The Main Elements Of Work Engagement In Terms Of Increasing Employee Productivity
To gain a broader understanding of how work engagement affects employee productivity, as well as the importance that individuals place on engagement, specific attention will be given to the work engagement, Vigour, dedication, absorption and employee productivity.
Employee productivity
Nowadays, one of the most challenges that confront organization is how to improve employee productivity. Productivity has been defined as the efficiency assessment of a worker or group of workers. In actual terms, productivity is a component which directly affects the company’s profits. Prior literatures have demonstrated the advantages of employee productivity which consequently results to organization success. Sharma and Sharma (2014) indicated that higher productivity produce economic growth, higher profit, and social progress. The higher is the employee productivity is the better employee wages, better working conditions and more employment opportunities. According to Cato and Gordon (2009) alignment of the strategic vision to employee productivity is a key contributor to the success of an organization. Thus, this alignment consequently would stimulate and inspire workers to be more creative and innovate in which this will results in improving employee’s performance effectiveness to accomplish organizational objectives and goals. The competitive advantage increases by employee productivity through cost reduction and improvement in output quality. However, there is a lack of an effective and standardized way to assess productivity. The evaluation of productivity might be in terms of employee’s output in a specific period of time. According to Piana (2001), typically, worker’s productivity will be assessed relative to an average output of employees who are doing similar work. Moreover, it can be assessed by the amounts of units of products or services a worker handles in a given time frame. Since employee productive mainly contributes to the organization success, productivity of employee has become for business as an important objective that must be achieved.
Many studies have concentrated on one or two methods to measure productivity and since many different approaches are taken, it can be challenging to compare the results. Ferreira and Du Plessis (2009) agreed that, employee productivity is assessed based on the amount of time that a worker is physically present at his/ her job. However, Sharma and Sharma (2014) emphasised that it is measured by the extent to which employee “mentally present” but Ferreira and Du Plessis (2009) emphasised on the efficiency of working during the presence of employees at the job. Thus, productivity can be evaluated in terms of the time spent by an employee actively executing the job he or she was hired to do, in order to produce the desired outcomes expected from an employee’s job description.
Work Engagement
Kahn (1990) carried out one of the most influential studies of engagement. Conceptually, Khan started with Goffman’s work (1961) who proposed that, “attachment and detachment varies between people according to their roles”. However, Khan argued that work of Goffman was focused on short-lived face-to-face encounters, meanwhile to fit organizational life different concept was needed, which is ongoing, emotionally charged, and psychologically complex. Khan defined work engagement as the harnessing of organization’s employee’s selves to their job roles. Khan believes that During role performances, employee express themselves physically, cognitively, and emotionally. Emotional aspect refers to the employees’ feeling about their work environment, safety, and recognition. The cognitive refers to employees’ beliefs about the organisation, its leaders and working conditions. The physical refers to the physical energies exerted by individuals to accomplish their roles. Moreover, several definitions of employee engagement exist in the literature. Fleming and Asplund (2007) describes employee engagement as, “the ability to capture the heads, hearts, and souls of your employees to instil an intrinsic desire and passion for excellence”. Certain scholars also viewed employee engagement as a construct which consists of cognitive, emotional, and behavioural elements that are related to the role of employee performance. Sundaray, 2011 believes that work engagement reflects the commitment and involvement of an employee towards his/ her work that is aimed to improve organizational performance. Bakker and Demerouti (2008) was more towards the definition of Khan in which they have defined engagement as “a positive, fulfilling, work-related state of mind that is characterized by Vigour, dedication, and absorption”. However, in order for employees to have vigour, dedication, and absorption there must be drivers behind it.
Baumruk R (2006) stated that Employee engagement is likely, therefore, to be influenced by many interrelated factors. Such variation is illustrated in the work of The Conference Board (2006) who found that 26 different drivers of engagement were proposed in 12 largely consultancy‐ based studies of engagement. The most commonly reported drivers were trust and integrity; the nature of the job; the line‐of‐sight between individual performance and company performance; career growth opportunities; pride in the company; relationships with co‐workers/team members; employee development and the personal relationship with one’s manager.
