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Employee Engagement
Everything You Wanted To Know About Engagement But Were Afraid To Ask
Benjamin Schneider, Ph.D. | William H. Macey, Ph.D. | Karen M. Barbera, Ph.D. Scott A. Young, Ph.D. | Wayne Lee, M.S.
Peek into any executive suite and it wont be long before you hear someone bring up the term employee engagement. Engagement remains a hot topic because of its proven links to critical business outcomes like productivity, retention, and customer satisfaction and loyalty. Everybody wants to have an engaged workforce because it can forge a path to competitive advantage. On the surface, the concept of engagement appears simple and intuitive. But ask five different people to define engagement and youll likely get five different answers. Better yet, ask five providers of employee surveys, and you may find that each has pulled together a different combination of traits under a single umbrella they refer to as employee engagement. The lack of a clear and precise understanding of engagement is more than just a semantics issueit affects how engagement is both managed and measured. Engagement surveys based on a clearly-defined concept zero-in on attitudes and behaviors that directly affect the bottom line and on ways that identify how to make improvements. The purpose of this short paper is to raise common questions about employee engagement and to provide answers that Valtera has discovered in our own research on the topic.
About Valtera Valtera is an HR consulting firm that helps global companies align their people and service delivery to their core business strategy. Contact 847.640.8820 (main) 847.640.8830 (fax) sales@valtera.com www.valtera.com CHICAGO CORPORATE OFFICE Valtera Corporation Continental Towers 1701 Golf Road, Suite 2-1100 Rolling Meadows, IL 60008
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UNDERSTANDING ENGAGEMENT
How do I know if my employees are engaged?
The only way to identify engaged employees is to observe their behaviors. Engagement behaviors are the crux of all the positive aspects of having an engaged workforce. From a managerial perspective, it is the behaviors that make engagement a desirable trait in employees. If you only remember one thing from this paper, remember this: Feelings and attitudes do not identify engagement in an employee. Without the behaviors, there is no engagement. That said, there are certain key feelings and attitudes that underlie and promote engagement behaviors, and these emotional factors are critically important if you are trying to increase the level of engagement in your workforce. They are critically important because without them you do not get to observe engagement behaviors. (The section on the engagement model delves deeply into these factors.) But if you just want to know if a particular employee is engaged or not, look for the following types of behavior: High levels of effort. Persistence at difcult tasks over time. Helping others. Going beyond the norms or expectations of a work place (like investing in self-development on ones own time). Voicing recommendations for change to improve things. Expanding ones role or responsibilities in response to a team or organizational need. Adapting to and even facilitating change to improve the work, the work place and organizational effectiveness.1 But even if you ignore the behaviors, youll see that the feeling and attitudes of a highly engaged employee are very different from a disengaged, but potentially satisfied employee. Feeling engagedwhich shows internal motivation to do and to striveis quite different from feeling satisfiedwhich can reveal itself in complacency and acceptance of the status quo. Engaged employees feel involved in, committed to, and a central part of the organizations accomplishment; and they feel they are a valued part of the organization. They feel safe, meaning they feel safe to disagree with a boss without fear of reprisal, for example because the boss has earned their trust through fair treatment. They feel they have the personal resources to accomplish their work goals and meet the needs of the organization.2 The big difference is that engaged employees not only feel a certain way, they also behave a certain way, and behavior is, after all, what matters. Satisfaction allows for no such behavioral inferences.
Satisfied Employees
Satisfied employees feel pleasant, content, gratified, and that their needs have been fulfilled.
Engaged Employees
Engaged employees feel energized, passionate, involved, dedicated, and committed.
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MEASURING ENGAGEMENT
Why do measures of employee engagement look like measures of job satisfaction?
As the notion of employee engagement became popular, managers wanted to measure it to find out the degree of engagement that characterized their work force. Typically, existing employee surveys were simply relabeled as engagement surveys, some without any modification at all. The fact that many of the items in the older surveys asked for peoples satisfaction was apparently not seen as a problem, since people often confuse employee satisfaction with employee engagement. This confusion is problematic, because satisfied employees are not necessarily engaged employees.
