Employee engagement and Job satisfaction - Are they different?

[Shikha Arora]

Hello all,

I have been working on my thesis on employee engagement in India. And so far I have collected about 150 responses. One of my hypothesis states that employee engagement will have incremental validity over job satisfaction when predicting turnover intentions. However, my results do not support this hypothesis. I was wondering if anyone has been able to show empirically that engagement is in fact a different construct as compared to job satisfaction.

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts/suggestions/ideas.

Thank you,
Shikha

[Shane Koller]

Your thesis sounds fascinating, Shikha. I think part of the difficulty in this area is that the concept of engagement is a fairly new management interest; therefore, what I see in the literature is an effort to separate the two concepts.

In my view, employee satisfaction is more of a one-way street than engagement. An employee could be satisfied by a practice, policy or program that does not benefit the company in any way. Engagement, on the other hand, takes into consideration a reciprocal relationship between employee and company where the employee considers the company's welfare and success as part of their satisfaction.

I would love to hear more about your findings.

Shane

[Shikha Arora]

Hi Shane,

Appreciate your response. I do agree with your thoughts regarding a one-way compared to a reciprocal relationship between engagement and the organization. And this is what we read in the engagement literature.

I guess defining engagement universally would be a starting point for us budding researchers as engagement still seems to be defined very vaguely by several consulting firms. For eg. The Gallup Workplace Audit was previously a satisfaction survey and it is now called the satisfaction-engagement survey, with the same items. How do we then differentiate between engagement and satisfaction when the terms are being used so loosely.

If we cant provide statistical evidence to show that engagement predicts other outcomes such as turnover intentions or higher production rates above and beyond job satisfaction, how do we justify engagement as a unique construct?

In theory it makes absolute sense that an engaged employee would be more committed to performing better and thus would be more satisfied with the outcome of their efforts. If only we could show that through our data...

I appreciate your interest in my thesis. I shall definitely share my results once I have analyzed all my data.

Thank you,
Shikha Arora

[Guy Farmer]

I've found that if employees are fully engaged using their talents and abilities satisfaction follows. I think in terms of ensuring that employees are able to use their gifts to benefit not only the company but also to help them feel fulfilled. The opposite scenario is to try to stuff people in proscribed positions without regard to their interests or talents. People naturally feel more worthwhile when they are doing things they enjoy and, by extension, will work harder and seek out new challenges.

Regards,

Guy
Management Training

[Md Ghazi Shahnawaz]

hi,

it wont be easy to diffrentiate between JS and EE, unless you share how you have operatioanlly defined the two constructs. For many people JS is one of the components of EE but it goes much beyond merely JS. job satisfaction as it is widely understood is the affective response to one's job and the context in which job is being done. However, EE is cognitive, affective and conative response to one's job and the context in which the job is being done. I read your reply to Shane, where you talked about Gallup EE. According to Galllup, EE is best measured by 12 items and these are the essence of EE. If you closely look at those items they appear to be the antevedents of EE.

One of the important framework is of Kahn (1990). He used qualitative interview based method to explore the conditions that led to ‘moments’ of engagement and disengagement at work. For Kahn, engagement in work could be seen as self employment and expression physically, cognitively and emotionally during role performances.

Another model of Job engagement was proposed by Maslach et al (2001) as the polar opposite of job burnout. For them job engagement is characterized by high levels of energy, involvement in work, and a sense of personal efficacy at work.

For Rothbard (2001), job engagement comprises of two distinct but inter-related factors. The first factor is called ‘attention’, which is operationalized as ‘rime spent thinking and concentrating on a ‘role’ and the second factor was ‘absorption’, which is operationalized as ‘losing track of time and becoming engrossed in role performance’.

So I am sure you must be confused with various conceptualization of EE, so what framework you have used, only then it would be possible to answere your query.

Ghazi Shahnawaz

[Shikha Arora]

Thank you for your detailed response.

