Testing the Organizational Landscape: How
do organizational characteristics influence the
engagement model?
WORK ENVIRONMENT SURVEY 2010
January 2011
CONTACT INFORMATION
This paper was prepared by Emilie Sia. If you have any questions about the information
in this report, please email Emilie.Sia@gov.bc.ca or phone 250-952-0358.
© BC Stats 2010
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The BC Public Service Engagement Model encapsulates the different work
environment concepts and functions that influence employee engagement. Three
engagement characteristics, namely BC Public Service Commitment, Job
Satisfaction and Organization Satisfaction, serve as the outcomes of the model
and make up the overall engagement score. Influencing these characteristics
through a complex web of interconnections are 12 model drivers which represent
the key aspects in the work environment that are in turn based on employees‟
responses to the Work Environment Survey (WES) questions1. While much is
known about how these model drivers impact employee engagement,
understanding on how certain characteristics and features of organizations may
play a role in influencing these model drivers and engagement characteristics is
currently limited.
With the recent decrease in the BC Public Service overall engagement score
from 68 points out of 100 in WES 2009 to 64 points in WES 2010, investigating
the possible factors in the work environment that could have caused this decline
is of primary concern. Much of the decrease on the WES 2010 overall
engagement score was suspected to be due to the workforce adjustments which
occurred prior to the WES 2010 launch. Could organizational level changes such
as workforce adjustments have that much impact on employee engagement? Are
there other organizational level characteristics and intrinsic features within the
organizations that are creating a barrier in the achievement of higher employee
engagement within the BC Public Service organization? With these questions in
mind, this study explores the possible relationships that may be present between
engagement characteristics and model drivers and certain characteristics of the
organizations within the BC Public Service. Specifically, the organizational
characteristics investigated are: size of the organization, proportion of leaders in
the organization, employee dispersion by geographic work location, degree of
reporting hierarchy and workforce adjustments.
The results outlined below suggest that at the organizational level, these
organizational characteristics have moderate to strong relationships with some of
the engagement characteristics and model drivers.
Employees who belong to large organizations (≥ 2,000 employees)
tend to have more negative perceptions on survey questions related
to Respectful Environment, Staffing Practices, Teamwork,
Recognition and Physical Environment & Tools drivers as compared
to employees who belong to smaller organizations (< 2,000
employees).
Eleven model drivers showed moderate to strong correlations with organization
size. Among these, the top five drivers with the strongest relationships were
Respectful Environment, Staffing Practices, Teamwork, Recognition and Physical
Environment & Tools drivers. As the size of the organizations increased, the
average scores for these drivers tended to decrease. Large organizations (≥
1
Refer to Appendix A for further details on the BC Public Service Engagement Model.
 TESTING THE ORGANIZATIONAL LANDSCAPE
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
2,000 employees) showed significantly lower average scores on these drivers as
compared to small organizations (< 2,000 employees). As an example, smaller
organizations such as Tourism, Culture & Arts or Healthy Living & Sport, with
employee counts of less than 200, had average scores of 77 points and 82 points
respectively on the Respectful Environment driver. Larger organizations on the
other hand, such as the Ministry of Children & Family Development and Public
Safety & Solicitor General with populations of more than 2,500 employees scored
69 points and 66 points respectively on the same driver. This means that
employees belonging to larger organizations are less likely to agree that a
healthy atmosphere exists in their work units, that their work units value diversity
and that their work units are free from discrimination and harassment as
compared to employees who belong to small organizations.
Similar trends were also observed for the other ten drivers that showed strong
relationships with organization size. These results suggest that there may be
some factors present within large organizations that are influencing employee
perceptions of their work environment differently than in small organizations. One
possible contributing factor that could be looked at is on the differences in the
nature of work that may be present between small and large organizations.
Further study is needed to validate this as well as explore other factors that may
help explain the observed trends.
It is also interesting to note that while in general, large organizations tend to have
lower scores on the eleven drivers of engagement, substantial variability in
average scores within small organizations was also observed. Not all small
organizations tend to have higher driver scores than larger organizations.
Consideration on specific attributes unique to some small organizations also
needs to be taken into account.
Employees who are farther away in terms of reporting hierarchy from
the Head of the BC Public Service tend to have more negative
perceptions on all engagement characteristics and model drivers
than employees who are closer to the Head of the BC Public Service.