Are there any employee surveys already in existence that measure engagement?
This is a very good question and it requires a two-part answer. First, the answer is Yes, we do have existing measures that capture the engagement concept but they are not the usual employee surveyeven though some employee surveys may ask some similar questions. Items that measure engagement usually fall into one of two categories, those that measure attitudes and those that measure behaviors. Most existing items measure aspects of attitudinal engagement. Attitudinal measures capture the individual feeling of being engaged. Two sets of measures have widely been adopted, one having to do with organizational commitment and the other having to do with job involvement. Organizational Commitment Organizational commitment speaks to how people feel towards the organization that employs them in terms of pride in working there, loyalty to the organization (e.g., feeling hurt when others criticize the organization), a sense of identification with the organization (e.g., seeing the organization and the self as sharing the same values and goals), and being willing to extend oneself in ways that promote the good of the organization (e.g., feeling that long hours for the good of the organization are worth the effort). So, the emotional experience of commitment is the sense of willingness to do what is necessary to defend and to enhance the organization because by doing so ones own self as well as the organization is enhanced.4 Unfortunately, most measures of commitment that we have seen used in practice on organizational surveys have focused on pride and loyalty, without going further to address the part of the commitment construct that is most similar to engagement and likely most important to the organization. These are the parts about feeling one wants to extend oneself and do things to promote the good of the organization--and then actually doing something about it.
My work load is about right. I feel energized by the work I do. How satisfied are you with your relationships with your co-workers? My co-workers and I help each other out when the going gets tough.
Engagement Item
So, engagement differs from satisfaction both in terms of the inner experience of feeling engaged and the effortful behaviors that follow from that emotional experience. A few examples might make the point clearer. Feelings of engagement are beyond satisfaction and into energy; behavioral engagement of the work force is how people in a work group see the level of engaged behaviors that characterize their co-workers.3
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Job Involvement Job involvement concerns the feelings of being invested in ones jobthe work itself. These feelings include the sense that one is working on something important, that one is challenged by the work, that the work has considerable variety, and that the work permits the use of knowledge, skills, and abilities that are personally important and valued.5 The good thing, as noted earlier, is that many employee surveys already ask questions about the degree to which employees experience organizational commitment and job involvement. The bad thing is that the items used to measure satisfaction are mixed in with the items designed to measure engagement, so when reviewing the survey results, the two get confounded. Careful researchers ensure that the two issues are not confounded in their employees surveys.
The path to engagement begins with shaping the work environment and then nurturing engagement attitudes. This leads to engagement behaviors those behaviors linked to critical business outcomes like productivity, retention, and customer satisfaction.
