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Bozena Benton, Head of HR, RLF
Karen Carr, Ministry of Justice
Karen Drury, fe3
Fiona Eldridge, Director, Coaching and Communication Centre
Alison Lyon, Head of Internal Communication and Information, Leonard Cheshire Disabilities
Richard Mortimer, Justice Academy, Ministry of Justice
Gary Saunders, fe3
Natalie Sawyer, Electoral Commission
Paula Simmons, European Director, VirginUnite
Our venue and lunch was very generously provided by the Ministry of Justice.
After introductions Karen asked participants to say why they thought the concept of engagement was important. Responses were:
After introducing the agenda , Karen admitted that she had found this a difficult session to pull together, due to what seemed to be a dearth of research on virtual teams and engagement. In addition, the more she investigated it, the more contested the whole idea of engagement is.
For those participants who were at the last mindstretch® on engagement, some of this content will be familiar. Karen said she had included it because, frankly – fe3 said it here first – in January last year, fe3 ran a session on engagement and came to the conclusion that engagement was a work in progress. Since that session, Karen has seen lots of academic debate about the concept. She said that the more she looked at the concept, the less convinced she was that it’s been nailed down sufficiently hard to make it useful. Hence this re-visit.
There’s a good reason to think about the definitions of engagement currently doing the rounds, and in here is an interesting debate in its own right. Practitioner definitions of engagement focuses on engagement as an outcome. Academic definitions of engagement focus on the “state” of the employee. There does appear to be one link – job satisfaction, commitment and involvement are generally part of the practitioner definition and measurements and have been found by academics to be related to the engagement measure.
The way in which you define engagement directs how you look at other elements of it – how’s its measured, what the potential requirements for it are, and what the outcomes might be. So looking at each of them in turn…..
Kahn talks of harnessing of employees’ “selves” to their work roles and expending additional effort – physical, cognitive and emotional – to the task, linked to the concept of “flow”.
Psychological meaningfulness is “the feeling that one is receiving a return on investments of oneself in a currency of physical, cognitive or emotional energy”.
Psychological safety is the “sense of being able to show and employ one’s self without fear of negative consequences to self image, status or career”.
Psychological availability is the “sense of having the physical, emotional or psychological resources to personally engage at a particular moment.”
The process of engaging employees in all its senses is not limited to conditions within the workplace – the sense of engagement is influenced by conditions and events external to the work environment and therefore under limited or no control of management.
Kahn’s three psychological conditions have been empirically tested through a scale designed by May, Gilson and Harter (2004) indicating that all three were significantly related to engagement. They also found that job enrichment and role fit were positive predictors of meaningfulness; rewarding co-worker and supervisor relations were positive predictors of safety.
Fiona asked if this could be used for recruitment, although Alison wondered if it would be too hypothetical, unless it was used as a way of asking questions of the prospective employer. Karen Carr thought that it would be difficult to know how to ask the right questions without also indicating the answers that were desired and Karen Drury added she thought it would require a real understanding of your “preferred self”.
Turning to Maslach and Leitner, Karen noted that some academics believe that burnout and engagement are two opposite ends of a continuum, where burnout is “the erosion of engagement with the job” (Maslach and Leiter (1997).
Burnout is characterized by three related, but empirically distinct, elements: namely exhaustion, cynicism, and reduced professional efficacy.
Feelings of exhaustion or energy depletion are generally considered a core symptom of the burnout syndrome and Cynicism is a negative attitudes toward work and the people with whom one works (e.g., clients and colleagues).
The third dimension of burnout, reduced professional efficacy is the belief that one is no longer effective in fulfilling one’s job responsibilities. Thus, burned-out individuals suffer from feelings of fatigue, behave indifferently toward their work and clients, and they believe that their performance has suffered accordingly.
Later research has shown that burnout and engagement are probably obliquely related, but not direct opposite ends of a continuum, indicating that emotional exhaustion and vigour are different concepts.