A reporting level variable was created for each of the WES 2010 respondents
based on their supervisory chain as contained in the CHIPS database2. For
example, reporting level 1 was assigned to the Head of the BC Public Service,
reporting level 2 was assigned to all employees reporting to the Head of the BC
Public Service, reporting level 3 then refers to employees who report to the
reporting level 2 employees and so on. The higher the reporting level number, the
lower the employees are in the reporting hierarchy chain and the farther they are
from the Head of the BC Public Service. Employees belonging to higher reporting
levels have more layers between them and the Head of the BC Public Service.
A clear and distinct relationship was observed between employee engagement
and model driver scores and the employees‟ reporting level. The farther
employees are from the Head of the BC Public Service (as represented by higher
numbers of reporting levels), the less engaged they tend to be and the lower their
2
BC Government Corporate Human Resources Information and Payroll System.
 TESTING THE ORGANIZATIONAL LANDSCAPE
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
average scores are for all of the engagement model drivers. For example,
employees belonging to the lowest reporting level (e.g. level 10) showed the
lowest average scores in all model drivers as compared to employees belonging
to the higher reporting levels (e.g. level 3). An exception to this is on the Stress &
Workload driver where the lowest average score is found on reporting level eight
instead of reporting level ten.
The rate of decrease in average scores is not the same between each reporting
level. Focusing on the Organization Satisfaction, Vision, Mission & Goals and
Executive-level Management drivers, the largest declines in average scores were
found to occur at the extreme ends of the reporting levels hierarchy (levels two to
four & levels nine to ten). In contrast, the average scores for these two drivers
and engagement characteristic declined only somewhat between reporting levels
four to nine. Put in another way, there is a steep decline in average scores for
these engagement characteristic and model drivers from levels two to four, which
plateaus between levels four to nine and becomes steep again between reporting
levels nine to ten. These inflection points may represent a change in the
organizational level work environment, such as functional breaks wherein
respondents at the division level (reporting level four) may break out into different
branches (reporting level five) that perform separate functions and which could
result in a different set of dynamics in the work environment. The inflection points
could also represent a difference in interaction between employees and their
executives, where most employees in levels four to nine may be located near or
in the same location as their executives and could visually see or interact with
them, while those in levels two to four may not have the same set-up. Further
investigation within specific organizations needs to be done to further pinpoint
what these inflection points represent.
A second reporting level variable was created which identifies the maximum
number of reporting levels within the organizations in the BC public Service.
Comparison was made between organizations with different maximum reporting
levels. For example, the driver scores for organizations with as many as 6
reporting levels were compared with the driver scores for organizations with up to
5 reporting levels or those with 7 reporting levels. Analysis results show that ten
model drivers have moderate to strong negative relationships with the number of
reporting levels present in organizations. Organizations which have more
reporting levels tend to have lower average scores on these ten drivers than
organizations with fewer reporting levels.
Among these ten drivers, the Pay & Benefits driver showed the highest negative
correlation with the number of reporting levels. Organizations with ten reporting
levels were found to show significantly lower Pay & Benefits scores compared to
organizations which have five to eight reporting levels. This indicates that
employees belonging to organizations whose reporting structure goes down to
level ten tend to be less positive on being fairly paid for the work they do and
having their benefits meet their (and their family‟s) needs well in comparison to
employees who belong to organizations which have five to eight reporting levels.
The findings from the two analysis (i.e., employee level and organizational level
analysis) involving reporting levels highlight the negative relationship that the
level of reporting hierarchy has with employee engagement and its model drivers.
 TESTING THE ORGANIZATIONAL LANDSCAPE
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The more layers in terms of reporting levels there are within organizations, the
lower the average engagement and driver scores tend to be.
It is possible that the distribution of the employees within each of the reporting
levels could also have an effect on these results. Analysis between the two
variables, namely organization size and reporting levels, showed that they are
highly correlated with each other, indicating that as organization size increases,
more reporting levels are also present within the organization. A key challenge in
fully understanding the effects of both organizational characteristics, organization
size and reporting level hierarchy, on employee engagement is the distribution of
employees within organizations. Broken out by hierarchy levels, the majority of
the employees would fall into reporting levels six and seven. Therefore, the
strong relationships found between the reporting level variable and some of the
drivers such as Pay & Benefits might also be a reflection of the larger proportion
of employees in these hierarchy levels compared to levels one to five. Further
research is needed to determine whether the observed relationships hold true
when a potential effect of employee distribution across hierarchy levels is
removed through additional analyses.
Employees who belong to more geographically dispersed
organizations tend to have more negative perceptions on five model
drivers, namely Respectful Environment, Staffing Practices,
Recognition, Professional Development and Stress & Workload than
employees who belong to centralized organizations.
The average scores for these five drivers tend to decrease as the number of
regions in which employees within organizations are located, increase. The most
significant average score differences on these five model drivers were found
between organizations where employees are centralized in one region as
compared to organizations where employees are dispersed across four regions.
The first two drivers having the highest negative correlation with the degree of
geographic dispersion are the Respectful Environment and Staffing Practices
drivers. Employees who belong to organizations which are dispersed across four
regions tend to have more negative perceptions on survey questions that indicate
that a healthy atmosphere exists in their work unit, that their work unit values
diversity and is free from discrimination. They also tend to have less positive
views on survey questions which indicate that in their work unit, the selection of a
person for a position is based on merit and that the process of selecting a person
for a position is fair.
Employees3 in organizations with more than 50% of their population
classified in leadership positions (Applied leadership, Business
leadership and Strategic leadership & Executives positions) showed
more positive perceptions on the Professional Development, Pay &
Benefits and Physical Environment & Tools drivers as compared to
employees in organizations with less than 15% classified in
leadership positions.
3
Employees in this section refer to respondents who are not in leadership positions.
 TESTING THE ORGANIZATIONAL LANDSCAPE
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Employees‟ perceptions of their work environment are positively correlated with
the proportion of leaders within their organizations. Among the fifteen model
drivers and engagement characteristics investigated, twelve were found to have
moderate to strong correlation with the proportion of leaders in the organization.
Organizations with higher proportions of leaders tend to have more positive
scores on these drivers. The most evident difference in drivers scores was
observed between organizations having small proportions of leaders (<15%) and
organizations with more than fifty percent leaders in their organization.
Of the twelve drivers that showed moderate to strong correlations with the
proportion of leaders‟ variable, the strongest relationships were found for the
Professional Development, Pay & Benefits and Physical Environment & Tools
drivers. Employees who belong to organizations with more leaders tend to have
more positive perceptions on survey questions that indicate that the quality of
training and development they receive is satisfactory and that they have
adequate opportunities to develop their skills. Similarly, these employees also
tend to agree that they are fairly paid for the work they do and that their benefits
meet their (and their family‟s) needs. In addition, they also indicate more
satisfaction with their physical environment and agree that they have the tools
needed to do their jobs as compared to employees who belong to organizations
with lesser proportions of leaders in their organizations.
Organizations that had workforce adjustments showed larger
decreases in scores between 2009 and 2010 on the model drivers
that make up the Development Path (e.g., Vision, Mission & Goals,
Executive-level Management, Professional Development drivers and
Organization Satisfaction) compared to organizations that did not
have workforce adjustments.
Between 2009 and 2010, the largest decreases (>10 points) for organizations
that had workforce adjustments (WFA) occurred in the drivers that make up the
Development Path, namely Organization Satisfaction, Vision, Mission & Goals,
Professional Development and Executive-level Management drivers. While
organizations that did not have WFA also saw a drop in these drivers, the
decrease was not as large as for organizations that did go through WFA. For
example, for organizations that did not have WFA, the average score for the
Vision, Mission & Goals driver decreased by 5 points between 2009 and 2010. In
comparison, the score for organizations with WFA decreased by 16 points on the
same driver. These results suggest that for an organizational level change such
as workforce adjustments, one of the key strategies in maintaining or improving
employee engagement involves focusing on the drivers that make up the
Development Path. The path suggests that while timely communication of the
vision, mission & goals and future directions of the organization is key, it is also
important to make the connection between organizational level changes and the
more personal and individual aspect of the organization through a maintained
focus on employee development.
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Employees belonging to organizations with workforce adjustments
resulting in a more than 5% decrease in population tend to have
larger decreases in scores between 2009 and 2010 on the BC Public
Service Commitment, Organization Satisfaction, Vision, Mission &
Goals and Staffing Practices drivers as compared to employees in
organizations with less than 5% population decrease due to
workforce adjustments.
The proportion of workforce adjustments is more strongly correlated with the
difference between the organizations‟ WES 2009 and WES 2010 driver scores
than the WES 2010 (single year) driver scores alone. Eleven out of fifteen model
drivers and engagement characteristics were found to have moderate to strong
correlations between the differences in WES 2009 and WES 2010 driver scores
and the proportion of workforce adjustments.
The highest correlations were found in the Commitment to the BC Public Service,
Organization Satisfaction, Vision, Mission & Goals and Staffing Practices drivers.
Employees belonging to organizations with higher percentage of decrease in
employee population due to workforce adjustments tend to show greater declines
in average scores on these engagement characteristics and model drivers
between 2009 and 2010. For example, the results on the BC Public Service
Commitment characteristic showed that most organizations which decreased by
more than 5% of their population due to workforce adjustments showed
approximately six to ten points decrease between 2009 and 2010 as compared to
the zero to four points decrease observed in organizations with less than 5%
population decrease.
In addition, among the six organizational characteristics investigated in this
report, the proportion of workforce adjustments was found to be the best predictor
of the decrease in average scores between 2009 and 2010 for the three
characteristics of engagement, namely BC Public Service Commitment,
Organizations Satisfaction and Job Satisfaction.
These results indicate that workforce adjustments have a significant negative
impact on employee engagement. The most substantial decreases in the eleven
engagement characteristics and driver scores between 2009 and 2010 tend to
occur when the proportion of employees impacted is greater than five percent of
the total population.
Overall, the results found in this report provide useful insights from the
organizational development perspective. Approaches to improvements can be
tailored to specific organizations while keeping organizational characteristics in
mind. For example, the knowledge that organizational size is negatively
correlated with Respectful Environment, Staffing Practices and Recognition could
be used to implement initiatives that focus on these drivers in large organizations.
Similarly, different approaches in Staffing Practices may be explored when
working with centralized organizations as compared to organizations where
employees are dispersed across four regions. The opportunities for
benchmarking can also be widened by looking at some best practices for specific
drivers between organizations with similar organizational characteristics.
 TESTING THE ORGANIZATIONAL LANDSCAPE
Page viii
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
A summary of the correlation results for each organizational characteristic
investigated in this study is found on page x.
Limitation of the Study
The analysis conducted in this study explored each organizational characteristic
separately and does not take into account the possible interconnections between
them or between the organizational characteristics and the engagement model
drivers themselves. Because of the similarities in trends found in some
organizational characteristics as well as the correlations found between variables
(e.g., organization size and reporting level variables), it is likely that these
organizational characteristics do not operate separately but may be associated
with the engagement model drivers through complex interconnected
relationships. It is therefore recommended that these possible relationships be
further explored and organizational variables simultaneously tested within the
existing BC Public Service Engagement Model using structural equation
modelling (SEM).
 TESTING THE ORGANIZATIONAL LANDSCAPE
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Summary of Results
Proportion of Leaders
Organization Size
-.45
-.48
-.75
-.72
-.71
-.69
-.68
-.66
-.66
-.59
-.58
-.52
-.51
-1.0
-.5
Commitment
Commitment
Job Satisfaction
Stress & Workload
Organization Satisfaction
Respectful Environment
Staffing Practices
Teamwork
Recognition
Physical Environment & Tools
Supervisory-level Mgmt
Professional Development
Pay & Benefits
Executive-level Mgmt
Empowerment
Vision, Mission & Goals
-.19
-.23
Reporting Levels in Organization
.57
Job Satisfaction
Stress & Workload
.67
Organization Satisfaction
.59
Respectful Environment
.59
Staffing Practices
.51
Teamwork
.51
Recognition
.79
Supervisory-level Mgmt
.32
Professional Development
.79
Pay & Benefits
.79
Executive-level Mgmt
.71
Empowerment
.44
Vision, Mission & Goals
.74
.0
.0
Correlation Coefficient
-.64
-.58
-.69
-.67
-.69
-.57
-.59
-.75
-.52
-.56
-.48
.65
Physical Environment & Tools
.5
1.0
Correlation Coefficient
Dispersion by Region
Commitment
Job Satisfaction
Stress & Workload
Organization Satisfaction
Respectful Environment
Staffing Practices
Teamwork
Recognition
Physical Environment & Tools
Supervisory-level Mgmt
Professional Development
Pay & Benefits
Executive-level Mgmt
Empowerment
Vision, Mission & Goals
-.08
-.12
-.52
-.33
-.64
-.63
-.48
-.56
Legend:
Statistically significant at p ≤ .01
Not statistically significant at p ