Lecture 5: Employee Engagement Flashcards
What is employee engagement?
Employee engagement refers to the harnessing of organization members’ selves to their work roles; when engaged, people express themselves physically, cognitively, and emotionally during role performances. (kahn 1990)
Related concepts: flow, absorption, energy, involvement, satisfaction,
commitment
What are the defining characteristics of engagement?
- psychological connection with the performance of work tasks rather than an attitude toward features of the organization or job
- self-investment of personal resources (which are physical, emotional, and cognitive energies) in work
what are the personal resources: physical, emotional, cognitive energies
Based on the results of numerous surveys,
what percentage of employees are thought
to be highly engaged?
A. 10-20%
B. 25-35%
C. 40-50%
D. 55-65%
A. 10-20%
What are some trends in employee engagement?
Highly disengaged tend to be 10-20%
Highly engaged tend to be 10-20%
Neutral tend to be 40-70%
STAR EMPLOYEES ENGAGEMENT
1 in 3 emerging stars reports feeling disengaged
Martin and Schmidt (2010) found that 1 in 3 high potentials admits to not putting in full effort into their job
A study Willis Towers Watson found that 40% of identified high potentials say that they need to leave their organization to advance their career.
Consequences of employee engagement
(INDIVIDUAL OUTCOMES)
Christian, Garza, and Slaughter (2011) found that employee engagement has a positive effect on both task performance and contextual performance
Gallup Organization found that 62% of engaged employees believe their work positively affects their physical health (22% for disengaged)
Corporate Executive Board found that employees with lower engagement are 4 times more likely to leave their jobs in opposition to those that are highly engaged
+ effect on task performance, contextual performance; physical health;
likeliness to leave job
Consequences of employee engagement
Business outcomes
Research has found positive relationship between employee engagement and
* shareholder return
* safety
* productivity
* growth,
* customer loyalty
* Profitability
* return on assets
* etc…..
ANTECEDENTS OF EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT
Antecedents: the causes for the occurrence of employee engagement.
- JOB CHARACTERISTICS
- LEADERSHIP
- LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT OPPORTUNITIES
- DISPOSITIONAL CHARACTERISTICS
Antecedents of engagement: JOB CHARACTERISTICS
JOB CHARACTERISTICS MODEL
- The Job Characteristics Model was created by Hackman and Oldham
- They basically said that any job can be described by 5 core dimensions:
1. skill/task variety: The extent to which a job requires a number of different activities, skills, and talents
- task identity: The degree to which a job requires completion of a whole, identifiable piece of work – that is, doing a job from beginning to end with visible results.
- task significance: The job’s impact on the lives or work of other people, whether Inside or outside the organization
- autonomy: The degree of freedom, independence, and discretion in scheduling work and determining procedures that the job provides.
- task feedback: The degree to which carrying out the activities required results in direct and clear information about the effectiveness of performance.
- there are three very important psychological states that jon characteristics influence:
1. experienced meaningfulness
2. knowledge of results
3. responsibility
all of this combined computes the Motivating Potential Score (MPS)
the higher the MPS, the more motivating the job is on average.
IMPORTANT SLIDE!!!!
Antecedents of employee engaement: job characteristics
Which of the following job characteristics do
you think most strongly relates to employee
engagement?
A. Autonomy
B. Feedback
C. Task Variety
D. Task Significance
C. TASK VARIETY
Stressful work conditions the least (0.22)
Physical demand (0.23)
Job complexity 0.24
Task variety - 0l53
Task significance 0.52
Antecedents of employee engaement: Job characteristics
JOB CHARACTERISTICS MODEL CONTINUED…
The job characteristics model is a framework that suggests that the way in which a job is designed can impact the people within those jobs’ motivation levels.
Thus, given the proper design of jobs, work can facilitate motivation in individuals. Accord-ing to this view, there are characteristics or attributes of jobs that are more (or less) motivating than others.
Antecedents of employee engaement: job characteristics
JOB ENRICHMENT
This refers to the designing of jobs to possess the attributes specified in the job characteristics model that are motivating
Antecedents of employee engaement: job characteristics
JOB CRAFTING
Often employers are concerned with the end result of the job, the outcome, and whether the task gets accomplished or not. This means that they are less concerned with how the employee structures the process of work.
JOB CRAFTING: refers to the process of allowing employees to make subtle modifications in the boundaries of their tasks and interpersonal relationships to provide more autonomy and feedback.