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We have played a little trick on you here by always talking about the work group or the work force when we bring up the topic of engagement One way to influence how people behaviors. That is, we are always think and feel is to change the concerned with an engaged work conditions in which they work. Behavior does not just force, not an engaged individual Conditions set the stage for why one at a time. In an era when pop out of people for no people feel emotionally engaged teams and work groups have or not and it is on the basis of reasonit emerges from become so important to the these thoughts and feelings that success of the company, it is what what they think and feel. they behave the way they do. If happens in those work groups you alter the work conditions and teams that is critical. To the appropriately (and we will have degree that we can create a team with individuals who have more to say about what those conditions are later) and gain strong feelings of engagement, the work group as a whole higher levels of engagement attitudes (those emotional will be characterized by engaged behaviors. experiences we discussed earlier) then you will have an impact on the behavior in which you are interested. The point is that people are not like electric bulbs that go on Are engagement behaviors the when you flip a simple switch; you must understand what same as organizational citizenship actually permits the switch to turn on the lights so you can behaviors? create the right conditions to make engagement happen. You already know where we are going with this so let us refer you to the picture on the previous page and the model below, and then get on with the discussion of engagement behaviors: Some readers might recognize something in the description of engagement behaviors that rings a bellorganizational citizenship behaviors (OCB). OCB is a concept that has generated huge amounts of academic research in the last quarter century and this work has revealed that units where OCB is higher are also more productive units. OCBs are acts that are in support of organizational preservation and enhancement that are generally not connected to a specific job description. For example, helping others, or not taking long breaks, not complaining when things get changed, and so forth.6 The OCBs that have been measured in the past are mild forms of the kind of engagement behaviors we are speaking about. We think this is true because the idea of OCB originally emerged in the 1960s where manufacturing
Engagement Attitudes
Engagement Behaviors
Engagement behaviors are characterized by high levels of energy and initiative, conscientiousness and persistence in pursuit of work goals and helpfulness to others, defense
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jobs in union environments typified work; where relatively strict rules and guidelines characterized work whose characteristics rarely changed. In todays world of work there is less formality in job descriptions, flatter hierarchies, more teams of self-managed people, and much speedier changes. This requires a more nimble and agile work forceone that is engaged to meet the new challenges of a dynamic and changing work environment. If management wants to see a work force that is emotionally and behaviorally engaged, it must create the right conditions. This requires some rethinking about how jobs must be designed and how people must be managed.
excited about what they are doing, find the day passing quickly, and can adapt to and deal with change, pressure and tension without blinking an eye.7 But it takes more than just changes in the work people do to have them be fully engaged.
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treated interpersonally fairly; that some are not picked out as favorites to receive special attention unless those favorites are picked based on work accomplishments. Third, it is ensuring that procedures are followed fairly for all who the procedures affectwho gets to go to training, gets to go on vacation at which times, and so forth. Academics talk about distributive fairness (how rewards are distributed), interactional fairness (how interpersonal relationships get played out), and procedural fairness (how processes get carried out); all are important in the creation of trust.9 You must admit this is a different way to think about the most important things managers can do. What happened to setting goals, and span of control, and planning? They are still tasks that need doing, but a lot of what used to be a managers job now resides at the level of the teamworkers participate in setting goals, they plan how they will accomplish those goals, and they work without direct supervision. And they will do these all much more effectively when they feel safe because their manager has earned their trust by being fair.
on the job. Training gives people skills and having the skills empowers people. Supportthe new thing makes everyone nervous. People need the support of others when trying new things. Teams that have a chance to chat about being nervous and how the new thing is going to work will then support each other when the new actually must be done. Another kind of support concerns stafng levels when the new requires additional people to make it happen. Some companies behave as if people are liabilities so they fail to add the staff necessary to make the new actually happen. But people are only liabilities on the balance sheet and should be treated as assets by management.
When workers trust their manager to treat them fairly, they feel safe. Feeling safe permits engagement to flower; being treated fairly leads to the trust that is at the very foundation of feeling safe.
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performance. First, there was the work on service climate in organizations which showed that employee reports on the service climate in which they worked correlated significantly with customer satisfaction and loyalty. Then there was the work on organizational citizenship behavior which showed that units characterized by high levels of OCB were also more productive units. And more recently, there is research that shows employee reports on their work conditionsthe kinds of conditions we think create engagementare significantly related to unit productivity, turnover, and customer satisfaction.12 What we have learned is that by asking employees the right questions we get valid information. And that is where we began this note: assessing engagement is not the same as assessing satisfaction. Employee surveys must be as carefully designed as the computers you use to process data; they must be designed to do the job you want them to do. You do not buy any old computer or any old softwareyou have to use computer technology and software specifically designed for your purposes. The same holds true for the surveys you administermake sure your employee surveys are designed to give you the information you need to know. If you want to know how engaged your work force is and if you want an engaged work force, you will need the right kind of employee survey data to see how you are presently doing and what you need to change to make improvements. Engage your work force in meaningful surveys, and you, too, can have an engaged work force.
