Employee engagement is significant for managers to promote and cultivate given that disengagement is often a main problem of employee’s lack of commitment and motivation (May et. al. , 2004). Work lacking rational direction or purpose often causes indifference and detachment from employee’s work. This view illustrates important reasons for providing employees with meaningful work that facilitates motivation and personal fulfillment. There are also various practical reasons that encourage organizations to be more concerned with employee’s engagement at work.
Britt, Adler and Bartone (2001) found that high employee engagement can bring many benefits to the organization.
Engaged employees work smarter, keep looking for ways to improve their performance, share information with their colleagues, are more focus on business results and care about the future of the organization they work for. As a result, the concept is linked to the crucial managerial variables such as employee turnover, customer satisfaction as well as productivity and profitability (Harter et. al. , 2002).
Theory, Drivers and Models of Employee Engagement There are two major streams of academic research that help us to understand the phenomenon of employee engagement.
One of the streams presented by Kahn (1990) identifies three psychological conditions related to employee engagement or disengagement at work: meaningfulness, safety and availability. Thus according to Kahn (1990) organizations that exhibit high degree of job enrichment and role fit are more likely to create a meaningful work environment for their employees.
Similarly, rewarding co-workers and supportive supervisor relations positively impact safety while availability of job resources are a positive predictor of psychological availability.
This theory finds its further confirmation in studies conducted by May et. al. (2004) who also found that meaningfulness, safety and availability are positively related to engagement at work. Another stream of the theory of employee engagement stems from the burnout literature.
This view describes job engagement as “a positive antithesis of burnout noting that burnout involves the erosion of engagement with one’s job” (Saks, 2006). According to the theory there are six aspects of work life that lead to the burnout and engagement at work: workload, control, rewards and recognition, community and social support, perceived fairness and values (Maslach et al. , 2001). These views are further explained by the social exchange theory (SET), which states that social behavior is the result of an exchange process.
Relationships develop over time into trusting, loyal and mutual commitments as long as the parties abide by certain “rules” of exchange” (Saks, 2006). For instance, when employee receives economic and socioemotional value from his/her organization, he/she feels committed to respond accordingly and compensate the organization. One way to compensate the organization is through the employee level of engagement. Therefore, employees feel committed to engage their work performance deeper as the resources and benefits are provided by the organization (Saks, 2006).
Numerous studies on employee engagement have also shown that job resources such as social support at work, skill variety, performance feedback, autonomy, and learning opportunities are also positively related to employee engagement (Shaufeli and Salanova, 2007). This view has been further supported by Bakker and Demerouti (2008). Job resources are important not only because they help employees to achieve their work related objectives but also through their role as and incentive and motivational tool that support employees growth and development (Bakker and Demerouti, 2008).
For instance, employee feedback increases the possibility of successful and improved completion of organizational task so the work goals can be effectively attained. Through the state of achievement of organizational goals the result is positive and engagement is likely to occur (Schaufeli and Bakker, 2004, Bakker and Demerouti, 2008). Consistent with this notion are also other authors, Hakanen et. al. (2006) and Llorens et. al. (2006) who have conducted numerous studies in the area.
Furthermore, personal resources such as optimism, self-esteem, self-efficacy or resilience contribute to a large extent to engagement at work. They help employees to control and impact upon the environment and accomplish career objectives successfully. (Bakker and Demetriou, (2006), Luthans et. al. , (2008). For instance, motivation and goal self-concordance of an employee strengthens the process of goal achievement and, as a result, trigger higher employee performance and satisfaction.
Additionally, according to the theory of conservation of resources (COR) stress experienced by an individual inhibits people to seek, obtain, retain and protect things important to them. As a result, job resources gain their motivational potential when “employees are confronted with high job demands (e. g. workload, emotional demands, and mental demands) because they can help goal accomplishment” (Bakker and Demerouti, 2008).
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