Unraveling Employee Engagement

 

A cursory Google search of employee engagement will produce an endless list of articles espousing the value in having engaged, committed, involved and satisfied workers. Numerous websites provide data from surveys demonstrating that most workers are not engaged. However, there are very few resources that explain exactly what employee engagement is, as understood by organizational psychologists.

       As I began my research, I quickly discovered that finding a cogent, widely held definition of employee engagement was complicated. My review of the literature revealed a lack of consensus among practitioners and scholars on the meaning and distinctiveness of engagement as a novel construct. What follows is a brief analysis of the emerging construct of employee engagement, including a discussion on why it has been difficult for experts to come to an agreement on a definition of the concept, which mostly stems from its linkage to previously explored constructs like organizational commitment, job satisfaction, and extra-role behavior.1, 2, 3

       In the 1950s, psychologists and sociologists promoted theories on how the centrality of a worker’s job affected their daily life.4 These ideas were later expanded on by researchers Lodahl and Kejnar (1965), who described job involvement in relation to how absorbed a person is in their daily work tasks, the extent to which people identify psychologically with their work, and how much their job performance affects their overall emotional evaluation of their worth.5 In short, Lodahl and Kejnar’s approach concentrated on understanding how people’s jobs influence their self-esteem and how they identify with their job.

       By the early 1980s, organizational behavior researcher, Dr. Rabi Kanungo, established distinct, empirically sound measures of workplace involvement. He developed an assessment index that allowed experts to rate the degree to which workers identify with their jobs.6 Kanungo defined job involvement as a “cognitive or belief state of psychological identification.”7 Moreover, he posited that the nature of people's psychological identification with their job or work is dependent on the importance of their needs and their perception of how thoroughly the job or work can satisfy those needs.8

       Another concept, linked, but not wholly comparable to engagement is job satisfaction. In 1976, American psychologist Edwin A. Locke defined job satisfaction as “a pleasurable or positive emotional state resulting from the appraisal of one’s job or job experiences.”9 While scholars like Locke were focusing on job satisfaction, other researchers were forming early conceptions of organizational commitment. These organizational psychologists described a worker’s attachment and loyalty to their organization of employment in terms of the strength of their desire to remain in an organization, their willingness to expend greater energy towards the accomplishment of the firm’s objectives, as well as their belief in, and acceptance of organizational values.10, 11, 12

       What I find notable in the explication of the concepts of job involvement, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment is the core focus on positive emotional states, with absorption and emotional investment by workers being unifying factors across each area. Consequently, I believe this similarity and the lack of widely recognized empirical evidence for each theory has contributed to the confusion about how to accurately describe one concept from another.

       In the mid 1990s the discriminant validity of these concepts—measures showing distinctiveness warranting their continued separation, was not yet well established.13 In addition to organizational commitment, job satisfaction, and job involvement, much research has been devoted to a better understanding of extra–role behavior.14, 15, 16 Extra–role behavior is discretionary work role behavior that goes beyond delineated role expectations. In short, going the extra mile, putting in more effort than what management asks for, or expects.17, 18

To summarize the 4 concepts of Employee Engagement we’ve covered so far:

  • Organizational commitment— is a psychological state associated with the degree a worker personally identifies with, and is attached to their work organization.
  • Job involvement— is akin to organizational commitment, as it too is a psychological state associated with a worker’s self-identification; but, instead of connectedness to the organization, this concept relates to the force of an individual's attachment to their particular work.
  • Job satisfaction— is a pleasant, gratifying, or positive emotional state stemming from or associated with one's job experiences, including challenges and social connotations ascribed to the job.
  • Extra-role behavior— is simply the discretionary energy an employee puts forth in their work; however, extra-role behavior is not indicative of or comparable to the kinds of proactive and inventive contributions made by engaged employees.

       Now that we have looked at some of the concepts associated with engagement, we are in a better position to understand the most current empirical literature elucidating the intricate distinguishing characteristics of employee engagement.

       Much research on engagement has drawn on the 1990 work of W.A. Kahn, who established the conceptual foundation for personal engagement— a personal experience that involves strong, or intense feelings of motivation that manifest in a physical, cognitive, and emotional way.19, 20, 21 Kahn argued that in every situation, people subconsciously make a determination to be engaged or disengaged by asking themselves three questions:

  • How meaningful is it for me to bring myself into this performance?
  • How safe is it to do so?
  • How available am I to do so?

       A 2004 empirical study concluded that meaningfulness, safety, and availability were significantly related to engagement.22 In time, researchers recognized that these factors are antecedents of employee engagement.23, 24

       Further expanding on Kahn’s definition, later researchers argued that engagement is a motivational concept.25 Engaged employees feel compelled to commit their full abilities, attention, and resources towards an ambitious goal.26 They aspire to succeed, willingly invest their physical, cognitive, and emotional strength, as well as their mental concentration in a personal endeavor sustained by their wholehearted devotion.27, 28 Work engagement is a personally satisfying motivational, mood, feeling, and attitude associated with one’s job. Organizational Psychologists Michael P. Leiter and Arnold B. Bakker characterized work engagement as a person's strong identification with their work, and high levels of vigor for, dedication to, and absorption in their job.29

       While work engagement, job involvement, and organizational commitment appear to be comparable concepts, empirically, each are separate constructs reflecting different facets of work attachment.30 Organizational commitment is an attitude, or emotional attachment people have to their work organizations, job satisfaction refers to an attitude people have about their job, and job involvement relates to the extent a person’s job is central to their identity. Conversely, employee engagement is not just attitudinal, but representative of the degree a person is dedicated to their work and attentive or absorbed in the performance of their duties. Engagement involves the use of emotions, behaviors, and cognition, with high levels of energy, mental resilience, and persistence while working, even in the face of difficulties.31

       Making these valuable distinctions are important because they allow practitioners to build stronger, better performing, and happier work teams. Finally, the intricacies touched on here, will likely increase as researchers continue exploring ways that various formulations of employee engagement are contextually specific to disciplines; for example, engagement in the context of health care providers.32