Employee Engagement

“The return from your work must be the satisfaction which that work brings you and the world’s need of that work. With this, life is heaven, or as near heaven as you can get. Without this – with work you despise, which bores you, and which the world does not need – this life is hell”. (Du Bois, 1958)

Why engagement is important Employee Engagement has become a popular concept over the last decade. Increasingly, organisations are realising that employees are assets rather than commodities. Seeing employees as assets rather than costs changes the “people management” imperative for senior management from seeking to minimise costs to maximising returns on assets. Ensuring that employees are as engaged as possible is rapidly becoming one of the central strategies to safeguarding the return on investment in employees.

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The reason for this is that engaged employees are more likely to work harder and to go the extra mile, be more creative, serve customers better and with more enthusiasm, and to stay with the company for longer. As a consequence, engaged employees add more value through their day-today contributions. They also help to keep costs down as they are less likely to leave – this means less expenditure on recruitment, and fewer knowledge losses and process disruptions. These gains in turn have a direct impact on bottom line organisational performance metrics. Large-scale research has shown that low levels of engagement can be associated with substantial drops in overall organisational performance. For example, ISR found that, compared to companies with low levels of engagement, companies with high levels of engagement had operating margins that were more than 5.5% higher, and net profit margins almost 3.5% higher. Further, Gallup estimates that unengaged employees are costing UK companies more than £30 billion each year. Clearly, mismanaging people, and not keeping an eye on the level of Employee Engagement, has potentially dire financial implications. While employers want employees that are prepared and motivated to “go the extra mile” to help with the bottom line, employees are looking for work that is interesting, worthwhile, and exciting. Engagement points the way to make both employers and employees get what they want. Employees will only become engaged in an organisational environment that offers them what they are looking for, where they feel that they are a good fit with what the job requires from them and with the culture and values of the company. Employee Engagement therefore offers the possibility for a win-win situation, where both parties in the employment relationship exceed their expectations.

Employee Engagement Engagement is a psychological state that employees can be in when they are performing their work roles. To describe engagement, we use Kahn’s conceptualisation of engagement as a starting point – that “… in engagement, people employ and express themselves physically, cognitively, and emotionally during role performances” (Kahn, 1990, p694). When people are engaged, they invest more of themselves in their work role – they are more likely to conduct their work with energy and enthusiasm. When engaged, people are attached to their work role, and absorbed by enacting it. They invest a lot of their personal energy into performing the role, as it is an important part of their identity. They have internalised the goals and aspirations of the organisation as their own. In contrast, when people are disengaged at work, they are only physically present at work, but do not deploy their emotions, energies, and passion in conducting their work. People who are disengaged have little or no emotional attachment to their work role, don’t think much of what the organisation tries to achieve, and rarely find themselves engrossed in their work. Defining engagement as a psychological state has at least two important implications. First, as engagement is a state, it means it is not necessarily stable over time. Employees can move into and out of the state of engagement. Furthermore, engagement is likely to be a “peak” type state – it is not necessarily a state that employees are in continuously for very long periods of time. At the very least, it is likely that even highly engaged employees experience periods where they are not engaged, on some facets of engagement. This means that when asking people about their engagement, the question should not be “how engaged are you?” but “how often are you engaged?”. Highly engaged employees are likely to experience a sense of engagement much more regularly than employees that are less engaged.

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Second, defining engagement as a state focuses attention on the fact that there are likely to be factors in the organisation that affect engagement in positive and negative directions. These drivers of engagement are the key levers to pull if an organisation seeks to increase levels of engagement.

