Employee engagement is the extent to which we, as employees, devote time, energy, and effort at work. Peak engagement happens when we face meaningful challenges while having the support and resources we need to succeed.
At the University of Minnesota, we think of employee engagement as a level of employee energy and motivation supported or hindered by the work environment.
What is Employee Engagement?
- What are the conditions that are proven to improve employee engagement?
- Where do you start in this work?
- What are the key steps to success?
- Review the quick guide below for answers to these questions and more.
Employee Engagement Module
- Employee Engagement Cycle: Input
- Employee Engagement Cycle: Discussion
- Employee Engagement Cycle: Action
Employee Engagement is an ongoing process that consists of three stages:
- input,
- discussion
- and action.
Input involves gathering perspectives on the following questions:
- How are we doing when it comes to creating the conditions that foster employee engagement?
- What are we doing well?
- Where do we need to do better?
The Employee Engagement Cycle: Input video offers an example of some of the ways that input can be gathered.
Review Quick Guide
Gathering feedback from your employees can be done in a variety of ways - conversations in 1:1 check-ins, faculty/staff meetings, individual or team discussions, employee engagement survey, etc.
Review the quick guide below to learn more about gathering input, especially if the formal employee engagement survey is not available, and what questions to consider.
Employee Engagement Cycle: Input Quick Guide
Apply What You've Learned
Work through the quiz below to see how you would gather input and what to look out for.
Once you have gathered input, make sure to recognize and celebrate strengths first. This will allow your team to continue to be successful in areas that are creating engagement! The goal of discussion is to answer the following questions rather than problem-solve:
- Which issues are the most important to address, given our goals and priorities?
- Which issues will get in our way if we don’t address them?
- Which issues are not a high priority, even if they could use improvement?
The Employee Engagement Cycle: Discussion video offers an example of conducting an effective follow-up discussion.
Review Quick Guide
How do you make sense of the input you have received? What are the main elements to consider when preparing for an effective discussion? How do you facilitate a discussion? Review the quick guide below to learn the answer to these questions and more.
Employee Engagement Cycle: Discussion Quick Guide
Apply What You've Learned
Work through the quiz below to check your knowledge on the important steps and best practices for conducting an effective discussion.
Once input has been gathered and discussed, a few small, simple actions can have a large impact. Action involves creating and implementing a plan to address the engagement drivers (conditions that create engagement and productivity) that were identified through input and discussion as most critical to advance the unit’s goals and priorities. Taking action is not more work because it’s work that already needs to get done.
Action will be most effective if there are answers to these questions:
- What specific, concrete steps are we going to take to improve?
- Who will do the work, what resources will be needed?
- How will we know if we’re successful?
Watch the Employee Engagement Cycle: Action video to see an example of employee engagement in action.
Apply What You've Learned
Depending on the issue you are trying to address, there are various Supervisory Development resources for improving employee engagement through action. For your convenience, we have referenced them by each engagement driver.
You have completed this module
Congratulations! You have completed this online module. The following are module materials and related resources. We encourage you to explore other online modules to continue your supervisory development journey.
Core Reading
- Bakker, A.B., Demerouti, E., & Brummelhuis, L.L. (2012). Work engagement, performance, and active learning: the role of conscientiousness. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 80, 555 – 564.
- Bakker, A.B., Shimazu, A., Demerouti, E., Shimada, K., & Kawakami, N. (2014). Work engagement versus workaholism: a test of the spillover-crossover model. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 29, 63 – 80.
- Bledow, R., Schmitt, A., Frese, M., & Kuhnel, J. (2011). The affective shift model of work engagement. Journal of Applied Psychology, 96, 1246 – 1257.
- Breevaart, K., Bakker, A., Hetland, J., Demerouti, E., Olsen, O.K., & Espevik, R. (2014). Daily transactional and transformational leadership and daily employee engagement. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 87, 138 – 157.
- Christian, M.S., Garza, A.S., & Slaughter, J.E. (2011). Work engagement: A quantitative review and test of its relations with task and contextual performance. Personnel Psychology, 64, 89 – 136.
- Crawford, E.R., LePine, J.A., & Rich, B. L. (2010). Linking job demands and resources to employee engagement and burnout: A theoretical extension and meta-analytic test. Journal of Applied Psychology, 95, 834 – 848.
- Harter, J.K., Schmidt, F.L., & Hayes, T.L. (2002). Business-unit-level relationship between employee satisfaction, employee engagement, and business outcomes: a meta-analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 87, 268-279.
- Kahn, W.A. (1990). Psychological conditions of personal engagement and disengagement at work. Academy of Management Journal, 33, 692 – 724.
- Macey, W., & Schneider, B. (2008). The meaning of employee engagement. Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 1, 3 – 30.
- May, D.R, Gilson, R.L., & Harter. L.M. (2004). The psychological conditions of meaningfulness, safety and availability and the engagement of the human spirit at work. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 77, 11-37.
- Rich, B.L., LePine, J.A., & Crawford, E.R. (2010). Job engagement: Antecedents and effects on job performance. Academy of Management Journal, 53, 617 – 635.
- Salanova, M., Agut, S., & Piero, J.M. (2005). Linking organizational resources and work engagement to employee performance and customer loyalty: the mediation of service climate. Journal of Applied Psychology, 90, 1217-1227.
- Schaufeli, W.B., Bakker, A.B., & Salanova, M. (2006). The measurement of work engagement with a short questionnaire: a crossnational study. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 66, 701 – 716.
- Schaufeli, W.B., Salanova, M., Gonzalez-Roma, V., & Bakker, A.B. (2002). The measurement of engagement and burnout: A two sample confirmatory factor analytic approach. Journal of Happiness Studies, 3, 71 – 92.
- Shuck, B. (2011). Integrative literature review: four emerging perspectives of employee engagement. Human Resource Development Review, 10, 304 – 328.
- Sullivan, B.A., Bartlett, K., & Rana, S. The role of strategic HRD in establishing employee engagement initiatives: A case study from higher education. Paper presented at the 16th International Conference on Human Resource Development Research and Practice across Europe, Cork, Ireland, June, 2015.
- Torp, S., Grimsmo, A., Hagen, S., Duran, A., & Gudbergsson, S.B. (2012). Work engagement: a practical measure for workplace health promotion? Health Promotion International, 28, 387 – 396.
- Woods, S. A., & Sofat, J.A. (2013). Personality and engagement at work: the mediating role of psychological meaningfulness. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 43, 2203 – 2210.