Information from employees on their work conditionsthe kinds of conditions we think create engagementare significantly related to unit productivity, turnover, and customer satisfaction.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
1
For an early excellent statement on employee engagement see the paper by Kahn, W. A. (1990). Psychological conditions of personal engagement and disengagement at work. Academy of Management Journal, 33, 692-724. See Macey, W. H., & Schneider, B. (In Press). Employee experiences and customer satisfaction: Toward a framework for survey design with a focus on service climate. In A. I. Kraut (Ed.), Getting action from organizational surveys. New York: Wiley. This can sound like we think employee job satisfaction is unimportant and that would be unfortunate. Job satisfaction is correlated with lots of important organizational outcomes like employee absenteeism and turnover, for example. We think it is good to have a satisfied work force and to have an engaged work force; the two can exist simultaneously in the best of circumstances and they will not be independent of each other because feeling engaged and being behaviorally engaged can be very satisfying. Organizational commitment (sometimes also called Organizational Identification) has profited from two long-term streams of research. For excellent introductions to this research see: (1) Mowday, R. T., Porter, L. W., & Steers, R. M. (1982). Employee-organization linkages: The psychology of commitment, absenteeism, and turnover. New York: Academic Press; and (2) Meyer, J. P., & Allen, N. J. (1997). Commitment in the workplace: Theory, research and application. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Job involvement has a relatively long history of research beginning with early work by Lodahl and Kejner (Lodahl, T. M., & Kejner, M. (1965). The definition and measurement of job involvement. Journal of Applied Psychology, 49, 24-33). More recent work on the topic shows its continuing relevance and relationship to important outcomes, including job satisfaction and some facets of work performance; see: Cooper-Hakim, A., & Viswesvaran, C. (2005). The construct of work commitment: Testing an integrative framework. Psychological Bulletin, 131, 241-259. For a comprehensive review of the history of work on OCB and its current status, including reviews of research on OCB as a correlate of organizational performance, see: Organ D. W., Podsakoff, P. M., & MacKenzie, S. B. (2006). Organizational citizenship behavior: Its nature, antecedents and consequences. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. For example see the work on job design and work motivation by Hackman J, Oldham G. (1980). Work Design. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. There has been considerable interest recently in trust at work. For two examples, see Ambrose, M. L. & Schminke, M. (2003). Organization structure as a moderator of the relationship between procedural justice, interactional justice, perceived organizational support, and supervisory trust. Journal of Applied Psychology, 88, 295-305, and Dirks, K. T., & Ferrin, D. L. (2002). Trust in leadership: Meta-analytic findings and implications for research and practice. Journal of Applied Psychology, 87, 622-628.
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Douglas McGregor in his early and important statement on a new vantage point for managerial behavior stressed the importance of fairness as the basis for supervisor-subordinate relationships (see McGregor, D. M. (1960). The human side of enterprise. New York: McGraw-Hill). For a comprehensive review of the current status of justice research and practice see: Greenberg, J., & Colquitt, J. A. (Eds.) (2005). Handbook of organizational justice. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. On psychological issues in organizational change see Burke, W. W. (2002). Organizational Change: Theory and Practice. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. On positive and negative affectivity and their importance at work see Brief, A. P., Butcher, A. H., & Roberson, L. (1995). Cookies, disposition, and job attitudes: The effects of positive mood-inducing events and negative affectivity on job satisfaction in a field experiment. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 62, 55-62. For research revealing how important employee reports can be for these issues, see the following for service climate (Schneider, B., & White, S. S. (2004). Service quality: Research perspectives. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.), the following for OCB (Organ, Podsakoff, & MacKenzie, op cit), and the following for the employee reports on work conditions related to engagement and unit performance (Harter, J. K., Schmidt, F. L., & Keyes, C. L. M. (2003). Well-being in the workplace and its relationship to business outcomes: A review of the Gallup studies. In C. L. Keyes & J. Haidt (Eds.), Flourishing: The positive person and the good life (pp. 205-224). Washington, DC: A. P. A.
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