Facets of engagement On the basis of this, we identify four facets that together describe Employee Engagement – absorption, alignment, identification, and energy. These facets cover the full spectrum of cognitive, emotional, and physical aspects of psychological investment outlined in Kahn’s work on engagement (1990). Absorption refers to the extent to which employees lose themselves in their work, and experience a sense of engrossment when conducting their work. When absorbed, people can feel as if time stands still. This construct is closely related to the concepts of “flow” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1975) and “timelessness” (Mainemelis, 2001). Alignment focuses on the congruence between employees’ beliefs about the where the organisation should be heading and what the goals and aspirations of the organisation should be, and the actual direction of the organisation. The more strongly employees agree with the strategic decisions of senior management, the more strongly their belief in the direction of the organisation will be aligned with the actual direction of the organisation. Identification refers to the emotional bond an employee experiences with the organisation. When employees experience a high degree of identification, the organisation features prominently in their work-related identity – characteristics of the organisation are important for them in defining who they are. Employees with a high level of identification will have a strong sense of belonging to the organisation, and place great value on many of the intangible, symbolic, and relational aspects of the organisation. Energy refers to the sense of physical energy that the employee invests into conducting the work. Employees who experience a strong sense of energy at work are directing their motivational resources towards their work performance, rather than to other activities. (Baker et al, 2003; Cross et al, 2003, Quinn & Dutton, 2005)

Drivers of engagement Engagement is predicted by features of the job the employee does and features of the organisation in which the employee works – essentially the work environment in which the employee spends his or her time at work. The features of the work environment can drive employees towards becoming engaged, or they can push employees towards disengagement. The environmental features are therefore essential to understanding what makes employees engaged, and perhaps most importantly, they are the key to taking action to increase engagement. Engagement is not necessarily driven by the same set of predictors in all jobs across all organisations. It is likely that a different sub-set of factors emerge as the most important drivers of engagement in different contexts. It is therefore critical that a wide range of job and organisational factors are represented in a model of engagement. This maximises the likelihood that that the key drivers of engagement in any particular context are identified.

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CEB has developed a comprehensive model of job and organisational features that capture all the most important typical predictors of engagement. The model is an extension of Warr’s Vitamin model (2007). The model consists of 42 job and organisational features, which can be represented by seven higher order factors. The job and organisational features in the model can be deployed in two ways to measure the strength with which they predict engagement. The first approach is to assess the absolute amount of each feature that is available to employees. For example, the amount of job security or the extent to which employees have an opportunity to voice their opinions. A greater amount of each of these features may be related to higher levels of Employee Engagement. The second approach goes beyond looking at absolute amount of each job feature, and assesses the amount of each feature that is present for an employee relative to how much employees want of that feature. That is, the fit between what employees want from their job and organisation and what they actually have. This approach is a much more powerful way to predict engagement, as fit is a fundamental driver of engagement.

Outcomes of engagement When employees are engaged at work, there are effects on both proximate behavioural outcomes, personal outcomes for the employee, and effects on more distant bottom-line outcomes. Behavioural outcomes

When employees are engaged, a range of behavioural outcomes are more likely to occur. Some of the most important behavioural outcomes are outlined here. Employees that are engaged are likely to exert a lot of effort on their core tasks. They are also more likely to “go the extra mile” for the organisation, and put in spurs of exceptional effort. When engaged, employees are also much more likely to contribute more widely to the organisation, and to go beyond their immediate job description. Examples of extrarole behaviours include taking the initiative to identify and solve problems no one else has noticed, or to offer help and assistance to co-workers or supervisors before being asked for help. The behavioural contributions of engaged employees can also stretch beyond activities within the organisation. When engaged, employees are more likely to act as positive advocates for the organisation when interacting with people outside the organisation. Such advocacy behaviours can for example focus on recommending the organisation to potential customers as a trustworthy partner to do business with, or recommending the organisation to potential job applicants as a great place to work. Furthermore, engaged employees are more likely to remain with the organisation for a longer period of time. This extends beyond the affective commitment aspect of engagement itself. Engaged employees are more likely to actively seek out ways to remain with the organisation, even in situations where they face external or internal pressures that make leaving the organisation an attractive option. Examples of such situations can include pressure from family to relocate, or restructuring of an organisation that involves changes in the employee’s job role.

