Employee Engagement and Employee Wellbeing-Does Anyone Care? Implications for HRD

Employee Engagement and Employee Wellbeing-Does anyone care? Implications for HRD.

Sally D Rumbles

University of Portsmouth UK

Abstract:

Purpose: This paper aims to explore the relationship between employee engagement and employee wellbeing, considers who is responsible for facilitating activities that can aid organizations in better engaging their employees at work as well as discussing the implications for HRD.

Design/Methodology/Approach: A mixed methods approach was adopted with the results of an electronic survey used as a basis for in depth semi structured interviews that asked questions around the issues of employee engagement, wellbeing and the role of HR and line managers.

Findings: The research findings demonstrate a link between levels of employee engagement and the wellbeing of employees and point to the pivotal role of line managers in facilitating this process, but few companies invest in either wellbeing initiatives or wellbeing training for their managers.

Research Limitations/implications: The interview sample size was small, the survey findings had only limited statistical significance and respondents were all in managerial or HR management roles that indicate that it would be of value to interview and survey a wider cohort of employees.

Practical implications: Implications for HRD intervention and practices are discussed.

Originality/Value: The question of who is responsible for facilitating employee engagement as well as the role of the HRD professional in managing employee engagement and promoting wellbeing has not been fully explored. Recommendations for HRD professionals to improve employee engagement and wellbeing are given.

Keywords: Human Resource Development, Employee engagement, Employee Wellbeing,

Paper Type: research paper

Introduction

Ever since Kahn (1990) first defined the concept, there has been widespread interest and an ever growing body of research into employee engagement from both academics and HR practitioners. Research into engagement has demonstrated that it is linked to an array of positive outcomes (and disengagement negative outcomes) at both the individual and organizational level (Bakker, Albrecht and Leiter, 2011; Halbesleben, 2011). Indeed as Shuck and Wollard (2010) observe “the positive outcomes attributed to employee engagement are exactly what most organisations are seeking: employees who are more productive, profitable, safer, healthier, less likely to turnover, less likely to be absent, and more willing to engage in discretionary efforts” (p90). Thus it is not surprising that employee engagement is seen as a priority for many organisations, yet a plethora of studies demonstrate that the fully engaged employee is a rarity and the majority of employees are not engaged at work (Blessings White, 2011; Gallup, 2013; Rayton, 2012 and Kennoy, 2014). Furthermore, too much emphasis has been placed on measuring engagement at the expense of related constructs such as wellbeing that might help in understanding the role of engagement in fostering positive workplace behaviours and outputs (Parker and Griffin, 2011) or to understanding the evolving experiences of engagement and disengagement (Sambrook, Jones and Doloriet, 2013).

Recent research into employee wellbeing has demonstrated that there is a positive link between it and employee engagement which may aid our understanding of employee engagement and how to facilitate it. (Albrecht, 2012; Keller and Price, 2011; Robertson and Cooper, 2010). Engaged employees experience wellbeing related positive emotions such as joy and enthusiasm (Schaufeli, Salanova, Gonzalez-Roma and Bakker 2002). Kossek, Kalliath and Kalliath (2012) comment that “in healthy work environments employees feel engaged in their jobs and also their home lives.” (p738). Conversely poor workforce engagement can be detrimental to organizations because of the ensuing decrease or impairment in employee wellbeing and productivity (Shuck and Reio 2014; Christian, Garza and Slaughter 2011). Indeed Juniper (2012) suggests that wellbeing drives engagement and yet Rees and Rumbles (2012) found that whilst there was an awareness of the need to engage employees there was a general lack of concern for employee wellbeing in organisations.

A further consideration is who should take responsibility for engagement and wellbeing, with some researchers (Kossek et al, 2012; Baptiste, 2008) firmly placing the responsibility for wellbeing with the line manager arguing high performance caring cultures facilitate engagement. Yet in many organisations the responsibility for driving engagement rests with the HR function which is often focused on aligning HR strategy to business strategy, looking upwards and seeking to manage and reward ‘talent’ (Holbeche 2014). Furthermore, Rees and Rumbles (2012) found that few organisations were taking any responsibility for employee wellbeing as well as not assigning responsibility to HR or line managers beyond compliance with health and safety legislation.

