Sukanlaya Sawang and Cameron J. Newton. QUT Business School. âThe challenge .... Cropanzano, R., & Mitchell, M. S. (2005). Social exchange theory: An ...
Psychological stress and employee engagement Sukanlaya Sawang and Cameron J. Newton QUT Business School “The challenge today is not just retaining talented people, but fully engaging them, capturing their minds and hearts at each stage of their work lives” (Kaye & Jordan-Evans, 2003, p. 11). Engaged employees produce positive work outcomes such as increased productivity satisfaction, and reduced turnover (Kahn, 1990, 1992; Saks, 2006). Engaged employees also impact on customers and co-workers’ positive experiences such as increased customer satisfaction (Wagner & Harter, 2006). Further, engaged employees demonstrate higher levels of trust in management and share more positive experiences with co-workers than disengage employees (Payne, Cangemi, Fuqua, & Muhleakamp, 1998). Past studies show that having a high proportion of engaged employees increases organizational performance, such as profitability and reputation (Wagner & Harter, 2006; Fleming & Asplund, 2007; Ketter, 2008). Having experienced the benefits of having engaged employees, organizations have become more aware of this issue and have been focusing on facilitating engagement climate within workplaces. Recently, an interest in positive psychology, instead of negative aspects of human behaviours, has become a focus for both scholars and practitioners. The trend towards positive psychology has led to the emergence of the concept of work engagement(Chughtai & Buckley, 2008). This article reviews literatures in the area of positive psychology and psychological stress, and discusses how organizations can increase work engagement among their organizational members. The remainder of this article is organised in four sections. First, we define work engagement as used in this article and psychological outcomes of work engagement. Second, we identify ways to increase work engagement among employees. Following this, we further discuss how gender roles influence individuals’ engagement at work. The final sections conclude the paper with a discussion of the practical implications. Defining work engagement Work engagement was initially defined by Kahn (Kahn, 1990, p. 694) as “the harnessing of organization members' selves to their work roles by which they employ and express themselves physically, cognitively, and emotionally during role performances” More recently, the most adopted definition of work engagement refers to “a positive, fulfilling, work-related state of mind that can be categorised into vigour, dedication and absorption”
(Schaufeli, Salanova, González-Romá, & Bakker, 2002, p. 74). Vigour can be described in terms of energy and resilience: workers who find their jobs energising are willing to persevere in the face of difficulties and challenges. Dedication is a sense of pride in one’s job and a feeling that it is meaningful, significant and inspiring. Last, absorption is characterised by employees who are fully occupied and unreservedly engrossed in their work to the extent that time will pass without them noticing it. Engaged employees and psychological outcomes There are clear links between level of work engagement and psychological outcomes. For instance, Job Characteristics Theory (Hackman & Oldham, 1980) identifies that meaningfulness of work, responsibility and knowledge of outcomes can lead to positive outcomes such as work performance, job satisfaction and lower turnover. In particular, Hackman and Oldham (1980) indicated that employees experience work meaningfulness when they invest themselves in job that they have a control and believe the job is significant. Similar to the concept of work engagement, individuals experience meaningfulness when they fully invest themselves physically, cognitively and emotionally in their role (Kahn, 1990; Schaufeli & Bakker, 2004). Therefore, engaged employees will demonstrate a positive attitude toward their job (i.e. job satisfaction) at individual levels (Koyuncu, Burke, & Fiksenbaum, 2006; Saks, 2006) and group levels (Harter, Schmidt, & Hayes, 2002). Indeed, previous research has also found relationships between work engagement and psychological outcomes such as higher job satisfaction and employee wellbeing, and lower turnover intentions (Schaufeli & Bakker, 2004; Sawang, Brough, & Barbour, 2009). In literature, turnover intention has been identified as the immediate precursor for turnover behaviour (Tett & Meyer, 1993). Given that engaged employees have invested a great deal of personal resources, they are less likely to detach themselves from their job.
