Employee Engagement and Commitment: A guide to understanding, measuring and
increasing engagement in your organization. Robert J. Vance, Ph.D; SHRM
Foundation’s Effective Practice Guidelines. 2006. SHRM Foundation.
Employee Engagement: Key Ingredients
Employee engagement includes several ingredients for which researchers have developed
measurement techniques. These ingredients include the degree to which employees fully
occupy themselves in their work, as well as the strength of their commitment of the
employer.
Occupying the Job: There are degrees to which an individual “occupies” a job role. In
the personal engagement perspective, individuals fully occupy themselves physically,
intellectually and emotionally in their work role. At the personal disengagement end,
they uncouple themselves and withdraw from the role (Psychologist William Kahn,
1990).
How Do Individuals Become personally engaged in their work activities?
Committing to the Work and the Company: Commitment can be defined as both a
willingness to persist in a course of action and reluctance to change plans, often owing to
a sense of obligation to stay the course. Commitment manifests itself in distinct
behavior:
 People devote time and energy to fulfill job responsibilities as well as their
family, personal, community and spiritual obligations.
 People experience and emotional component- Expressing positive feelings
toward an entity or individual to whom they have made a commitment.
People experience a rational element – they consciously decide to make
commitments, then thoughtfully plan and carry out the actions required to fulfill
them.
Expectation of Reciprocation – Psychological Contract of Employment. : People
expect an exchange for their commitment, assuming they will get something a return in
value – such as favors, affection, gifts, attention, goods, money and / or property.
Employers have made a tacit agreement: In exchange for worker’s commitment,
organizations would provide forms of value for employees, such as secure jobs and fair
compensation. When an entity or individual to whom someone has made a commitment
fails to come through with the expected exchange, the commitment erodes.
Restructuring and reductions in staff have meant reductions in staff and layers of
management. Although these actions have been deemed necessary ( to compete,
budgetary restraints), these changes have broken the traditional psychological contract of
employment. This has led to a feeling of less commitment from some employees. This
has led to 10 common themes for reviving employee commitment.
1
10 Common Themes: How Companies Measure Engagement:










Pride in employer
Satisfaction with employer
Job satisfaction
Opportunity to perform well at challenging work
Recognition and positive feedback for one’s contributions
Personal support from one’s supervisor
Effort above and beyond the minimum
Understanding the link between one’s job and the organization’s mission
Prospects for future growth with one’s employer
Intention to stay with one’s employer
Figure 1: Employer Practices Ultimately Influence Business Results
How does an engaged workforce generate valuable business results for an organization?
The process starts with employer practices such as job and task design, recruitment,
selection, training, compensation, performance management and career development.
Such practices affect employees’ levels of engagement as well as job performance.
Performance and engagement then interact to produce business results.
Job Performance
Employer Practices
Business Results
Employee
Engagement and
Commitment
2
Food For Thought: Thinking About Commitment and Engagement
Employee Commitment
Employee Engagement
 How do you and others define
 How do you and others define
commitment?
engagement?
 Are some employees engaged in
 How do you know that certain
your work but not committed to the
employees in your company are
organization ?
engage? Do they relish their jobs?
 To whom are your organization’s
Enjoy specific responsibilities or
employees committed? To the
tasks? Willing “go the extra mile”?
organization? Their supervisors?
 In teams, departments or business
Co-workers? Team members?
units that have a large number of
Customers?
engaged employees, what business
 What business results has
results are you seeing? Higher
commitment from employees
productivity, lower costs, more
created for your organization?
efficiency, lower turnover, higher
For example, has commitment
product or service quality?
reduced turnover and, therefore,
 Conversely, how do disengaged
decreased recruitment, hiring and
employees behave, and what are the
training costs?
consequent costs fort the teams,
 What does your company do to
units and organization?
reciprocate employees’
commitment? Is the organization
living up to its side of the bargain?
A Job Performance Model
Figure 2 below reflects that a person possesses attributes such as knowledge, skills,
abilities, temperament , attitudes and personality. He or she uses these attributes to
accomplish work behaviors according to organization-defined procedures, by applying
tools, equipment and/ or technology.
Work behaviors, in turn, create the services that make the organization successful. These
are classified as prescribed (required to accomplish duties and tasks specified in job
description), voluntary (extra behaviors that an employee contributes for the good of the
organization) and proscribed behaviors ( including unexcused absenteeism, stealing and
other counteractive or illegal behaviors).