The relationship between employee engagement, employee wellbeing and who is responsible for them is explored further in this paper. It proceeds by assessing the literature on employee engagement, wellbeing and who is responsible thus identifying the motivation for this research contribution. It then details the research methodology and presents the findings by assessing the perceived relationship between these variables. It concludes by evaluating and interpreting the findings in the wider context and specifically the implications for HRD as well as making recommendations for further research.

Employee Engagement

Kahn originally defined employee engagement as a unique and important motivational concept: “the harnessing of organization members’ selves to their work roles; in engagement, people employee and express themselves physically, cognitively and emotionally during role performances” (1990, 694). This conceptualization represents engagement as a multi-faceted concept with clear links to performance, yet a quarter of a century later and despite the widespread interest in engagement it remains a very elusive and poorly defined concept (Keenoy 2014).

Macleod and Clarke (2009) found over 50 different definitions of the construct and as Kahn originally implies there is considerable overlap between engagement and other psychological terms, such as job satisfaction, commitment and motivation. Indeed Macey and Schneider (2008) concluded that employee engagement is a messy construct that has variously been articulated as a psychological state (e.g., involvement commitment or attachment), a performance construct (e.g., involvement, commitment or attachment) and/or disposition (i.e., a trait). Maslach (2011) makes the distinction between “work engagement” and “employee engagement” but the terms are used interchangeably and like other psychological terms it is easier to recognise in practice than it is to define (Schaufeli 2013). Truss (2014, p1) nicely sums up the difference between the two stating that employee engagement ‘is an approach taken by organisations to manage their workforce”….whereas work engagement is… “a psychological state experienced by employees in the performance of their work; ‘doing engagement’, rather than being engaged”.

The danger for employers in doing engagement, is that employees, particularly highly skilled knowledge workers, are becoming more sceptical of “best practice” HRM led interventions that can result in situations where the employer is seemingly “doing the right thing” but employees, whilst committed to their work, are uncommitted, disengaged and even angry towards the organisation. (Cushen and Thompson 2012). They further observed that HR and directors looked to apportion blame on poor implementation by managers rather than questioning their overall approach and policies. Most employees saw these as a “damaging vanity project that painted an excessively flattering picture of the organisation, enabling top management to avoid employees” (p87).

Indeed, HRM approaches that seek to assess the state of engagement so that they can then do something with it fail then to appreciate individual motives or the more subtle discretionary self-orientated aspects of employee engagement which are at the heart of Kahn’s original definition. “The experience of employee engagement at the personal level and the regard for Kahn’s approach to both the concept and future research remains under examined” (Sambrook, Jones and Doloriert 2014, p176). Shuck and Rose (2013) also sound a note of a caution in researching engagement from the outcomes perspective as it doesn’t take into account the intended situational context or the individual employee’s interpretation of meaning and purpose in their work that would facilitate engagement. They propose “engagement and performance are secondary consequence to work that is interpreted as meaningful and purpose-driven and ultimately, work that stimulates the engagement of the condition”. As a result “engagement cannot be demanded, artificially created or inflated” (p343). Employers choose to work towards engaging employees but at the same time employees must decide how much effort they themselves will offer the employer. So as Valentin (2014) argues employee engagement seeks to create the worker who loves his or her job feels emotionally committed to the organisation and contributes discretionary effort but for the organisation it is primarily sought for the benefit of the organisation and not the individual employee.

Understanding the profile of engagement in organisations through measuring engagement with an employee survey is often recommended by both practitioners and academics as the most appropriate way to manage employee engagement (Macleod and Clark, 2009; Towers Perrin, 2012). Yet, as already noted, the number of employees who are engaged remains low and “the discrepancy between the perceived importance of engagement and the level of engagement that exists in organizations today” (Czarnowsky, 2008, p.4) is of concern because measurement alone fails to explain why employees are disengaged, how engagement can be generated and how it can impact positively on other desirably outcomes such as performance and wellbeing (Sambrook et al, 2014) thus giving the practitioner little insight as to how to engage employees.

How organisations can foster employee engagement is central to some research particularly the role of managers and leaders. Engaging leaders support adaptability, experimentation, learning and innovation (Alimo-Metcalfe, Alban- Metcalfe, Bradley, Mariathasan and Samele 2008). Oswick (2014) comments that rather than assuming that employee engagement is something that can be directly managed, it is better to think of it as something that can be encouraged and enabled that is to say whilst it is an “intrinsic” factor it can be influenced and shaped by “extrinsic” factors such as the behaviour of line managers and HRD interventions.

