Work engagement is the "harnessing of organization member's selves to their work roles: in engagement, people employ and express themselves physically, cognitively, emotionally and mentally during role performances".Kahn, W. A. (1990). Psychological conditions of personal engagement and disengagement at work. Academy of Management Journal, 33, 692-724 Three aspects of work motivation are cognitive, emotional and physical engagement.May, D. R., Gilson, R. L., & Harter, L. M. (2004). The psychological conditions of meaningfulness, safety and availability and the engagement of the human spirit at work. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 77, 11-37
There are two schools of thought with regard to the definition of work engagement. On the one hand Maslach and Leiter assume that a continuum exists with burnout and engagement as two opposite poles.Maslach, C., Jackson, S.E., & Leiter, M. (1997). The truth about burnout: How organizations cause personal stress and what to do about it. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass The second school of thought operationalizes engagement in its own right as the positive antithesis of burnout.Bakker, A.B., Demerouti, E. (2007). Using the Job Demands-Resources model to predict burnout and performance. Human Resource Management, 43, 83-104 According to this approach, work engagement is defined as a positive, fulfilling, work-related state of mind that is characterized by vigor, dedication, and absorption.Schaufeli, W.B., Salanova, M., González-Romá, V., & Bakker, A.B. (2002). The measurement of Engagement and burnout: A confirmative analytic approach Vigor is characterized by high levels of energy and mental resilience while working, the willingness to invest effort in one's work, and persistence even in the face of difficulties; dedication by being strongly involved in one's work, and experiencing a sense of significance, enthusiasm, inspiration, pride, and challenge; and absorption by being fully concentrated and happily engrossed in one's work, whereby time passes quickly and one has difficulties with detaching oneself from work.Schaufeli, W.B., Salanova, M., González-Romá, V., & Bakker, A. B. (2002). The measurement of Engagement and burnout: A confirmative analytic approach. Journal of Happiness Studies, 3, 71-92
Organizations need energetic and dedicated employees: people who are engaged with their work. These organizations expect proactivity, initiative and responsibility for personal development from their employees.Bakker, A.B., & Leiter, M.P. (Eds.) (2010). Work engagement: A handbook of essential theory and research. New York: Psychology Press
As a unique concept
Work engagement as measured by the UWES is positively related with, but can nevertheless be differentiated from, similar constructs such as job involvement and organizational commitment,Hallberg, U., & Schaufeli, W.B. (2006). "Same same" but different: Can work engagement be discriminated from job involvement and organizational commitment? European Journal of Psychology, 11, 119-127 in-role and extra-role behavior;Schaufeli, W.B., Taris, T.W., & Bakker, A. (2006). Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: On the differences between work engagement and workaholism. In: R. Burke (Ed), Work hours and work addiction (pp. 193-252). Edward Elgar: Northampton, UK personal initiative,Salanova, M., & Schaufeli, W.B. (2008). A cross-national study of work engagement as a mediator between job resources and proactive behavior: A cross-national study. International Journal of Human Resources Management, 19, 226-231 Type A,Hallberg, U., Johansson, G. & Schaufeli, W.B. (2007). Type A behaviour and work situation: Associations with burnout and work engagement. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 48, 135-142 and workaholism.Schaufeli, W.B., Taris, T.W., & Van Rhenen, W. (2008). Workaholism, burnout and engagement: Three of a kind or three different kinds of employee well-being? Applied Psychology: An International Review, 57, 173-203 Moreover, engaged workers are characterized by low levels of burnout,González-Roma, V., Schaufeli, W.B., Bakker, A., Lloret, S. (2006). Burnout and engagement: Independent factors or opposite poles? Journal of Vocational Behaviour, 68, 165-174 as well as by low levels of neuroticism and high levels of extraversion.Langelaan, S., Bakker, A.B., Van Doornen, L.J.P. & Schaufeli, W.B. (2006). Burnout and work engagement: Do individual differences make a difference? Personality and Individual Differences, 40, 521-532 Also they enjoy good mental and physical health.
Trait versus state
Generally, work engagement is conceptualized as a relatively stable phenomenon. This can be explained by the presence of specific job and organizational characteristics.Macey, W.H., & Schneider, B. (2008). The meaning of employee engagement. Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 1, 3-30 However, engagement is not a fixed state: the level of engagement can even fluctuate on a weeklyBakker, A.B., & Bal, P.M. (in press). Weekly work engagement and performance: A study among starting teachers. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology or day-to-day basis.Bakker, A.B., & Xanthopoulou, D. (2009). The crossover of daily work engagement: Test of an actor-partner interdependence model. Journal of Applied Psychology, 94, 1562–1571Xanthopoulou, D., Bakker, A.B., Demerouti, E., & Schaufeli, W.B. (2009). Work engagement and financial returns: A diary study on the role of job and personal resources. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 82, 183-200.Xanthopoulou, D., Bakker, A.B., Heuven, E., Demerouti, E., & Schaufeli, W.B. (2008). Working in the sky: A diary study on work engagement among flight attendants. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 13, 345-356.) Increasingly, attention is being paid to these short-term fluctuations by conducting experience sampling studies and diary studies.Sonnentag, S., Dormann, C., & Demerouti, E. (2010). Not all days are created equal: The concept of state work engagement. In A.B. Bakker & M.P. Leiter (Eds.), Work engagement: A handbook of essential theory and research. New York: Psychology Press Christian, Garza, and Slaughter (2011) meta-analyzed over 90 engagement research studies. They found that engagement is distinct from job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and job involvement.