Job crafting permits some psychological flexibility in how work is performed, and in so doing, can lead to greater psychological health. EMPLOYEES BECOME ACTIVE ARCHITECTS OF THEIR JOBS RATHEN THAN PASSIVE INCUMBENTS
antecedents of employee engagement: job charcteristics
ORGANIZATIONAL APPLICABILITY OF JOB CHARACTERISTICS MODEL
Worthy of note is that while some jobs can be redesigned to enhance worker
motivation to perform them, other jobs cannot be altered in any meaningful way. The motivational characteristics of work reflect the underlying mental demands of work. For example, the job of parking lot attendant is monotonous because it involves little information processing. As such, this job would best be staffed with employees who are content with the lack of stimulation inherent in the highly repetitive nature of the tasks performed. Other jobs, such as air traffic controller, already have a very high level of information processing, and adding to it would only increase stress. There is also the issue of matching abilities and pay to the job characteristics. Jobs characterized by higher scores on the core job dimensions are associated with higher aptitudes and higher pay. Thus, when organizations want to make jobs more motivating, it should be realized that they will need people with more ability, and should be prepared to pay them accordingly.
THUS: **Moderate Organizational Applicability
**: Not all jobs can be designed to be stimulating or motivating.
Antecedents of employee engagement: Leadership
What are the two styles of Leadership to manage employees that contribute to engagement
- Transformational Leadership: this is when leaders move their followers beyond immediete self-interests through idealized influence (charisma), inspiration, intellectual stimulation and/or individualized consideration.
- Leader-Member Exchange (LMX): this captures the nature of the relationship between the leader and a follower. The most high quality exchanges are characterized by mutual trust and respect; feeling trusted.
Antecedents of employee engagement: Learning & development opportunities
LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT
what does this involve and what are implications
This involves:
1. Effective mentoring
2. challenging of development plans
3. management and job skills training
this has some implications:
* provide mentoring and coaching to boost employee engagement
* use stretch assignments and other challenging developmental experiences to help employees grow and develop
* ensure employees have access to both generic (eg: management) and specofic (job-related) skills training
Antecedents of employee engagement: dispositional characteristics
What are the dispositional characteristics that contribute to engagement
- conscientousness
- proactive personality (do you go out of ur way to shape the environment in a certain way that boosts employee engagement)
- positive affect (their positive and motivated attitide)
WHAT ARE THE MEASURES OF ANALYZING EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT:
- employee listening
- engagement surveys
measures of analyzing employee feedback
EMPLOYEE LISTENING
EG: AMEX
there are a variety of ways of finding out how an employee feels about being an employee; this could be asking about the hiring experience, poll surveys (eg: Boeing airlines asks employees to do this everyday), exit surveys, annual surveys, midyeat pulse points, recruitment surveys
annual surveys are most common
measures of analyzing employee feedback
ENGAGEMENT SURVEYS
Common themes used by employers:
Pride in employer
▪ Satisfaction with employer
▪ Job satisfaction
▪ Opportunity to perform well at challenging
work
▪ Recognition and positive feedback for one’s
contributions
▪ Personal support from one’s supervisor
▪ Effort above and beyond the minimum
▪ Understanding the link between one’s job and
the organization’s mission
▪ Prospects for future growth with one’s
employer
▪ Intention to stay with one’s employer
measures of analyzing employee feedback: engagement surveys
Problems with engagement surveys
combine prediction, outcomes, and antecedents
Measures if analyzing employee engagement: engagement surveys
Recommendations for measuring engagement
- align survey items with how engagement is defined in the organization
eg: amex defines engagement as energy, pride, and optimism and so their survey items are my job gives me energy, i belong at this company, i believe this company has a strong future etc. - differentiate measures of engaement from measures of its antecedents and consequences
ANALYZING AND ACTING ON EMPLOYEE FEEDBACK:
Common mistakes made by organizations are failing to act on their employees’ feedback or taking too long to do so. This is crucial because employees need to know that they have been heard and that their feedback is being taken seriously.
this is why increasingly companies are making use of analytics and dashboards to help HR and people leaders make sense of and respond to employee feedback.
work motivation theories:
Flow theory
suggests that individuals will experience an intense level of enjoyment, concentration, and lack of self-awareness when actively engaged in pursuits that have clear goals, unambiguous feedback, and a match between one’s skills and the challenge of the task.
this is similar to the task feedback in job characteristics model put in