Schaufeli defines work engagement as a positive, fulfilling, work related state of mind that is characterized by vigour, dedication, and absorption. Their measurement – although NOT their concept - also includes professional efficacy
Vigour means high levels of energy and mental resilience while working, the willingness to invest effort in one’s work, and persistence in the face of difficulties.
Dedication means a sense of significance, enthusiasm, inspiration, pride, and challenge.
Absorption is characterized by being fully concentrated and happily engrossed in one’s work, whereby time passes quickly and one has difficulties with detaching oneself from work.
Thus, engaged employees feel vigorous and strong, are enthusiastic about their work, and they often get immersed in their work activities.
Empirical research has shown that there are strong correlations between the elements that are being measured here – meaning that the concepts overlap.
Karen Carr commented that maybe it is just difficult to define, maybe it’s so personal it’s impossible to put a structure round it. Alison thought that engagement with a role is limited and what internal communication is trying to do is to make links with the organisation. With the aims of the organisation, added Natalie, or the charismatic figurehead, added Paula. She said that many people joined Virgin because of Richard Branson.
The last model we looked at came out of the Institute of Employment Studies. Their engagement model and questionnaire was developed through a study done specifically within the NHS using more than 10,000 responses from 14 NHS organisations
IES’s research indicates that the following areas are of fundamental importance to engagement;
Managers who:
Although we have the bare bones of the model, because it’s proprietary, we can’t pick it apart in the same way as we do the academic models. Karen thought it was interesting that the engaged employee, for the IES, is described as someone who “Sees the bigger picture even at personal cost”.
However, recent reviews by Christian and Slaughter (2007) and Wefald and Downey (2009) demonstrate some concerns over the purity of the elements which are being measured, particularly in the Schaufeli version of engagement.
Wefald and Downey (2008) looked at satisfaction and engagement and their impact on performance and found that while both concepts predicted performance, the measures were significantly related and that in fact, satisfaction was a greater predictor of performance than engagement. This is in line with other studies that note similar concerns about job involvement (Newton & Keenan 1983) and affective commitment (Newman and Harrison 2008).
Looking at a summary of conditions for engagement, Gary suggested that what comes out is that the conditions for Kahn’s version of engagement are around relationships and social support; that conditions for Schaufeli’s version of engagement are situational; and for the IES the conditions are instrumental. For Maslach and Leiter, conditions for burnout are behavioural.
Karen showed the group the requirements for engagement according to the IES.
The group commented on the attractiveness of the concept. Fiona said that according to these, you could be engaged without satisfaction and Alison’s view was that satisfaction was a passive concept, whereas engagement was active. The group thought that engagement to the role was too narrow - Karen Carr thought that the coaching relationship is similar – that you’re committed to the relationship rather than the task or role.
Richard commented that the public sector often works towards a big ideal or goal and that in the MoJ, they never stop – and therefore satisfaction may be lower than engagement.
Natalie wondered if the example of Woolworths showed that engagement is based on social relationship at work – people were engaged because they worked with friends and sometimes even families.
Given the differing views on the definition of engagement, and the fact that the concepts of all of them don’t appear to have more predictive ability than some more established concepts such as satisfaction, commitment….is it important anyway? Might we use something else?
When looking at which definition might be helpful for use in engagement, Natalie noted that the Electoral Commission had very small offices and developing strong relationships might be difficult in remote locations, even at a relatively instrumental level – not all parts of the organisation are able to implement centrally-designed policies.
Fiona suggested that bring people together helps – her organisation’s 32 branch offices are brought together twice a year to help people feel that they have a connection to the bigger organisation.
Natalie thought that engagement was an individual thing – that some people just ARE engaged – in which case, recruit them!
Bozena thought that nevertheless, people needed to like what they are doing and to engage with the immediate team. Sometimes you can select by pre-disposition to be engaged, and to what.
Karen thought that central to the whole idea of any relationship is TRUST.
