Employee Engagement
There is a general belief that there is a connection between employee engagement and business results; a meta-analysis conducted by Harter et al (2002:272) confirms this connection. They concluded that, “…employee satisfaction and engagement are related to meaningful business outcomes at a magnitude that is important to many organisations”. However, engagement is an individual-level construct and if it does lead to business results, it must first impact individual-level outcomes. Therefore, there is reason to 7 expect employee engagement is related to individuals’ attitudes, intentions, and behaviours.
Although neither Kahn (1990) nor May et al (2004) included outcomes in their studies, Kahn
(1992) proposed that high levels of engagement lead to both positive outcomes for individuals, (eg quality of people’s work and their own experiences of doing that work), as well as positive organisational-level outcomes (eg the growth and productivity of organisations). The Towers Perrin (2003) study of engagement identified both emotions and rationality as core components. They found that emotional factors are linked to an individual’s personal satisfaction and the sense of inspiration and affirmation they get from their work and from being a part of their organisation. For example, a key element here is having a sense of personal accomplishment from one’s job. By contrast, the rational factors generally relate to the relationship between the individual and the broader corporation, for instance the extent to which employees understand their role and their unit’s role, relative to company objectives. It was found that scores for key aspects of rational engagement (such as I ‘understand how my role relates to company goals and objectives’ and ‘I am willing to put in a great deal of effort beyond what is normally expected’) are generally higher than those for emotional engagement
(such as, I ‘would say my company is a good place to
Although neither Kahn (1990) nor May et al (2004) included outcomes in their studies, Kahn
(1992) proposed that high levels of engagement lead to both positive outcomes for individuals, (eg quality of people’s work and their own experiences of doing that work), as well as positive organisational-level outcomes (eg the growth and productivity of organisations). The Towers Perrin (2003) study of engagement identified both emotions and rationality as core components. They found that emotional factors are linked to an individual’s personal satisfaction and the sense of inspiration and affirmation they get from their work and from being a part of their organisation. For example, a key element here is having a sense of personal accomplishment from one’s job. By contrast, the rational factors generally relate to the relationship between the individual and the broader corporation, for instance the extent to which employees understand their role and their unit’s role, relative to company objectives. It was found that scores for key aspects of rational engagement (such as I ‘understand how my role relates to company goals and objectives’ and ‘I am willing to put in a great deal of effort beyond what is normally expected’) are generally higher than those for emotional engagement
(such as, I ‘would say my company is a good place to