3
Figure 2: A Job Performance Model
Work Context
Leadership
Work Organization Physical Setting
PERSON
Knowledge
Skill
Experience
Attitudes
Ability
Temperament
Personality
PROCESS
Tools,
Equipment,
Technology
Procedures
--Prescribed
--Voluntary
--Proscribed
Social Setting
PRODUCT/
SERVICE
Quality
Quantity
Timeliness
Safety
The Power of Enrichment
Findings show that managers who provide enriched work (jobs that are high in
meaningfulness, variety, autonomy and co-worker trust) stimulate engagement and
enthusiasm in their employees.
Broad definition of job roles enhances workers’ willingness to take ownership of
challenges that lie beyond their immediate assigned tasks. These challenges inspire
people to innovate and to solve problems proactively.
To Increase Engagement
Imbue jobs with :
o
o
o
o
To Enhance Commitment
Demonstrate reciprocity by providing
employees with opportunities for personal
development.
Meaningfulness
Variety
Autonomy
Co-Worker Support
Increasing
With job enrichment, employee
performance on prescribed on
prescribed tasks improves. Workers define
their role more broadly – and willingly take
on tasks outside their formal job
description.
Knowledge
Skills
Experience
Expertise
4
Increasing
Self-efficacy
Self-esteem
Employer
Commitment
Recruiting for Engagement and Commitment
If you design jobs specifically to engage employees, then you’ll want to ensure that
recruiting ads extol those positions attractive features, such as challenging work
assignments a highly skilled team environment or minimal supervision.
Also consider how you might best seek candidates from inside your organization. When
you recruit existing employees for desirable jobs, you enhance their engagement (by
maximizing the person to job fit) and commitment (by providing growth and
advancement opportunities to employees in return for their loyalty).
To Increase Engagement
To Enhance Commitment
Target qualified applicants likely to find
the work interesting and challenging.
For internal candidates
Send recruiting messages that:
Emphasize possibilities of
movement/promotion to more desirable
jobs, to signal commitment reciprocity.
Send recruiting messages that:
Extol attractive job features to enhance
person-job fit.
For external candidates
Highlight the employer side of the
exchange relationship-pay and benefits,
advancement opportunities, flexible work
hours.
Encourage those who are not suited to the
work to self-select out.
Recognized and address commitment
congruence (e.g., work-family balance).
Encourage those who are not suited to the
organization to self-select out.
5
Effective Employee Selection
When you select the right person for the right jobs, your new hires carry out their work
more smoothly and experience fewer performance problems. To enhance engagement
through your selection of employees, identify those candidates who are best-suited to the
job and your organization’s culture.
To Increase Engagement
Select the right individuals for the jobs
To Enhance Commitment
Present selection hurdles that are relevant
to the job in question.
Successful
candidates
will
feel
good
about
surmounting such hurdles to land the job.
Choose candidates most likely to:
Perform prescribed job duties well
Contribute voluntary behaviors
Avoid proscribed activities
Crate a positive first impression of your
organization’s competence. You will set
the stage for growth of long-term
commitment.
Training and Development
To Enhance Commitment
To Increase Engagement
Provide employee orientation to establish:
The employer-employee exchange
relationship.
Understanding of how the job contributes
to the organization’s mission (encouraging
engagement from the beginning).
Foster person-organizational fit.
Signal commitment reciprocity by:
Your investments in training.
Modes of training delivery that
accommodates employees’ other
commitments.
Increasing
Knowledge
Skills
Experience
Expertise
Increasing
Offer skill development to enhance:
Performance
Satisfaction
Self-efficacy
Self-efficacy
Self-esteem
Employer
Commitment
Provide training to encourage prescribedand voluntary performance.
6
Effective Performance Management
Begin by linking job objectives to organizational objectives. What are your
organizational goals and how will each employee achieve them ? What expectations and
results does your organization expect employees to achieve? How might you help your
managers throughout the organization to communicate performance expectations and
goals to their direct reports?
Encourage managers to include employees in the goal-setting process. This helps to
ensure that workers understand the goals, and promotes acceptance of challenging
objectives that they help define. In addition, consider how you will recognize and
encourage contributions that exceed expectations.
Performance management is a continuous process. Managers can use routine discussions
about performance and feedback sessions to learn which aspects of the job hold the most
interest for each employee and which tasks are most challenging. During such
discussions, managers can define what “going above and beyond the call of duty” looks
like and generate ideas for rewarding such contributions.
Consider how to treat experience employees. Design a performance management
system that recognizes and rewards proactive sharing of knowledge and expertise among
co-workers. For example, create knowledge repositories of learning histories that can be
stored in databases that employees can access, and then create incentives for those who
so contribute.
