are characteristics of jobs that are observable and can be measured. Yet how individuals respond depends on a whole range of different factors.

While they can’t always be managed perfectly, they can be managed, and that is an important part of leadership work.

???? How do you manage the balance between job demands and resources for individuals in your team?

Why challenge and support needs to be balanced daily

A key point in this model is that challenging job demands need to be balanced with appropriate job resources on a daily basis, because that's how we experience our work, day-to-day. People experience their work in the moment, each and every day.

In their excellent work Teresa Amabile and Steve Kramer showed just how dramatically the impact of small, daily events is:

• On days described as ‘best’, when workers simply felt a sense of progress in their work, they were more intrinsically motivated in and enjoyed the work itself. A sense of ‘getting somewhere’ is seriously under-rated. After such days, people felt more committed to their work and were more creative.
• On days described as ‘worst’, workers most often experienced some kind of setback, such as not making progress, or experiencing conflict, getting stuck by the bureaucracy. Mood and motivation were negatively affected, and that too carried over to following days. This is how stress turns into strain, self-undermining can begin and a loss cycle can embed.

Here’s how to make regular daily balancing between demands and support a habit:

1. Share the information about the need for balance between job demands and support. Tell the team that you’re starting an experiment to make it a priority.
2. Start by talking about the importance of wellbeing. Given its importance, why not start by measuring it daily? You can use a simple 1-5 point scale from least to highest wellbeing, or for example use the WHO-5 assessment. Each person can measure themselves and you might share and discuss the results in the team on a weekly basis. Make sure people can access you and/or your Employee Assistance Program if they go below a certain score. Take note of patterns and variations, discuss them and adapt as you go.
3. You might use a similar simple measure for people’s sense of balance between demands and resources. Give them responsibility for noticing their own balance and work out triggers for seeking more help and discuss what they could be. Job crafting in particular shows that having a sense of autonomy and control over your workload makes a huge positive difference - there's more on this below. Know what your own limits on that autonomy are first, and make sure team members know!
4. I’ve written about the value of daily attachment and detachment to work, and this includes a daily review recommended by Professor Amabile.

Tackling the positives and negatives of working life as it happens, on a daily basis, makes getting the balance of demands and resources easier.

You have a chance to correct the course of action before negative spirals begin.

??? What daily practices do you use with your team to manage wellbeing and workloads?

Having control over when, where and how you work matters a great deal.’ Tsedal Neeley

One of the themes coming through from the above is the importance of autonomy. Let's dive into that in a little more detail now.

How to empower through autonomy - but watch its limits

A leader for whom colleagues worked had a great reputation for providing autonomy. Smart, achievement-oriented people wanted to work for him, and thrived under his leadership. Until they didn’t.

He provided plenty of challenge and scope for initiative, yet far too little support when it mattered. His style was described as ‘giving enough rope for you to hang yourself’. Faint praise.

Autonomy is empowering, you just need to watch the limits. Having control over when and where you work really matters. As a leader, how do you know if you’ve given enough, too much or too little to your team?

Knowing how autonomy works from a human psychology perspective helps you to know when to give more or less freedom, when to challenge more, and when to support more.

Research by García-Merino, Martín and Alcover shows that job autonomy works best when it is mediated by Psychological Capital and Job Crafting.

Psychological Capital is a personal resource that helps people maintain a positive outlook and a sense of intentionality, control and agency.

Psychological Capital comprises four personal resources:

• Hope - the degree of perseverance in pursuing goals and redirecting actions to succeed
• Efficacy - the confidence to take on and succeed at challenging tasks
• Resilience - the ability to bounce back and succeed when faced with problems or setbacks
• Optimism - the positive expectation that you will succeed.

The ability to mobilise these personal resources impacts attitudes, behaviours, performance and well-being. When given the opportunity to take control over work, workers who have high Psychological Capital have the resources to accept and use the opportunity well. Those with lower levels will be more likely to struggle and will need greater support.

Assessing this in your team will help you identify development opportunities for people, and watch-outs to trigger giving more support to those who need it.

Being given job autonomy empowers people to craft their work.

Job crafting is a process of moulding job tasks to manage demands and resources according to motivations and strengths.