Employees (engaged, committed) invest their energy, time, or personal resources trusting that the investment will be rewarded in some way. The fundamental motivation for this may be instrumental based on the norm of reciprocity (Coyle-Shapiro and Conway 2005). If we follow this reasoning, trust (in the organisation, manager, the team) is essential to increasingly the likelihood that engagement behaviour will be displayed – particularly important to Kahn’s requirements for psychological safety. And yet, trust in all the definitions except Kahn’s is implicit rather than explicit - do you think this is important?
The general view was that there was a greater need for trust between organisations and virtual workers as they were “out of sight”. The emergence of self directed teams and a reliance on empowered workers greatly increase the importance of the concept of trust as control mechanisms are reduced or removed. Trust must take the place of supervision because direct observation of employees becomes impractical.
Bozena felt that there should be a difference of emphasis, from inputs to outputs, but also that managers should trust in the competence of the dispersed workers. She also noted that there might be increased management time in managing virtual workers. Alison added that there should be clear expectations of virtual workers, and Bozena agreed, adding there should also be set authority levels.
Virtual teams are physically isolated and visually anonymous. Members of virtual teams have a reduced set of social cues with which to control the effect of stereotyping on their relationship management. Fiona commented that relationship building is so important in coaching that she wouldn’t do remote coaching unless she’s met the person first.
Research conducted by Benbunan-Fich, Hiltz and Turoff (2002) supports the idea that anonymity increases uninhibited hostile behaviour and extreme decision making.
On this slide, Karen noted that some of the disadvantages noted were of prime concern to engagement/commitment.
But others can be added even to this list:
Alison thought that you could provide a basic standard of HR/communication in a central location, but it was more difficult in remote locations, although Bozena thought that these problems could be circumvented with money (i.e. provide for more elaborate communication systems or by pulling everyone together on a regular basis.) Paula thought that there was a significant challenge when people are not in the office – that it’s a challenge to engage REAL remote workers.
Bozena wondered whether there was some self-selection which meant workers were less concerned about being remote.
Reminding the group again of the conditions for engagement , Karen then asked the group if engaging virtual teams was just a matter of choosing the right definition?
The group thought that there were differing levels of instrumentality in the definitions, although Karen Carr also boiled it down to “good management practice”, with which Natalie agreed – more pressure on managers to get the basics right.
Fiona added that you needed to help people understand what would be necessary, that there were individuals who didn’t know what good management is.
Karen suggested that given that there are workers who work outside of offices, that this is likely to grow – although perhaps more slowly than at first anticipated – workers out of the office can’t be out on a limb.
So she offered three things to think about, all focused around communication as a primary tool. She offered satisfaction, identity and commitment because the jury was still out on the concept of engagement. She acknowledged that this is not just the communication between people absent from the office, but the actions taken by the organisation that are communicated, and their view of the “out group”. Here reasoning was as follows:
Questions from a satisfaction measure from Cooper et al (1987) include questions such as:
Commitment
This is generally described as a state or process of employee-organisation attachment. Communication has long been held to be important to the development of commitment, precisely because employees need to have sufficient information to judge whether the values of the organisation are congruent with theirs.
Identity
For identification to occur, individuals must be motivated to belong to a group. Some research has suggested that people seek group membership to ill self-enhancement needs – which involves making comparisons with out groups that increase members feelings of self-worth. Identification in this case is likely to extent that members consider worthy and attractive the distinctive qualities of the group and if they believe outsiders notice them and perceive them as worthy and attractive (Ashforth and Mael 1989, Dukerich et al 2002). Members rely on communication cues to develop social categories, perceptual elements by which they characterise the group.
Following the theme of communication as the linking factor, Karen then introduced a research article by Glenda Jacobs, published in the Journal of Communications Management in 2006.
Although it only looks at two companies, they do appear to be largely similar. It’s small – only 16 interviews in one company and 8 in the other. But Karen thought it contained some interesting stuff.
