Lecture 19: Employee Engagement (10/30)

Reading: H&M Chapter 13

What is employee engagement?

“The harnessing of organization members’ selves to their work roles; in engagement, people employ and express themselves physically, cognitively, and emotionally during role performances”

What are related concepts to engagement?

flow, absorption, energy, involvement, satisfaction, commitment

Define the 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 (physical, emotional, and cognitive energies) in work

Based on the results of numerous surveys, what percentage of employees are thought to be highly engaged?

30%

How many employees are highly disengaged, neutral, and highly engaged?

Highly disengaged: 20%

Neutral: 50%

Highly engaged: 30%

What does data show about star employees in terms of engagement?

• One in three emerging stars feel disengaged, meaning high performers are not automatically motivated or committed.

• One in three high-potential employees admits they don’t give full effort, suggesting underutilization, burnout, or lack of challenge.

• 40% of high-potentials believe they must leave their organization to advance, indicating weak internal career paths and development opportunities.

Identifying “star” employees is not enough—retaining and engaging them requires meaningful development, growth opportunities, and career mobility.

What did a meta-analysis by Christian, Garza, and Slaughter (2011) find about engagement in terms of individual outcomes?

Found that engagement was positively related to both task performance (mean corrected correlation = .43) and contextual performance (.34)

What did The Gallup Organization find about engagement in terms of individual outcomes?

62% of engaged employees believe their work positively affects their physical health, whereas this figure is only 22% for disengaged employees

What did Corporate Executive Board find about engagement in terms of individual outcomes?

employees with lower engagement are four times more likely to leave their jobs than those who are highly engaged.

What has research shown about business outcomes and the relationship between employee engagement

Research has found a positive relationship between employee engagement and shareholder return, safety, productivity, growth, customer loyalty, etc…

What are the antecedents (cause) of employee engagement?

Job characteristics

Leadership

Learning & Development Opportunities

Dispositional Characteristics

Describe and list the 5 core dimensions of Hackman and Oldham (1976)’s job characteristic’s model

• 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 required activities results in direct and clear information about the effectiveness of performance.

What are the 3 important psychological states the job characteristics influence and how does it impact the Motivating Potential Score (MPS)

Experienced meaningfulness, Responsibility, Knowledge of results → MPS

• The higher the MPS, the more motivating the job, on average

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

What are the various job characteristics and how strongly does each relate to employee engagement?

Autonomy: .39

Task Variety: .53

Task Significance: .51

Feedback: .33

Social Support: .32

Problem Solving: .28

Job Complexity: .24

Physical Demands: –.23

Stressful Work Conditions: –.22

What is transformational leadership?

Transformational leaders move their followers beyond immediate self interests through idealized influence (charisma), inspiration, intellectual stimulation, and/or individualized consideration.

What is leader-member exchange?

Leader-member exchange (LMX) captures the nature of the relationship between a leader and follower. High-quality exchanges are characterized by mutual trust and respect.

How much does transformational leadership and leader-member exchange strongly relate to engagement?

transformational leadership: .27

leader-member exchange: .31

What are learning & development practices that can increase employee engagement?

Effective mentoring: Provide mentoring and coaching to boost employee engagement

Challenging Development Plans: Use stretch assignments and other challenging developmental experiences to help employees grow and develop

Management & Job Skills Training: Ensure employees have access to both generic (e.g., management) and specific (e.g., job-related) skills training

What are dispositional characteristics (stable personal traits) that contribute to engagement?

Conscientiousness: .42

Positive affect: .43

Proactive Personality: .44

What are the stages of employee listening in an organization?

• Plan / Recruit / Select → recruitment surveys (candidate experience)

• Orient → early pulse surveys and learning plans

• Develop → 360° feedback, skip-level meetings, and 1-on-1s

• Retain → annual engagement pulse surveys

• Separate → exit surveys

What do engagement surveys measure?

Engagement surveys measure how emotionally, cognitively, and behaviorally connected employees are to their work and organization.

Engagement surveys common themes:

• 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

What are 2 recommendations for measuring engagement better

• Align survey items with how engagement is defined within the organization

• Differentiate measures of engagement from measures of its antecedents and consequences

What is a common mistake orgs do with employee feedback

they fail to act on their feedback or take to long to do so.

companies are utilizing analytics and dashboards to help HR and people leaders make sense of and respond to employee feedback