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Separation of behavioural outcomes of engagement from the definition of engagement

In our model, the behavioural consequences of engagement are treated as outcomes of engagement. This is done for two reasons. First, engagement is defined here as a state that employees can be in. A state is by its nature a psychological process. Behaviours are not psychological processes – they are consequences of psychological processes. Therefore, when employees are in the state of engagement, they are more likely to display these behaviours. Second, the behaviours often included as part of a physical/behavioural aspect of engagement can be driven by factors other than engagement. Working hard, contributing beyond one’s role, or making efforts to remain with an organisation are behaviours that can occur even if people are not engaged. For example, normative or continuance commitment can drive these behaviours – that is, employees can do them because they feel it is the “right” thing to do (normative commitment), or because they feel they have to do them in order to remain in their job (continuance commitment). Organisational outcomes

The direct behavioural outcomes of Employee Engagement are likely, in turn, to have an effect on more distant organisational business performance metrics. Most immediately, to the extent that engaged employees put in more effort and contribute beyond their role and remain with the organisation for longer, this will have a positive effect of the overall profitability of the organisation. This is because the employees (i.e., “the assets”) return more value from each hour spent working. Increasing levels of engagement therefore leads to greater return on human capital assets, and consequently higher levels of profitability. When customer facing employees are more engaged, the organisation is also likely to benefit from higher levels of customer satisfaction. Engaged employees will serve customers with more energy, attention, and enthusiasm leading to more satisfied customers. Furthermore, as employees are keen to stay with the organisation for a longer period of time, turnover levels will be lower. By reducing costs associated with recruiting and training new staff, this will improve profitability. More intangible benefits also accrue to organisations that have a consistently highly engaged workforce. Word will get out about how engaged employees are, and how well aligned the work environment in the organisation is to what the employees are looking for. This is likely to improve the image outsiders have of the organisation, which in turn is likely to yield a range of benefits. Such benefits may include becoming a destination employer for high calibre applicants, becoming an attractive supplier or customer to do business with, gaining free PR from positive media coverage, and making other stakeholders in the wider community (such as politicians and special-interest campaign groups) more favourably disposed to the organisation.

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Personal outcomes

The behavioural and organisational consequences outlined above focus primarily on the benefits of Employee Engagement for the organisation. However, a major attraction of focusing on engagement is that it is not a zerosum phenomenon: increasing engagement has positive implications for employees as well as for the organisation. To the extent that engaged employees are driven to perform better across a wider set of tasks, and remain with the organisation for a longer period of time, they are highly likely to reap benefits in terms of faster career progression. However, individuals also gain less instrumental benefits from engagement. By being engaged in their work, employees are likely to be much more satisfied with their jobs, and to experience higher levels of well-being at work. There is substantial empirical evidence indicating that when employees experience the sense of vitality, energy, enthusiasm, and involvement that characterise the state of engagement, they are less likely to be anxious and depressed, and therefore more likely to be mentally healthy (Christianson et al., 2005; Keyes, 2002). When engaged, employees are more likely to find their work interesting and meaningful.

Dispositional effects on engagement While engagement itself is a state that employees can be in, which is affected to a large extent by a set of features of the job or the wider organisational environment, it is also likely that there are certain dispositional personal characteristics that make some employees more or less likely to be engaged. For example, it is likely that people with certain personality traits are, overall, more likely to be engaged. This is an ongoing area of research.

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References 1.

Baker, W., Cross, R., & Wooten, M. 2003. Positive organizational network analysis and energizing relationships. In K. S. Cameron, J. E. Dutton, & R. E. Quinn (Eds.), Positive Organizational Scholarship: Foundations of a New Discipline: 328-343: Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

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Christianson, M., Spreitzer, G., Sutcliffe, K., & Grant, A. (2005). An empirical examination of thriving at work. Working paper, Center for Positive Organizational Scholarship, Ross School of Business, University of Michigan.

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Cross, R., Baker, W., & Parker, A. 2003. What creates energy in organizations? MIT Sloan Management Review, 44(4): 51-+.

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Csikszentmihalyi, M. 1975. Beyond boredom and anxiety. San Francisco: JosseyBass.

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Kahn, W. A. 1990. Psychological conditions of personal engagement and disengagement at work. Academy Of Management Journal, 33(4): 692-724.

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Keyes, C. L. M. (2002). The mental health continuum: From languishing to flourishing in life. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 43, 207-222.

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Mainemelis, C. 2001. When the muse takes all: A model for the experience of timelessness in organizations. Academy Of Management Review, 26(4): 548-565.

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Quinn, R. 1996. Deep change. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Quinn, R. W., & Dutton, J. 2005. Coordination as energy-in-conversation. Academy Of Management Journal, 30(1): 36-57.

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Warr, P. 2007. Work, happiness, and unhappiness. London: Lawrence Erlbaum.

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