I am using Kahn's model of personal engagement and disengagement, where Kahn states that in engagement, people employ and express themselves physically, emotionally and cognitively during role performances. And the only other researchers who have tested Kahn's theory are May, D., Gilson, R., Harter, L. (2004) The psychological conditions of meaningfulness, safety and availability and the engagement of human spirit at work. Journal of Occupational and Org psych.

According to Kahn, the 3 conditions of psychological meaningfulness, safety and availability must prevail in order for engagement to take place.

Also, according to Macey, W.H. and Schneider, B. (2008) The Meaning of Employee Engagement. Industrial and Organizational Psychology. Vol 1, pg 3 – 30, job satisfaction and organizational commitment are parts of engagement, however engagement is much more than the 2 recognized and more universally used concepts.

I think the confusion about the construct of engagement is caused by the fact that it is defined differently by different people. If we could have one universal way of describing what engagement is composed of, it may be an easier way to define it as a unique construct, thus differentiating it from satisfaction and commitment.

The issue I am facing is, though I'mconceptually clear about the fact that engagement is unique as lsome literature suggests, why then are we not able to prove that empirically?

As some researchers have suggested, is engagement just "an old wine in a new bottle"?

Thank you for responding. I appreciate your time and effort in furthering my discussion.

Regards,
Shikha

[Md Ghazi Shahnawaz]

hi,

conceptual clarity and empirical justification many not always be same! we use diffrent tools to measure the constructs, many a time the tools themselves are problematic. As you have mentioned that "According to Kahn, the 3 conditions of psychological meaningfulness, safety and availability must prevail in order for engagement to take place", as per this explanation , these are the conditions under which EE may thrive but these may not be dimensions/crux of EE, so this is the first problem I suppose in your question formulation, same problem might be there with the conceptualization of JS (which is much more developed as a construct than EE).

these are some of the reasons bcoz of which you are not getting results in the desired direction.

What statistical technique you are using on your analysis? Hierarchical regression analyis or some thing else!

Ghazi

[Craig Althof]

Greetings, Shikha and all.

As you are researching EE, I have nothing much from an empirical / research perspective to add that you haven't seen I'm sure. I (along with many other practitioners here) have been searching mightily for help in bridging the gap between the academic / conceptual and the workplace---making it real, putting substance and results behind the words and concepts.

Some time ago Ana Maria, like you an EEN member doing her thesis, started a discussion that led to several posts that you may find interesting. That discussion is linked in this blog post, along with links to several other more practitioner-based sources if you have the patience to search through the various posts: Engagement: the Gap Between Academics and Shop Floor

I hope you find this interesting, as food for thought.

Shane noted that this is more than JS, as it is not a one-way street. From BlessingWhite: Full engagement represents an alignment of maximum job satisfaction (“I like my work and do it well”) with maximum job contribution (“I help achieve the goals of the organization”) That's about the best working definition I've seen, while keeping it simple and meaningful.

You are not alone in your research, that is for certain. You should start a "Thesis Research" group here! The final paragraph of the post linked above:

Ana-Maria’s post and the responses expose the core issue, and from what I’m gathering from ‘old-timer’ comments on the Employee Engagement Network this is a repeat discussion, a never-ending quest. What is desperately needed, I think, is a common-sense interpretation of engagement that appeals to those people we practitioners serve. A meta operational definition of the word, but also broken down into a context that makes sense to the specific organization. Then, what specifically engagement is capable of delivering to the bottom line, and how you go about “engaging” people. That’s our Holy Grail.

What I'd really like to see is a thesis based on making EE more accessible and meaningful to pragmatic, results-driven, and generally grumpy old "show me the spreadsheets" operations managers!

Research on, Shikha!

Craig
In Pursuit of Excellence

(By the way...."old" above is referencing a state of mind rather than a physical attribute. I wouldn't want to insult anyone I am more closely resembling with each passing year!)

[Shikha Arora]

Hi Craig,

Thank you for sharing your insights! You totally understood my sentiments about the topic! I just read your blog about how its ok that engagement is an old wine in a new bottle and its the image/perception that will help us gain acceptance about the notion of engagement especially amongst operational leaders.

I'm looking forward to your next few blogs!

Thanks again for your response.

Regards,
Shikha