L.Shane Foundation for Engagement

Lisa Shane, Foundations of Engagement, p. 1

A Foundation for Employee Engagement
Lisa Shane
April 15, 2016

SUMMARY:
Engaged employees are not just satisfied and committed to their work, but display focused
energy that exceeds what is expected of them and are enthusiastic about their work and the
organization. Organizations desire increased levels of employee engagement, and consulting
firms are rushing to market to deliver plans to help them accomplish this goal; yet engagement
levels around the world are stagnant. This may be due to an underdeveloped focus on
employee’s ability to engage, which academic research shows must be cultivated to allow for
the employee to reach a state of engagement. This paper will summarize the literature on
engagement and propose steps organizations can take to create a foundation for employee
engagement by hiring the right people, building trust and promoting positive mental health.
HIRE RIGHT
• Hire People with a positive, conscientious, non-neurotic personality assessed through
psychometric testing
• Use multiple rounds of interviews to assess fit for the organizational culture
• Use structured behavioral descriptive interviews to assess job competencies

BUILD TRUST
• Build strong, supportive and collaborative teams
• Ensure leaders provide frequent and ongoing feedback
• Ensure procedural fairness
PROMOTE MENTAL HEALTH
• Promote mental health awareness and understanding
• Provide feedback if it is observed an employee is struggling
• Provide health and wellness seminars and Employee Family Assistance program

Introduction
Since the creation of the first management consulting firm, Arthur D. Little (ADL) in
1886, consultants have been in search of breakthrough strategies to help companies improve
their profit, market share and customer base. Some of these strategies have become deep-
rooted in every aspect of business such as market segmentation and the experience curve;
which help us to understand how to improve market share and efficiency respectively. Other
strategies seem to have been a passing fad that showed promise to add value to companies,
but fell out of favour over a decade; such as total quality management in the 1980s (Kiechel,
2010). Recently, strategies to improve employee engagement seem to be a strong area of
growth for consulting firms and with good reason. Seventy-eight percent of business leaders
rate employee engagement as urgent or important, and companies are spending over $720
million each year on the development of employee engagement strategies (Bersin, 2014;
Deloitte Human Capital Trends, 2014; LaMotte, 2015).
Employee engagement was first explored as a separate construct from satisfaction or
work commitment by William A. Kahn, in a 1990 journal article titled “Psychological Conditions
of Personal Engagement and Disengagement at Work”. In this article Kahn defined employee
engagement as “harnessing of organization members’ selves to their work roles” (p. 695). Since
Kahn, many other academics have gone on to offer other definitions of engagement but all
have noted that engaged employees are not just satisfied and committed to their work, but
display focused energy that exceeds what is expected of them and are enthusiastic about their
work and the organization (Gonzalez-Roma, Schaufeli, Bakker, & Lloret, 2006; Hakanen, Bakker,
& Schaufeli, 2006; Kumar and Pansari, 2015; Macey, Schneider, Barbera, & Young, 2009; Paul,

2012; Schaufeli, Salanova, Gonzalez-Roma, & Bakker, 2002; Seijts & Crim, 2006). Perhaps the
most concise definition is offered by Schaufeli et. al which provides insight into why
engagement benefits both employees and organizations as “a positive, fulfilling, work-related
state of mind that is characterized by vigor, dedication, and absorption” (2002, p. 74).
Engaged employees find more fulfilment in their work and find a sense of meaning and
purpose in its outcome (Kahn, 1990; Shuck & Rose, 2013). But why does it matter to
organizations if their employees are engaged? Ultimately, because increasing employee
engagement improves the company’s bottom line. Engaged employees have been found to
provide better customer service, have higher customer satisfaction ratings, better safety
records, increased productivity as well as lower absenteeism and turnover rates; and these are
all factors that improve profitability for the company (CSOD, n.d.; Ferreira, 2013; Macey et al.,
2009; Menguc, Auh, Fisher & Haddad, 2012). Major companies like Johnson & Johnson, and
Caterpillar have demonstrated these effects of improving employee engagement when both
invested in an engagement strategy and have seen an increase in savings, customer satisfaction
and ultimately profit (Shuck, Rocco & Albornoz, 2011).
Organizations have strong motivation to increase engagement in their workforce. Yet
employee engagement, according to Gallup, has been stagnant for the last 15 years and while
most leaders understand the importance of engagement, almost 75% feel that most employees
in their organization are not highly engaged (Mann & Harter, 2016; HBR, 2013). This deficiency
is not because of a lack of activity. An abundance of academic research continues to document
the antecedents of engagement and the consequences of disengagement in the workplace, and
consulting firms have built a business on implementing engagement programs in organizations.

