When engagement: Something more or too much of a good thing?

Prudence M Millear; Roxane L Gervais

Introduction: Work engagement is viewed as an outcome of the employees' experiences in the workplace, as it increases with more resources and reduces with excessive demands. In this paper, we examine the role of work engagement as an indicator variable, compared against personal and work resources and work demands, in three diverse populations. It was hypothesised that work engagement could be an additional resource by increasing e.g., job satisfaction and preventing e.g., burnout. Moreover, it was also possible to determine if work engagement could be considered as 'too much'. If so, then the presence of resources and demands would account for the benefits of work engagement, leaving only the negative aspects of excessive engagement (evident by negative suppression in the regression models). Method: Centre directors, teachers and room assistants (N = 219) working in early childhood; registered nurses and nursing assistants (N = 198) working in aged care; and a sample of employees across diverse occupations (N = 114) completed independent online surveys consisting of work and personal characteristics. The analyses consisted of two stages: hierarchical multiple regressions (HMRs), adding work engagement as the final block; followed by the PROCESS macros for SPSS using mediation to explore the indirect pathways including the effects of work engagement. The outcomes were job satisfaction, emotional exhaustion, cynicism and professional efficacy. The regression models included Block 1: personal resources (e.g., dispositional optimism), Block 2: workplace resources (e.g., skill discretion), Block 3: workplace demands (e.g., workload) and Block 4: work engagement. Results: Each block added significant variance to the outcomes and for each sample. Work engagement was a positive and significant predictor of greater job satisfaction, higher professional efficacy, less emotional exhaustion, lower cynicism, and did not show evidence of negative suppression. Across the samples, the general pattern was that personal resources were initial strong predictors of the outcomes, then the successive additions of workplace resources and demands partially mediated their effect. Work engagement predicted strongly and positively the outcomes over and above the first three blocks of variables. Whilst the effects of job demands were not mediated by work engagement, resources lead to work engagement, which in turn predicted all of the outcomes. The enthusiasm that the participants felt about their work provided a balance to cope with the work demands. When enthusiasm was lessened, demands would increase, leading to lower levels of job satisfaction and increased burnout. The second part of the analyses explored the strength of the indirect effects of work engagement on the outcomes. In a similar manner to the regressions, the indirect pathways through work engagement added significantly, over and above the direct effects of personal and workplace resources. Discussion: Regardless of place or type of employment, work engagement provided the participants with an additional and substantial benefit. In these samples, engagement was not a strong predictor, but provided a buffer for burnout and added to job satisfaction. These issues will be discussed.

When engagement: Something more or too much of a good thing?

Files and links (1)

Abstract

Details

Metrics