How can organizations increase engagements among employees? A commonly identified antecedent of work engagement is the working conditions of employees. Generally, two sets of variables that can be distinguished in any kind of job are job demands and job resources (Schaufeli & Bakker, 2004). According to the Job DemandsResources (JD-R) model, high job demands (including working fast and hard, and experiencing conflicting demands) present as a workplace stressor and can deplete employee's mental energy. Employees who are exposed to a high job demands for a long
period of time can develop a chronic stress (Ganster & Schaubroeck, 1991). Ultimately, then, these sustained demands can lead to employees disengaging themselves from work due to physical and psychological fatigue (Katerndahl, 1993). Under stressful conditions such as high demands, job resources can buffer the influence of job demands on strain and engagement. While, the Demand-Control (DC) model proposed that individuals’ decision latitude can be seen as job resources to reduce a worker’ s stress (Karasek Jr, 1979), the JD-R model expands this view by proposing that many different types of job resources (e.g. autonomy, social support, supervisory coaching, and performance feedback) can buffer the undesirable influence of job demands (Bakker, Demerouti, & Euwema, 2005). Indeed, job resources extend to psychological, organizational and social aspects that reduce job demands, facilitate work achievement and career growth (Dementiti, Bakker, De Jonge, & Janssen, 2001). Cleary, then, the JD-R model suggests that the job resources predict individual work engagement. Overall, previous studies have confirmed the positive relationship between job resources and work engagement in various occupations such as academic staff (Rothmann & Jordaan, 2007), telecommunication managers and executives (Schaufeli, Bakker, & Van Rhenen, 2009), teachers (Schaufeli & Salanova, 2007) and hospitality managers and supervisors (Karatepe & Olugbade, 2009). Another type of resource that can increase work engagement is personal resources: “individuals’ sense of their ability to control and impact upon their environment successfully”
(Xanthopoulou, Bakker, Demerouti, & Schaufeli, 2007, p. 124). Other personal resources include self-efficacy [individuals’ belief of their ability to meet work demands (Bandura, 1989)] organizational-based self-esteem [individuals’ belief that they can satisfy their needs by participating in roles within the context of an organization (Pierce, Gardner, Cummings, & Dunham, 1989)], and optimism- individuals’ belief that they will generally experience good outcomes in life (Scheier & Carver, 1985). Such resources have been described as fundamental components of individual adaptability (Hobfoll, 2002). Overall, personal resources both increase stress resilience and improve individuals health and well-being (Scheier & Carver, 1985; Pierce, et al., 1989; Chen, Gully, & Eden, 2001). As such, when job demands are high, organizations can boost employee engagement through various job resources as discussed above. Gender role and work engagement
Gender differences may exist between males and females in their perceptions of stress sources and outcomes which can differentially impact employee engagement . For example, research has found that females have a tendency to appraise stressors as being more distressing than men (Eaton & Bradley, 2008). Further, Heppner et al. (1991) identified that males and females differed in their coping styles when addressing career related issues. The findings indicated that the men made greater progress toward handling their stressful situation, were more confident in their problem-solving appraisal, and were less confused about their vocational identity than women. Similarly, Day and Livingstone (2003) identified gender differences with regard to perceived levels of stress and the use of social support as a coping mechanism. They found that women perceived school, friend, and work scenarios to be more stressful than did men and also that women utilized friend and family for support in coping with stress more than men. Taylor (2007) further revealed that female employees sought more support from their co-workers than male employees. In collectivist countries, men and women have different and quite rigidly maintained role identifications. Indeed, in collectivistic society, men have hierarchical precedence over women and there is fewer women in occupations such as lawyer, physician, judge and professor (Kislenko, 2004). According to Triandis and Gelfand (1998) collectivist societies are characterised by norm biases that are even more intransigent than those found in Western societies. Therefore, it is posited that this can translate into career experiences for women that have even thicker and more opaque ‘glass ceilings’ to those encountered in the West. It can also be noted that Asian women’s gendered social role may lead to lower job involvement than men. For instance, Asian women are expected to take care of their households while men are expected to be in the work force (Wang, Lawler, Walumbwa, & Shi, 2004). Consequently, within Asian countries it is a common experience that women’s salaries are lower than those of men, and women are less likely to receive bonuses because they are not available to work overtime (Yang, Chen, Choi, & Zou, 2000; Cooke, 2003; Granrose, 2007). Further, religion can also influence the society and women's engagement in the wprkplace, For example, Buddhism has also played an important role in shaping gender-relations (Falk, 2008). Generally, gender inequality can influence women’s lower satisfaction comparing to men (Chiu, 1998). However, some studies found that women reported higher job satisfaction scores than did men. For example, Kim (2005) surveyed 5,128 public Korean employees in Seoul Metropolitan Government and results suggested that women were more satisfied with their jobs than were men. The question remains why women’s job satisfaction is not lower
than men’s, given that women’s jobs are often inferior in terms of pay, autonomy, and promotional opportunity (Chiu, 1998). The common explanation is that women have lower expectations and compare themselves to other woman (instead of comparing with men) (Chiu, 1998). In collectivistic societies, maintaining social harmony is very important and people will avoid any conflict (Sriussadaporn-Charoenngam & Jablin, 1999). Thus, women cope with the gender inequality by expecting less from work and so they are satisfied with less, but also less perform than do men (Ingram & Simons, 1995). According to social exchange theory, individuals feel obliged to respond in kind and repay to an organization which provides economical and socioemotional resources (Cropanzano & Mitchell, 2005). One way for individuals to repay their organization is through their level of engagement (Saks, 2006). Due to gender inequality, women perceive fewer resources (e.g. personal development) are provided by an organization. Therefore, female employees will choose to engage themselves to lesser degrees than do male employees in responding to the resources they receive from their organization (Saks, 2006). Implications and conclusion Overall, there is clear evidence that psychological stress can adversely interfere with and even reverse processes and interventions that are aimed at facilitating employee engagement. Managers need to be aware of the negative effects of high demands, conflicting demands on employees, and inadequate job resources on employee engagement and design the workplace in such a way as to limit the prevalence of these stress-related factors. Managers also need to ensure their employees are supported in the development of personal resources so employees feel they can achieve and develop the resilience necessary to promote engagement. Last, managers need to ensure that they are aware of the needs and the cultural and working contexts of both male and female employees to ensure that interventions designed to foster engagement are maximally effective.
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