Nevertheless these engagement models on their own are not working. Most employee
engagement models focus on the work experience, not on the employee (LaMotte, 2015).
These models, like the ’10 Cs of Employee Engagement’ focus on creating great teams, defining
roles, and ensuring everyone understands the vision (Seijts & Crim, 2006). Research
demonstrates that the employee’s cognitive availability is important for engagement (Bakker,
2006; Kahn, 1990; Kahn, 1992; LaMotte, 2015; Menguc et al.; 2012; Paul, 2012; HBR, 2013).
Consequently, before an engaged workplace can be created, individual employees and
organizations must have a foundation from which they can begin to engage, or have the ability
to engage. This paper provides a guide that assists both employees and organizations with
practical steps they can take to create a foundation for engagement that will give employees
the ability to engage.
The Ability to Engage
Many employee engagement models focus on the employee experience in the
workplace rather than on the personal characteristics of the employee (LaMotte, 2015). While
there is much to be said for developing a workplace that drives towards engagement, this focus
leaves a gap. In order to engage, an employee needs to be available and have the capacity to
engage (Macey et al., 2009). Kahn defines this availability as “having the physical, emotional or
psychological resources to personally engage at a particular moment” (1990, p.714). Without
these resources, employees are not able to engage, and an organization can have an amazing
strategy, but fail to find their employees engaged. “[E]mployees bring their whole selves to
work. What happens after the workday may be just as important as what happens during it”
(LaMotte, 2015, p.2). Organizations need to be aware of who their employees are by creating

an environment that promotes employee wellbeing and allows employee to maintain balance
in their lives (Macey et al., 2009).
Without a focus on the development of employee’s physical, emotional and
psychological resources, employee burnout becomes a real possibility. Burnout, characterized
by exhaustion and cynicism of an employee is not exactly the opposite of engagement but is
negatively correlated to engagement (Schaufeli & Bakker, 2004). A burnt out employee
becomes cynical and drained, which impacts their ability to perform in their job and can
transfer to those around them; therefore burned out employees impact the organization’s
ability to accomplish its goals (Gonzalez-Roma et al., 2006). Personal crisis, mental and
emotional strains can prevent employees from having the capability to engage in their work.
Organizations and employees that are mindful of this, and take steps to improve employee
wellbeing can create a foundation from which an employee is ready to engage. This can be
done by hiring people that are likely to engage, fostering a safe and trusting environment
within the organization, and promoting positive mental health among their employees.

FOUNDATIONS OF ENGAGEMENT
Hire Right Build Trust
Promote Mental
Health

Hire the Right People
In the 2014 study by Sharma & Ningthoujam on higher education in Thailand they
showed that neither age, gender, tenure, level of education nor occupational status are
variables that impact employee engagement. However, academics have found that there are
personality factors that predict the ability to engage, namely conscientiousness, positivity, self-
efficacy and non-neuroticism (Macey et al., 2009; Macey & Schneider, 2008a; Sharma &
Ningthoujam, 2014). These studies show that when hiring for engagement it is all about who
someone is, rather that what someone does. Psychometric testing, such as those based on the
Five Factor Model (FFM), and structured interviews are the best way to assess personality
factors (Barnett, Pearson A., Pearson, R., & Kellermanns, 2015; Lievens & De Paepe, 2004;
Tett, Jackson, & Rothstein, 1991).
Organizational alignment and job competencies also should be assessed during the
hiring process. Behaviours and values need to match and compliment the company and job in
order to create a good foundation for engagement (LaMotte, 2015). To do this, organizations
must first be aware of their culture, and then determine how the candidate will fit within the
company and have proper role profiles. Interviewers should be honest about their current
organizational culture with candidates, and take time to ask questions to determine if the
candidate is the right fit for the organization. The candidate should also have the opportunity
to see if they feel that the organization is right for them. Doing multiple rounds of interviews
with different people within the organization can ensure both the company and the candidate
can assess organizational fit (Ullah, 2010). Conducting structured behaviour descriptive
interviews is the best way to ensure that personal characteristics such as cultural background,

