A quick Google search illustrates the fact that organizations are genuinely concerned with increasing employee engagement. Articles from such popular news and business media as the Harvard Business Review, Forbes, and The Wall Street Journal all discuss potential ways that organizations can enhance employee engagement. Scholarly research shares this sentiment, as research on employee engagement has experienced an increased amount of attention in the past couple of decades. Employee engagement is related to a number of positive outcomes, such as job satisfaction, commitment, organizational citizenship behaviors, reduced intentions to quit, and more.
William A. Kahn introduced employee engagement as "simultaneous employment and expression of a person's 'preferred self' in task behaviors that promote connection to work and to others". Engagement is generally prompted by perceived psychological meaningfulness, psychological safety, and psychological availability in an individual's work. Broadly, engagement is a sense of vigor, dedication, absorption, and efficacy that one may experience due to their work. We may think of engagement as a sense of fulfillment or connectedness that one finds within his or her work and the behaviors and attitudes that reflect this.
There are different types of engagement that individuals may experience (i.e., being mentally engaged in your work, being emotionally invested, etc.). My research focuses on how coworkers influence an individual's emotional and social engagement in the workplace and how that ultimately relates to employee performance.
Emotional engagement may reflect an emotional connection that individuals have with their work. This is manifested through a sense of positivity, enthusiasm, and energy at work. Emotional engagement is organizationally relevant as it reflects an individual's sense of inherent passion and exuberance for his/her job. I found that having supportive coworkers related positively to increased levels of emotional engagement at work. This increased sense of emotional engagement in the workplace then manifested in increased employee performance.
Many individuals are also socially invested within their organization. Consider the popularly referenced scene of employees gathering around the water cooler in an office to talk and find out what is going on in each others' lives. We may infer these individuals are likely very socially involved or engaged with their colleagues. Socially engaged employees develop strong relationships with others at work. For example, an employee may be part of an organization where they actively participate in voluntary committees or events to interact with those around them. In this case, that person is very socially engaged at work. I also found that employees who reported having supportive and competent coworkers were more likely to be socially engaged in the workplace. This increase in engagement subsequently boosted employee performance levels.
Ultimately, employees recognize that highly competent coworkers provide the resources necessary to become socially engaged in the workplace. Those with highly supportive coworkers have the resources to not only become socially engaged in the organization but also more inherently emotionally absorbed in their work. Employees who are socially and/or emotionally engaged are likely to direct this heightened sense of engagement beyond their traditional work tasks and aim this constructive energy towards their colleagues and organization. They do this by partaking in voluntary contextual performance behaviors, such as expressing loyalty to the organization and offering extra help, ideas, and action at work.
To enroll in our Executive Education workshop: Maintaining Employee Engagement When Working Remotely, visit: Go.UWPlatt.edu/Maintaining-Employee-Engagement
For more information about UW-Platteville's Executive Education Program, visit: www.uwplatt.edu/executive-education.
To read Tringale's full academic paper, Good People: How Coworker Competence and Support Influence Engagement and Contextual Performance (2018), click here: https://uh-ir.tdl.org/bitstream/handle/10657/3366/TRINGALE-DISSERTATION-2018.pdf?sequence=1