Effective performance management systems also identify employees who are not
meeting expectations. Failing to address problem performance can erode other
employees’ engagement and commitment, as their workloads increase and they conclude
that the company is willing to tolerate poor performance.
If feedback, coaching and remedial training are of little avail, the manager may need to
move the person to a different position within the company where he or she can make a
more valuable contribution, or let the individual go if there is not good match elsewhere
in the organization.
To Enhance Commitment
To Increase Engagement
Provide:
Manage Performance:
Challenging goals that align with your
Enable employees to experience success
organization’s strategic objectives.
over the long term.
Positive feedback and recognition for
Facilitate congruence between employee
accomplishments.
commitment to your organization and other
Recognition and appreciation for extra
life commitments.
voluntary contributions.
Value the expertise of experienced
employees.
7
Additional Information Regarding “ Employee Satisfaction”: SHRM 2007 Job
Satisfaction: A Survey by the Society of Human Resource Management, June 2007.
The SHRM Glossary of Human Resource Terms describes job satisfaction as a tool that
Defines and measures how employees feel regarding their job, work environment, pay,
benefits and so on.
The recruitment and retention of qualified, skilled employees is the foundation of any
business, small or large. Research shows that employees who are satisfied with their jobs
are more likely to stay with their current employers. In the 2007 Job Satisfaction
Survey, 79% if employees reported overall satisfaction with their current positions, with
almost 4 out of 10 employees indicating they were very satisfied. The participants were
asked to rate the importance of 22 aspects of the work environment commonly associated
with employee job satisfaction.
Sample Size: The HR professional sample was randomly selected from SHRM’s
membership, which included 210,000 individual members. The survey was sent to
approximately 3,000 SHRM members. The response rate was 27% ( 713 responded).
The employee sample was based upon a randomly selected group selected by an outside
research organization.. 604 employees were selected with a 57% response rate 344
responded).
The top “very important” aspects of job satisfaction, according to employees and HR
professionals were:
Employees
1. Compensation
2. Benefits
3. Job security
4. Work/life balance
5. Communication between
employees and senior management
6. Feeling safe in work environment
7. Management recognition of
employee job performance
8. Relationship with immediate
supervisor
9. Autonomy and independence
10. Opportunities to use
skills/abilities
HR Professionals
1. Relationship with immediate
supervisor
2. Compensation
3. Management recognition of
employee job performance
4. Benefits
5. Communication between
employees and senior management
6. Opportunities to use
skills/abilities
7. Career development opportunities
8. Job security
9. Flexibility to balance life and
work issues
10. Career advancement opportunities
8
Opportunities to use skills/abilities.
# 10 Employees and # 6 for HR Professionals: 49% of HR professionals and 35% of
employees viewed this as very important to job satisfaction (45% HR/40% employees as
important). Such opportunities are linked to job satisfaction because it is generally
thought that employees feel good about their jobs when they are utilizing and
contributing their unique skills to the organization.
 This element of job satisfaction appeared to be especially important to employees
35 years and younger compared with employees above the age of 55.
 This aspect was also a higher priority for female employees than for male
employees.
Management Recognition of Employee Job Performance.
# 7 Employees and #3 for HR Professionals: 65% of HR professionals and 49% of
employees believed this to be very important to job satisfaction (32% HR/3;7%
employees as important).
 Employee recognition can include offering awards, incentives or something as
simple as praise that recognizes and values outstanding work. It is believed to be
a cost-effective and valuable tool that can help lower stress, absenteeism and
turnover, and increase employee morale, productivity, competitiveness, revenue
and profits.
 Employees 35 and younger valued recognition by their managers more than did
employees 56 and older.
 Employees with 5 years or less of job tenure viewed recognition by management
as more important than employees who had been with their organization for 16
years or more.
Work / life balance practices.
# 4 Employees and # 9 HR Professionals: 48% if HR Professionals and 52% of
employees rated this as very important.
 This practice was perceived to have greater value by employees 55 and younger
compared with those 56 and older.
 Females rated this as more important than males.
 Studies have reported that telecommuting, increases job satisfaction, productivity,
amount of hours worked and commitment to job and lowers stress level.
 Other practices such as flextime, and compressed workweeks are low-cost
alternatives and have shown to increase job satisfaction and productivity while
lowering stress levels.
 This rating indicates that employees are focusing on tangible rewards, such as
flexibility, rather than relationship aspects of the job.
 Work life programs are known to be excellent strategic tools to attract and retain
talent.
9