As people creatively adapt their job to their needs, goals and preferences, it impacts their perception of job demands and job resources. They feel a greater sense of agency. Overall, they are more likely to achieve their personal goals and they can adjust their work to get a better person–job fit. You can help your team to develop the specific skills to job craft.

Autonomy itself is not a magical cure - the research makes it clear that autonomy needs to be channelled through specific practices, such as Job crafting, for it to work.

If there is too much autonomy eg, there are too many additional job challenges such as increased decision making, or autonomy is not well-supported eg, obstacles to effective working are not removed, then people may no longer be able to cope.

Too much autonomy without the right amount of support is a greater risk with hybrid working practices than traditional office practices – the promise of more autonomy remains enticing for many but will only succeed if actively managed.

Having a degree of autonomy over work sets up the conditions within which it’s possible for workers to exercise significant autonomy, yet make sure you keep a hold of the rope and know how to play it in and out.

People will be more engaged in their work, produce better results and stay healthy!

How does hybrid working affect the job demands-resources balance?

Researchers Lamov?ek, Radevi?, Mohammed and ?erne asked just this question, examining the differences between on-site, remote and hybrid work using a survey of 1,215 workers and their bosses who rated worker performance.

Their findings provide guidance on how to refine your leadership depending on how your team is working: the diagram below, taken from Figure 2 in their article, shows performance differences as a result of different job design elements.

What they found was:

1. High ‘task identity’ mattered for everyone – having ownership of tasks from start to finish is most motivating and satisfying no matter where you work.
2. High ‘task variety’ mattered to on-site and hybrid workers – having a variety of tasks and challenges keeps work interesting and engaging.
3. High ‘social support’ mattered for remote workers, to mitigate isolation and maintain their engagement and wellbeing.
4. High levels of ‘Information processing’ were important for both remote and hybrid workers to help them process information and make decisions.
5. High levels of ‘feedback from the job’ were important for hybrid workers to understand how they are progressing.

The researchers point out that the important balance between job demands and resources needs to be maintained wherever you work – job challenges need to be buffered by increased support according to the context.

If it feels more complicated to lead a hybrid team, then this research certainly shows why.

In a hybrid context, task identity, variety information processing and feedback all need to be high.

How you work is so much more important than where

Leaders impact the broader environment in which people are doing their knowledge work, whether it’s face-to-face in the office or elsewhere, and the above research gives some clear guidance about how to design the work depending on where people work.

Taking that (and AI!) into account those leaders (and consequently their teams) who will thrive into the future world of work will be those who know how to engage people, and that means they understand the social psychology of people at work, and that means that know what levers to work with in or out of office.

They use an Engaging Leadership style to inspire (help people feel they contribute to something important), strengthen (grant freedom and responsibility through delegation) and connect (encourage collaboration and team spirit).

Research by Mazzetti and Schaufeli shows that when people see their leaders as fulfilling their individual needs for autonomy, competence and care, they experienced a boost of optimism, resilience, self-efficacy and flexibility (aka Psychological Capital), supporting a steady stream of research findings that show this same result. That directly affects the performance of both individuals and teams.

The engaging leaders worked to increase collaboration within the team which helped them to ‘get in sync’, creating shared mental models for their actions and decisions. They increased work engagement, team effectiveness, and also contributed to a climate of growth, which in turn increased engagement.

In contrast, a disengaging leadership style that neglects these things and relies instead on coercion, erosion of competence, isolation and demotivation increases boredom, burnout, and detachment.

When leaders engage with their team members to increase autonomy, psychological capital and to generate collaboration in their teams, they don’t just increase work engagement, they predict future work engagement.?

No matter where they work. And that's all summarised in the image below.

Where there are high but realistic levels of challenge and people are empowered (and have the competency) to craft their approach to their work their work engagement increases. High job demands need not be a precursor to burnout.

Yet people are not inexhaustible machines and so there are limits. As demands increase - they should be realistic even if high - so too should support. This applies to the smartest, most resilient workers as much as those still learning and needing particular care and attention.

What’s important is organisations and leaders should realise that the focus on wellbeing and burnout is not about wrapping their team in cottonwool. On the contrary. When they better understand the science of human motivation and the social psychology of work, they know that the right kind of challenge balanced with the right kind of support leads to sustained, high levels of performance and dedication?that not only does not require workers to sacrifice their health it increases their energy, dedication and absorption in their work.

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