Jacobs asserted that without exposure to physically and spatially shared structures and systems that reinforce and maintain organisational identification, remote workers come to see themselves as independent contractors, operating with other goals than those of the organisation that employs them.
Jacobs notes that the skills and expertise of the workforce she studied are core to the productivity of the organisation, but not part of the elite. She cites various strategies used to help teleworkers identify themselves as part of a group despite their physical separation from one another:
None of this is problematic when teleworkers work from home – more problematic when they’re out on the road. Communication options are limited, not only by distance and reduced frequency, but by wide variation in work schedules, job locations and client environments.
The structure was hierarchical. In both companies, engineers reported to service managers who were responsible for performance and productivity of a geographical group of engineers. Team managers reported to a regional service manager, who reported into a national service manager.
Depots – Company A – still had depots where team managers and technical specialists had offices, although these were otherwise unused; Company B had one head office providing only a few small offices where equipment and tools could be dropped off/collected.
Work distribution – systems for allocating, ordering tools and parts, as well as tracking information (where job was started, type of job, status, time spent travelling, etc)
The values of the organisations were also very similar. They included:
Empowerment, personal achievement, thinking outside the box, collaboration, shared responsibility for team and job; openness and recognition of the expertise at the rock face.
The calculative commitment from Company A – supports findings from Herriot et al (1997) that employees favour transactional forms of obligation-based commitment when they perceive that the relational bonds between themselves and the organisation have been compromised.
The findings for Company B, however, were very different. . In terms of commitment, engineers claimed pride in belonging to a meaningful and leading service organisation.
The respondents did not see themselves as a separate subculture – possibly because their team managers and regional managers worked from home and spent significant amounts of time travelling. So what made the difference?
Karen pointed out that current studies indicate that both company information and work knowledge are important to encourage employee commitment and that best ways of communicating these combine computer mediated communication (CMC) and face to face interaction.
What follows is what Jacobs found in her study.
Company A – provided engineers and managers with one main communication option – that of one computer mediated access point
Company B – varied communication choices, with virtual exclusion of online communication methods, with greater emphasis on the use of less flexible but more immediate oral/audio, phone, and face to face modes
Karen noted that not all teleworkers will react the same way to the same communication systems – and these are essential to create some sort of relationship (commitment, engagement, whatever).
Jacobs concludes that in Company A, although communications systems might have been designed to enhance their view of their independence – what happened was that they were interpreted as dismissive and impersonal.
In Company B, the communications systems made engineers see each other as individuals.
Being apart from the physical organisation may create a sense of only having a marginal sphere of influence – which means that communication mechanisms need to be sufficiently flexible to accommodate voice – two-way may not mean email. Jacobs notes that this is particularly important as engineers are asked routinely to exercise their judgement and decision making abilities. Voice is an important part of creating any kind of relationship – again, regardless of the name.
Because engineers don’t have day to day social interaction, the “tasks” of social, informal and task-related communication are all wound up together, less separable than it might be for office based workers. In most office based contexts, social systems exist and develop organically and naturally, unlike company A where communication is dictated through the computer mediated systems. The team meeting in Company A may be insufficiently long to allow for social as well as task-oriented communication.
Another way Jacobs considers that engineers may formulate their sense of organisational attachment is through special effort. She suggests that engineers in each of the companies drew conclusions about their organisations’ values and attitudes from the perceived special effort made by management to communicate appropriately with them and this in turn elicited reciprocal commitment to going the extra mile for the organisation.
The group wondered how the communication systems were set up and if Company B engineers had been involved in identifying the best way to reach them.
Karen’s final thoughts were, perhaps obviously, that virtual and remote workers are different from office based workers and need to considered more carefully in terms of management, communication and the messages both of these send.
She also thought that communication was essential regardless of the relationship you’re trying to engender.
And finally - engagement as a concept is looking increasingly dodgy in present form – but watch this space!