Measurement The three aspects of work engagement (vigor, dedication and absorption) are assessed by the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES), which is currently available in 20 languages and can be used freely for non-commercial purposes. In addition a short formSchaufeli, W.B., Bakker, A.B. & Salanova, M. (2006). The measurement of work engagement with a short questionnaire: A cross-national study. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 66, 701-716 and a student versionSchaufeli, W.B., Martínez, I., Marques Pinto, A. Salanova, M. & Bakker, A.B. (2002). Burnout and engagement in university students: A cross national study. Journal of Cross- Cultural Psychology, 33, 464-481 are available. The reliability and validity of the UWES is documented is various studies.For an overview see: Schaufeli, W.B. 2007 pp. 135-177
The Oldenburg Burnout Inventory (OLBI)Demerouti, E., & Bakker, A.B. (2008). The Oldenburg Burnout Inventory: A good alternative to measure burnout and engagement. In J. Halbesleben (Ed.), Handbook of stress and burnout in health care (pp. 65-78). New York: Nova Science Publishers.Demerouti, E., Mostert, K., & Bakker, A. B. (2010). Burnout and work engagement: A thorough investigation of the independency of both constructs. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 15(3), 209–222. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0019408 is an alternative instrument for the assessment of work engagement. It consists of two dimensions: exhaustion-vigor and cynicism-dedication.Sinval, J., Queirós, C., Pasian, S. R., & Marôco, J. (2019). Transcultural adaptation of the Oldenburg Burnout Inventory (OLBI) for Brazil and Portugal. Frontiers in Psychology, 10, 1–28. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00338
The recently operationalized construct of drive was proposed as the key differentiating individual difference dimension of work engagement and has shown promising psychometric results. Measured on the basis of 13 facets and three aspects (passion, effort, ideation), drive is argued to predict future motivation and engagement levels better than measuring these attributes directly at any point in time, in any given context.
Main drivers Research has identified two key sets of variables that drive work engagement:
Job resources: Work engagement is found to be positively associated with job resources such as social support from co-workers and from one's superior, performance feedback, coaching, job control, task variety, opportunities for learning and development, and training facilities. These resources are helpful in reducing the impact of job demands on strain, but they are also useful in the achievement of work goals, and they stimulate learning, personal growth and development. One consistent finding is that the motivational potential of job resources is particularly salient in the face of high job demands.Bakker, A.B. & Demerouti, E. (2008). Towards a model of work engagement. Career Development International, 13, 209-223
Example: In a longitudinal study among 2555 Finnish dentists, researchers found that job resources lead to work engagement, which in turn had an influence on the level of personal initiative and consequently on work-unit innovativeness.Hakanen, J.J., Perhoniemia, R., and Toppinen-Tannera (2008). Positive gain spirals at work: From job resources to work engagement, personal initiative and work-unit innovativeness. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 73, 1, 78-91 Example: In a study that aimed to examine job resources, work engagement and Finnish dairy farmers’ preferences concerning methods to enhance overall well-being while working on farms. The results indicate that the family, working with cattle, healthy farm animals, a reasonable workload, and a sustainable farm economy have the capacity to create positive impacts on well-being among dairy farmers. Well-being on farms is a part of sustainable food production.
Personal resources: personal resources, such as optimism, self-efficacy and resilience are functional in controlling the environment and exerting impact on it in a successful way. Furthermore, engaged employees have several personal characteristics that differentiate them from less engaged employees. Five factor model is useful for examining the dispositional source of work engagement. As a higher order factor work engagement was related to big five factors. Examples are extraversion, conscientiousness and emotional stability. Psychological capital also seems to be related to work engagement.
Example: Xanthopoulou, Bakker, Demerouti, and Schaufeli (2007) studied Dutch technicians' work engagement in relation to three personal resources (self-efficacy, organizational-based self-esteem, and optimism).Xanthopoulou, D., Bakker, A.B., Demerouti, E., & Schaufeli, W.B. (2007). The role of personal resources in the job demands-resources model. International Journal of Stress Management, 14, 121-141 Results indicated that these resources were related to work engagement.
For an overall model of work engagement, see Bakker & Demerouti (2008).
The work motivation model includes 5 elements of individual motivators: money, myself, membership of a team, mastery, and mission. The approach is similar to Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
Performance