What about engagement?

Employee engagement has become an ubiquitous issue in the modern working environment. Since its first conceptualization, engagement has been entitled with various and different terms, such as employee, work, job, organizational, physical, cognitive, emotional, intellectual, social and affective. The pluralism of the potential attributes mentioned above has created a vast theory of engagement approaches in business world rendering its definition a very difficult venture. At the same time, the absence of one universally accepted definition leads to the inability of constructing a reliable and valid measurement tool.

But first, what is engagement

“Employee engagement is often used as a catch-all term for employee job satisfaction, motivation, productivity and retention” (SHRM). For many people is just “old wine in a new bottle”, but actually is a distinct construct from satisfaction or commitment.  

In 2015, Omar Ababneh recorded in his thesis 19 different definitions of engagement in business settings, not to mention the approaches of consulting firms. The first scholar who tried to conceptualize engagement wholesale was William Kahn (1990) who described the term as:

“the harnessing of organizational members’ selves to their work roles; in engagement, people employ and express themselves physically, cognitively and emotionally during role performances” (pg. 694).

Since then numerous definitions were delivered in the spotlight basically from an academic perspective. Conceivably, the most influential definition of engagement was expressed by Schaufeli, Salanova, Gonzalez-Roma and Bakker (2002) :

“Engagement is defined as a positive, fulfilling, work-related state of mind that is characterized by vigor, dedication and absorption” (pg. 74).

From the above definitions it is clear that employee engagement is a multidimensional construct with many psychological aspects to consider and an urgent need for consistent research scrutiny.

Measurement

Unequivocally, the most intricate thing concerning employee engagement is its measurement. Consulting companies have developed their own tools and procedures in order to gauge engagement in ways that practitioners are not aware of. This creates a confusion and an ambivalence about the proper construction of a psychological tool, such as employee engagement questionnaire, in terms of reliability, validity, test standardization and norms. Based on the academic literature the most well-established tool is the UWES (Utrecht Work Engagement Scale) designed by Schaufeli and Bakker. This specific instrument has been tested over a decade in different circumstances (countries, occupations etc.), as a lot of researchers have adopted and utilized it.

Quantitative depiction

Employee engagement numbers are very interesting and not only lead to future research but also guide and indicate the engagement programs HR practitioners should implement. According to Gallup Organization, which is tracking employee engagement since 2000 in USA, engagement seems to fluctuate the last 20 years. More specifically, in 2020 only the 37% of the US workforce is engaged contrary to the 14% which is actively disengaged. The rest 49% of the workforce is not engaged which denotes psychological detachment to work and company. It is worthwhile to mention that the percentage of engaged employees has been increased the last 10 years, but there is a lot of room for improvement. This statistical divergence between engaged and actively disengaged employees highlights the conceptual dilemma of state engagement or trait engagement, which troubles academics and practitioners. In any case the employee engagement in intertwined with the wider economic, political and social developments and being affected by them.  

Drivers and outcomes

Bakker and Demerouti developed a model which is one of the most used frameworks in explaining employee engagement, called “The JD-R (Job Demands – Resources) Model. According to this model, job and personal resources in conjunction with job demands play a significant role to the intensity of engagement an employee may experience. The JD-R model assumes that although every occupation has its own specific working characteristics, these characteristics can be classified in two general categories (job demands and job resources), thus constituting an overarching model that may be applied to various occupational settings, irrespective of the particular demands and resources involved. The central assumption of the JD-R model is that job strain develops – irrespective of the type of job or occupation – when (certain) job demands are high and when (certain) job resources are limited. In contrast, work engagement is most likely when job resources are high. Studies have shown that job resources (autonomy, performance feedback, social support, supervisory coaching etc.) and personal resources (optimism, self-efficacy, resilience, self-esteem etc.) are positively associated with work engagement. Consequently, these two kinds of resources can be characterized as predictors-drivers of employee engagement. As far as the outcomes are concerned, engaged workers can offer a competitive advantage to their company, due to:

-         Discretionary effort

-         Better morale and health

-         Augmented levels of satisfaction – commitment

-         Increased productivity

-         Decreased levels of intention to quit

Employee engagement is a very popular concept in business and in academia. The great variety of conceptualizations creates an ambiguity concerning its definition and measurement. This article is an effort to unravel some thoughts and approaches about this complicated term and it may work as an incentive for practitioners to discover more about the theoretical foundations of engagement, realize its importance and possibly try to construct their own measurement tool.

Ababneh, O.M.A. (2015). Conceptualizing and measuring employee engagement, and examining the antecedents of leadership styles and personality attributes. (Doctoral dissertation, Auckland University of Technology). Retrieved from https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/56365553.pdf

Bakker, A. B., & Demerouti, E. (2007). The Job Demands‐Resources model: State of the art. Journal of Managerial Psychology,22(3), 309-328. doi:10.1108/02683940710733115

Kahn, W. A. (1990). Psychological Conditions of Personal Engagement and Disengagement at Work. Academy of Management Journal, 33(4), 692-724. doi:10.5465/256287

Schaufeli,W. B.,& Bakker, A.B. (2003). Preliminary manual for the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale. Utrecht University, the Netherlands. Retrieved from https://www.schaufeli.com

Schaufeli, W. B., Salanova, M., González-Romá, V., & Bakker, A. B. (2002). Journal of Happiness Studies, 3(1), 71-92. doi:10.1023/a:1015630930326