Object of My Affection: with What Do Employees Engage?

Object of My Affection: with What Do Employees Engage?

Why Leadership at All Levels is Critical to Employee Engagement
 


http://ministry-to-children.com

 Pop quiz: When an employee is engaged, what is the object of their engagement?

a. Their job
b. Their manager
c. Their company
d. Their work environment
e. Themselves

The answer, not surprisingly, is usually some combination of the items above.

The focus of employee engagement has evolved along with its conceptualization over time. Kahn's (1990) original construct was named "personal engagement" and focused on the preferred self at work. The Burn Out family (e.g., Schaufeli et al., 2002) focused on "work engagement," the primary focus of which was one's immediate work. As practitioner literature began to influence the employee engagement discussion (e.g., Robinson et al., 2004 and Harter et al., 2003), the focus of engagement began to shift towards the organization as a whole.

In researching my dissertation, I asked employee engagement experts working in the field what they understood employees to engage with. Consistently, they noted that employees engage at multiple levels simultaneously, including with: the work they are doing; their physical environment; their peers, work teams or social environments; immediate supervisors; corporate missions, values; objectives and brands; the communications process; customers; and even with themselves.

Pulling these perspectives together, one can say that employees engage with the work they are doing in the context of their organizations. My research demonstrated that, for the purposes of defining and measuring employee engagement, this statement works.

But so what? Why does it matter what entity employees engage with? One reason is that understanding the focus of engagement makes it easier to understand drivers that increase it, as well as what other things like HR policies and practices might interact with employee engagement to drive desired business results.

Perhaps more importantly, understanding that engagement occurs at multiple levels suggests that leaders at every level have an important role to play in facilitating employee engagement. It's not just the executive team reiterating corporate objectives, or first-line managers empowering their staff through delegation that drive engagement. Instead, every employee can help to create an engaging work experience for their team members, for example, by initiating open communication and modeling trustworthy behavior.

As a leader, which would you guess is the most critical focus of employee engagement? As an employee, would you agree?