attractiveness, race and gender, which can influence an interviewer subconsciously, are ignored
and the focus is instead on organizational alignment and job competencies (Huffcutt, Iddekinge,
Roth, 2011). Once the job of hiring the right people is done the next step is to “create the work
environment to ensure that the individual energy employees bring to the job can become
manifest and is then sustained” (Macey & Schneider, 2008b, p.81).

Create an environment of trust
Engagement happens when people feel safe in taking risks, as it is in taking risks that
employees are provided with new challenges and can learn from their own successes and
failures (Macey et al., 2009). By creating an environment where employees can say what they
are thinking without fear of repercussion, have some autonomy and know where the
boundaries are for that autonomy; organizations can provide an environment which builds trust
and fosters engagement for “ ...without trust, engagement cannot exist” (Macey et al., 2009,
p.46). This environment must be echoed within the relationships that the employee has in the
workplace with their team, their manager and the organization as a whole.
Engagement or burnout often happens within a team environment and studies have
shown that these behaviours often transfer from one employee to another (Bakker, 2006).
Environments that support collaboration and solution sharing amongst team members have
HIRE RIGHT
• Hire People with a positive, conscientious, non-neurotic
personality assessed through psychometric testing
• Use multiple rounds of interviews to assess fit for the
organizational culture
• Use structured behavioral descriptive interviews to assess job
competencies

been shown to increase engagement (Hlupic, 2011). Further, teams that support each other
and allow for the ability to express themselves within the team, and build friendships further
build engagement in the individuals within the team (Gupta et al., 2015; Kahn, 1990).
In order to support the team perhaps no other role is so crucial as the team manager.
The 2013 BlessingWhite research report in Engagement reported that 90% of engaged
employees trust their managers, while only 51% of disengaged employees felt this trust. Royal
& Sorenson’s study on engagement in 2015 found that managers account for 70% of the
variance in engagement scores across the work unit (Royal & Sorenson, 2015). These statistics
show that managers who are able to build trust will have a much greater chance of creating and
sustaining engagement within their teams (BlessingWhite, 2013).
Managers who are transformational leaders display vision, provide emotional support
and recognition for contributions, and admit when they have made a mistake - are more likely
to have engaged teams (Ceresco-Saul et al., 2015; Nolan, 2011). To be a transformational
leader a manager must do frequent pulse checks with their employees, get to know their
employees as individuals and give frequent feedback; both for successes and areas in need of
improvement (Markey, 2014). Feedback is perhaps the most important in environments where
there is little perceived autonomy, for when “employees perceive little autonomy, they feel less
motivation and empowerment to actually put the support into action. That is, these employees
feel that they are not provided with the control and discretion they need to capitalize on the
help that they receive from their supervisors” (Mingus, Auh, Fisher & Haddad, 2012, p.2165).
Meguc et. al. reported that by increasing the frequency of this feedback, managers can help to
overcome the environmental challenge. To do this, managers can implement a performance

feedback process including meeting to discuss and set objectives, ensuring resources are
available to meet these objectives, having ongoing discussions on the status of the objectives
and celebrating the finished results (Medlin & Green, 2014).
Organizational climate has one of the greatest impacts on employee’s feelings of safety
at work (Shuck, Rocco & Albornoz, 2011). Organizational Climate can be defined as “the shared
perceptions of and the meaning attached to the policies, practices, and procedures employees
experience, and the behaviours they observe getting rewarded and that are supported and
accepted” (Schneider, Ehrhart and Macey, 2013, p.362). Organizations can assist with creating
an engaged workforce by establishing an environment based on transparency, fairness and
equity. Transparency helps to break down barriers between management and employees and
the ‘us vs. them’ attitude that can exist in a bureaucratic environment. When organizational
structure is hierarchical and separates what management can know vs. what employees can
know, employees are more likely to respond by fragmenting themselves to ensure that they
only display the parts of themselves that should be present (Kahn, 1992). This fragmentation
means that employees cannot be true to themselves in the workplace; and when not fully
present employees are not able to engage. Organizations can also promote procedural fairness.
This does not necessarily mean that the same outcome follows every procedure, but that the
steps taken to arrive at the outcome were fair and transparent (Macey et al., 2009). Employees
who feel that the organizational climate is supportive and empowers them to make decisions,
and provides safety if they make mistakes, are more productive (Shuck, Rocco & Albornoz,
2011).