However, McEwen (2011) had different view from Institute for Employment where he believed that engagement relies most on the perception of employees and their working experience evaluation, including their manager, organizational leaders, work environment, and the job itself. Echols (2005), however, pointed out that managers have the most impact on employee engagement where he stated that managers should pay more attention to their employee skills, knowledge and talents of their staff in order to enhance their engagement. The author supported that be adding that when employees are aware of their talents and strengths, their level of engagement tends to be higher, and this eventually results to better performance. Swaminathan and Rajasekaran (2010) differently addressed that issue in which they believe that engagement results from employee motivation and satisfaction. Rothmann and Storm (2003) concluded that work engagement can be reflected through the energy, efficacy, behavioural satisfaction and involvement.
Relationship between work engagement and productivity
Employee engagement is a key organizational issue that should be strictly given enormous consideration by organizational management in the current scenario of challenging business environment. This is because highly engaged and motivated employees reflect the core values of the organization, and this resultantly reinforces overall brand equity. The review of literature reveals that engaged employees yield positive organizational outcomes. In the rapidly changing markets, business leaders recognize that highly engaged employees can increase their productivity and firm performance. In other words, engaged employees feel passionate about their work, happy to work in their organization, and have the enthusiasm to go to their work every day. Besides that, employees who are engaged in their work are deemed very important for their organizations in maintaining competitive advantages; coping with changes and ensuring work innovations.
Past studies found that work engagement had a significant positive effect on employee productivity. According to Zahargier and Balasundaram (2011), a successful and highly productive business can be achieved by engaging its employees in improving their performance. Similarly, Harter et al. (2002) conducted a meta-analysis of data on 7, 939 business units from 36 firms that represent different sectors and found out employee engagement had a significant positive impact on increased productivity. In line with the study of Markos and Sridevi (2010), employers should consider investing in workforce engagement because it has a positive impact on performance outcomes such as employee productivity.
Overall work engagement has positive effect on employee productivity.
Vigour
Vigour is characterized by “high levels of energy and mental resilience while working, the willingness to invest effort in one’s work and persist in the face of difficulties”. Shriom (2004) also stated that Vigour is an affective construct and considers the subjective experience of energy and aliveness. Moreover, vigour is perceived as the opposite of emotional exhaustion amongst the dimension labelled energy. Low levels of energy tend to indicate a high exhaustion level, whereas high levels of energy indicate a high amount of vigour. Both Schaufeli and Shriom linked vigour to the energy but, however, Sonnentag & Niessen (2008) looked at vigour as a vital element to stimulate creative and proactive engaging behaviours relevant for the organization.
Furthermore, Hobfoll (2012) indicated that the concept of vigour is drawn from the view that individuals share a basic motivation to obtain, retain and protect the things that they value, such as resources (in this case, energetic resources). Energetic resources refer to physical strength, emotional energy and cognitive liveliness. Thus, it can be said vigour relates to psychological capacities for exercising will power and developing alternative ways to achievement, optimism in expecting future success, and resilience to persist in the pursuit of goals. A person who is vigorous at work distinctly represents an engaged employee.
Relationship between vigour and employee productivity
The physical strength of the employee can never be separated from how employees perform their task in order to be productive. If the employees do not have the required state of energy that enable them to perform their asked job, they never would be productive. Jalal Hanaysha (2016) conducted a study on 242 employees at public universities in northern Malaysia concluded that vigour has positive effect on employee productivity. Furthermore, Hakeem and Gulzar also conducted a study of higher education sector in Kashmir where they found that vigour positively affects the productivity of teachers. Moreover, Shirom emphasised on the centrality of subjective energy in personal experience at work where he found that vigour has effect on employee productivity. Based on the above discussion, the following hypotheses are presented: Vigour has positive effect on employee productivity.
