07).Employee Engagement

 

07).Employee Engagement

 

Employee engagement is a workplace approach resulting in the right conditions for all members of an organization to give of their best each day, committed to their organization’s goals and values, motivated to contribute to organizational success, with an enhanced sense of their own well-being. Employee engagement is based on trust, integrity, two way commitment and communication between an organization and its members. It is an approach that increases the chances of business success, contributing to organizational and individual performance, productivity and well-being.

According employee work engagement is defined as a “positive, fulfilling, work-related state of mind that is characterized by vigor, dedication, and absorption” (Schaufeli et al., 2002a,b, p. 74). Kahn (1990) conceptualized engagement as “harnessing of organization members’ selves to their work roles” and stated that in engagement, “people employ and express themselves physically, cognitively, and emotionally during role performances” (p. 694). Demerouti et al. (2010) emphasized the benefits of work engagement for individuals and for organizations because the way individuals accomplish their work and fulfill their tasks depends on the extent to which they are engaged in their work. Rich et al. (2010) described engaged employees as more attentive and focused on their responsibilities than less engaged employees, as emotionally connected to their role tasks, and as more enthusiastic workers, and other researchers suggested that because engaged employees are also active in social activities and hobbies outside work (Schaufeli et al., 2001), positive effects of work engagement spill over into private life and vice versa (Grzywacz and Marks, 2000), which in turn leads to improved individual and group performance.

 

Because engaged employees possess energetic and affective connections with their work activities, see themselves as capable of dealing with job demands, and transfer their engagement to others at work (Bakker, 2009; Demerouti et al., 2010), they are more likely to contribute to sustainable individual and organizational development while promoting a healthy workplace (Bakker et al., 2011). It is crucial for organizations to sense the true essence of work engagement, especially in the public sector, to better identify its drivers (Mostafa and Abed El-Motalib, 2020). The government in Uzbekistan sees state employees as one of the main assets in promoting public sector reform (Ergashev, 2006), and thus, government employees’ work attitudes are of the utmost importance to administrators there (Ergashev, 2006). The form of ownership is the main distinctive point between state and private organizations in Uzbekistan. Specifically, the government controls and operates public sector organizations, whereas the state has no stake in private sector organizations (Ergashev, 2006). Public organizations are vulnerable to political constraints, which lead to frequent changes in policy. Their goals are pursued through political processes rather than by individual managers as in private organizations (Ernazarov, 2020). Another characteristic of public organizations is that they usually have more formal decision-making procedures, and another way they differ from the private sectors is that these organizations have few rivals in providing services such as in education and health (Ernazarov, 2020; Abdulhaevna, 2021).

 

Further than according to Kahn’s theory (1990, 1992), meaningfulness describes how valuable a work goal is in relation to an individual’s own standards. Employees who have faith that a given work role activity is personally meaningful are likely to fully immerse themselves in it. Engaged individuals experience high connectivity with their work tasks and strive toward task-related goals that are intertwined with their in-role definitions and scripts; they also make extra efforts to resolve job-related problems, which in return leads to high job performance (Christian et al., 2011; Al-dalahmeh et al., 2018). Thus, this study is the first examination of engagement as a mediator in the relationship between job meaningfulness and performance. Meanwhile, supportive, trustworthy coworker relationships produce high work engagement as well (Kahn, 1990), and task interdependence generates positive coworker relationships (Lee et al., 2018). When employees fail to experience meaning in their work, highly interdependent workers provide each other with information, advice, help, and resources, which serve to amplify their work-related attitudes and behaviors (Kim and Oh, 2020).

 

 

Work Engagement

Work engagement refers to high personal investment in one’s work role and includes the characteristics of being energized, cognitively vigilant, and willing to invest extra effort to achieve goals (Sonnentag et al., 2010). Research interest in work engagement has increased in recent decades; currently, it is an extremely relevant and meaningful area of inquiry (Karatepe and Karadas, 2015). Work engagement is a construct comprises three dimensions: vigor, dedication, and absorption (Schaufeli et al., 2002b). Schaufeli et al. (2002b) define vigor as expressions of high energy and motivation at work and dedication as indicating an employee’s perceptions of the meaning of work; dedication entails a sense of pride in the job and its challenges. Finally, absorption refers to the degree to which an employee is focused on and happily engrossed in work; absorbed workers are unaware of the passage of time and find it difficult to detach themselves from their tasks (Schaufeli et al., 2002b).

Work Engagement and Performance

 

 

The effects of work engagement on job performance as a predictor have been an increasing topic of academic study (Demerouti et al., 2010). Demerouti et al. (2010) and Kim and Park (2020) highlighted many advantages to employee engagement. Engaged employees exhibit high energy and strong mental resilience, and they tend to voluntarily invest considerable effort in their assigned tasks. Moreover, highly engaged employees tend to have a sense of their work’s significance and challenges, and they express enthusiasm and pride in their work, thus enhancing their performance.

 

According to Kahn (1990, 1992) posited work engagement as a psychological state of mind whereby people are attentive, connected, integrated, and focused in their role performance and stated that employees’ “being there” gives them access to their considerable energies and talents in fulfilling work-related tasks and goals. Many studies have shown a significantly positive relationship between employee engagement and performance (Ismail et al., 2019; Zheng et al., 2020). Kahn (1990, 1992) further stated that work engagement refers to a psychological connection with performing work tasks rather than attitudes toward the job itself. Engaged individuals approach tasks with a sense of self-investment, energy, and passion, which should translate into higher in-role and extra-role performance (Kahn, 1990, 1992). Moreover, engaged employees are excited about their work (Bakker, 2009), and enthusiastic employees are positively driven to perform better at work.

 

 

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