By providing a safe environment, employees have the freedom to engage and they
feel “secure to take action of their own accord. This emphasizes the need for trust in order for
employees to deal with adversity, uncertainty and change. The importance of trust in
management and the organization are key factors that must be present in order for employees
to experience a culture of employee engagement” (Paul, 2012, p.138).

Promote positive mental health
A state of vigour, dedication and absorption is hard to realize if an employee is faced by
issues that impact their mental health such as depression, anxiety or substance abuse, to name
a few. People are more engaged when they have more of themselves to give, and mental
illness can impact this availability limiting the physical, psychological and emotional resources
an employee can invest in the role (Kahn, 1990). Since engagement fluctuates with the daily
ebbs and flow of life, it is critical that organizations address the employee as a whole person,
not just a resource to do the job (Macey & Schneider, 2008a). In a 2015 study in higher
education in Thailand, Sirisunhirun and Dhirathi showed that the best predictor of behavioural
engagement was a “happy brain and a happy soul” (p.83).
A lot of the focus on engagement programs and academic research is on how the
employer needs to create an engagement strategy, but fails to take into account that
BUILD TRUST
• Build strong, supportive and collaborative teams
• Ensure leaders provide frequent and ongoing feedback
• Ensure procedural fairness

sometimes employees have problems that are not work related that may impact their ability to
engage. “The employee may be responsible for the initial problem that has switched him or her
off, but the organization is also responsible as it must then manage the situation” (Pech &
Slade, 2015, p.25). This is why employees must be provided with frequent feedback on their
employment to be given an opportunity to address areas that they may not be aware of. Then
the employee must assume some responsibility to take action for improving for their own
engagement, or any effort the organization or managers put into improving engagement could
have little or no impact (Royal & Sorenson, 2015).
Mental health initiatives in the workplace have become common over the last decade.
When organizations take part in these initiatives they are ensuring that they provide a positive
framework from which an employee can engage. For example, organizations can offer
employee family assistance programs which provide counselling, as cognitive behavioural
therapy (CBT) has been shown to reduce stress reactions including burnout, which can lead to
mental illness (Schaufeli & Bakker, 2004). Organizations can also promote initiatives that focus
on renewing and restoring employee energy such as sufficient vacation, health activities or
employee wellness seminars (Macey et al., 2009).
Employees facing mental health issues, personal crisis or other problems should utilize
the resources that the organization has made available to them. Once the employee has
improved to a place where they can begin to function without burnout they will feel that the
organization has provided them with not only a job, but also cares about them as a person.
Support from the organization allows the employee to feel that the organization values the
employee as an individual for their contribution and cares about their well-being, and the

perception of organizational support is a strong predictor of engagement (Saks, 2006).

Conclusion

‘‘People can use varying degrees of their selves, physically, cognitively, and
emotionally, in the roles they perform . . . the more people draw on their selves to
perform their roles...[t]he more stirring are their performances’’(Kahn, 1990 p. 692).

An engaged workforce requires more than just a successfully executed engagement
strategy, it requires individual employees who come to work every day ready and able to
engage. Organizations can build a solid foundation to ensure that their workforce is able to
engage by hiring the right people, providing an environment that is built on trust and
supporting mental health initiatives. By building a strong foundation for engagement
organizations will prepare themselves to effectively execute their engagement strategy and
improve the lives of the employees in the organization as well as the success of the
organization itself.
PROMOTE MENTAL HEALTH
• Promote mental health awareness and understanding
• Provide feedback if it is observed an employee is struggling
• Provide health and wellness seminars and Employee Family
Assistance program

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