IWP 2010: Engagement finally gets a voice!

The world of business has known about the benefits of engagement for some time now:

The empirical evidence shows that engagement is predictive of the bottom line: organizational performance

But while engagement is already high on the agenda for most organisations (see here for example), unfortunately academia and research have been slow to catch up.  So it was a pleasant surprise to see that engagement was the focus of a dedicated conference session, moderated by Professor Arnold Bakker, at the Institute of Work Psychology 2010 conference.

Ilke Inceoglu and Peter Warr, of SHL Ltd, noted that while the term ‘engagement’ had previously been used interchangeably with ‘job satisfaction’, it is now considered as a construct in its own right. The conference explored definitions of the term; relevant research methods; causes and consequences of engagement; and means of sustaining it.

It was pointed out that recent research has already indicated that work engagement is positively associated with

  • social support from colleagues and supervisors
  • performance feedback
  • skill variety
  • autonomy
  • learning opportunities

However, from an extensive study using a number of practical research techniques, Genevieve O’Reilly & Richard Hicks found eight main drivers of engagement:

  • senior leadership
  • team leadership
  • continuation
  • work demands
  • work resources
  • employee empowerment
  • customer focus
  • financial rewards

The fact that various predictors of engagement have been found across different studies is a common feature of academic research, especially in the early days of a field of study. Further development and analysis is needed; while investment into engagement has been shown to be worthwhile, it is important to understand where and how that investment should be made. With this buzz word ‘engagement’ now humming though the academic world hopefully we won’t be waiting too long.

The 2-day conference covered a range of other topics including work-life balance, well-being, diversity, work relationships and leadership; potentially the most promising point highlighted during the conference as whole was the need for both academic and practitioner based research. Blending these approaches together will bring about applicable findings and recommendations.

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