Dedication The second element of employee engagement is dedication. This refers to being strongly involved in one’s work and experiencing a sense of significance, enthusiasm, inspiration, pride and challenge. Being dedicated to one’s job includes motivated acts such as working hard and giving the best that one can at work. Work not only seems to be important but also requires self-disciplined behaviour, as demonstrated by following rules, taking the initiative to solve a problem at work and exceeding one’s personal job requirements. A person who is dedicated to work is veritably engaged to his or her job.
Harpaz and Snir (2014) expressed dedication in terms of being highly involved in the work and is reflected through the feelings of enthusiasm, challenge, and significance. Dedication refers the level of the immersion in one’s work and is described by a sense of enthusiasm, significance, challenge, inspiration and pride. Dedication is also about being inspired, enthusiastic and highly involved in your job. Dedication is an individual’s deriving a sense of significance from work, feeling enthusiastic and proud about the given job, and feeling inspired and challenged by the job most of the literature view dedication as immersion of employee in his work. However, Mauno, Kinnunen, and Ruokolainen (2007) linked dedication to job involvement to some extent. According to Mauno, Kinnunen, and Ruokolainen dedication has conceptual similarities with job involvement.
Dedication is defined as a strong psychological involvement or identification with one’s work, whereas job involvement denotes an individual’s psychological identification with a particular job or with work in general. Additionally, both concepts are regarded as fairly stable phenomena, although the difference between the concepts has not been clearly argued. However, dedication appears to be a broader phenomenon than job involvement because dedication contains feelings of enthusiasm, inspiration, pride, and challenge, while job involvement focuses strictly on the psychological importance of the job in an individual’s life.
Relationship between dedication and employee productivity
Past studies found that work dedication had a significant positive effect on employee productivity. According to Zahargier and Balasundaram (2011), a successful and highly productive business can be achieved by engaging its employees who are dedicated in improving their performance. Similarly, Harter et al. (2002) conducted a meta-analysis of data on 7, 939 business units from 36 firms that represent different sectors and found out employee engagement had a significant positive impact on increased productivity. In line with the study of Markos and Sridevi (2010), employers should consider investing in workforce engagement where employees are dedicated because it has a positive impact on performance outcomes such as employee productivity. Based on the above discussion, the following hypothesis is presented: H2: Dedication has positive effect on employee productivity.
Absorption
The third element of employee engagement is absorption. This describes the feeling of contentment while performing work. Absorption represents a state of being fully concentrated on and happily engrossed in work, a state in which time passes quickly and one has difficulty in detaching oneself from work. This domain of employee engagement concerns the hedonic aspect of work. Absorption is described by being fully focused and happily attached in one’s work, whereby the employee feels that time passes quickly and has difficulties with detaching himself from work. Absorption is characterised by the employee being happily engrossed and fully immersed in the workRayton and Yalabik (2014) stated that, absorption refers to a sense of detachment from your surroundings, a high degree of concentration on your job, and a general lack of conscious awareness of the amount of time spent on the job. Absorption means concentration and being engrossed in people’s work, whereby passing time will be intangible and being detached from the job has some difficulties for them. Furthermore, it is pleasurable to have job experience for individuals. They do that, only for having that and paying high expenditure for job is not such important issue which it is for the others.
Relationship between absorption and employee productivity
For a person to be engaged, he or she should enjoy the work and find pleasure in performing it. Thus, a happy and focused employee embodies an engaged employee. A study using 30 in-depth 23 interviews confirmed that absorption is a relevant aspect of engagement. The study argued that this facet of engagement relates to individual efficacy through having the confidence to be absorbed and the resilience to be persistently absorbed in a task. Past studies also found that absorption had a significant positive effect on employee productivity. Furthermore, Jalal Hanaysha study (2016) also concluded that absorption had a significant positive effect on employee productivity in education sector. Furthermore, the study of Hakeem and Gulzar on education sector in Kashmir found that absorption has a significant effect on teachers productivity. Therefore, the following hypothesis is presented: Overall work engagement has positive effect on employee productivity.