Employee Engagement and HRD

The relationship between employee engagement and HRD is gaining widespread interest because support for learning training and development forms a key part of practices claimed to facilitate engagement. Formal training and development interventions such as coaching and mentoring, management and professional development programmes and opportunities to develop skills are all cited as important antecedents to employee engagement (Czarnowsky, 2008; Valentin, 2014) and Gebauer and Lowman(2008) observe that some management training courses are being tailored to increase levels of engagement amongst direct reports. Shuck and Wollard (2010) are one of the first groups of researchers to examine engagement from an HRD perspective and define it as “an individual employee’s cognitive, emotional, and behavioural state directed towards desired organisational outcomes” (p103). However, they observe that no model exists for understanding how HRD practice can influence the development of employee engagement and that there is a short window of opportunity for HRD to take a leading role in fostering engagement. Conceptualisation, they further argue is critical as problem solving and solutions can only come from common language and understanding of what engagement is, it must be therefore be practical and usable. Thus we need consider how best to create the right conditions to foster engagement and wellbeing and consider how HRD professionals can develop agreed understanding in order to design learning and training interventions that could facilitate the process.

Employee Wellbeing:

Conceptualising wellbeing is equally problematic, with how it should be defined (or spelt) still remaining largely unresolved (Dodge, Daly, Huyton and Sanders, 2012) which “has given rise to blurred and overly broad definitions of wellbeing” (Forgeard, Jayawickreme, Kem and Seligman, 2011, p81). Early definitions of wellbeing are concerned with optimal psychological functioning and entail the perception of engagement with existential challenges of life, such as pursuing meaningful goals, growing and developing as a person and establishing quality relationships with others (Keyes, Shmotkin and Ryff 2002). Other researchers (Cropanzano and Wright, 2001; Daniels, 2000; Kahn and Juster, 2002; Warr, 2002) reflect that wellbeing has often been narrowly operationalised as job satisfaction and thus wellbeing has traditionally been studied mainly in terms of employee’s satisfaction with their jobs.

Cropanzano and Wright (2001) recognise that wellbeing is a multidimensional concept that could capture the subtleties in experience of work. Job satisfaction, occupational stress burnout and work engagement are important dimension of the affective work related wellbeing of employees and these concepts have considerable overlap. Seligman (2011) concurs that wellbeing is multidimensional and states it is about positive emotion, engagement, meaning, positive relationships and accomplishment, and argues that, in addition to engagement, positive emotion, relationships, meaning and achievement are core constituents of psychological wellbeing. Pruyne (2012, p4) states that wellbeing is “a positive state in which the individual is able to function at or near their optimal level, whether defined and measured in terms of physical, mental or social functioning, with significant implications for the individual, their family and community, the organization and society at large”. Most recently Salanova, Del Linano, Llorens and Schaufeli (2014) have attempted to define wellbeing by identifying four different wellbeing types, relaxed, work engaged, workaholic and burned out that can be influenced by other variables such as energy, pleasure and challenge that could provide the framework for practical interventions to enhance wellbeing as well as clearer links to employee engagement.

Despite the problems with conceptualization academics argue (Albrecht 2012; Cartwright and Holmes, 2006; Wright and Cropanzano 2007) that “employee wellbeing remains fundamental to the study of work and a primary consideration for how organizations can achieve competitive advantage and sustainable ethical practices” (Albrecht 2012:840). People spend a significant proportion of their lives at work, thus changes in their work environment can have profound influence on their health and wellbeing and consequentially on the job, organisational performance and firm competitive advantage (Cartwright and Holmes 2006; Kalliath and Kalliath 2012).

According to Fairhurst and O’Connor (2010) wellbeing is important because an employee’s level of wellbeing can sustain or erode their level of engagement. In their research on behalf of Towers Watson they found that employee wellbeing affects engagement in a unique way. When they are aligned, true sustainable engagement is achieved, but when one is strong and the other is weak then the outcomes (complacent or chronic disengagement and burnout for example) are at odds with the organisations goals. Bevan (2010) concurs and whilst he believes that the relationship between employee health, employee commitment and engagement is multifaceted, research evidence suggests that a two-way possibly self-reinforcing relationship exists between the two concepts: healthy employees are more engaged and engaged employees are healthier. Consequently, fostering a work culture that is mindful of the importance of work-life balance, employee growth and development, health and safety, and employee engagement can be the key to achieving sustainable employee wellbeing and organisational performance (Grawitch, Gottschalk and Munz, 2006).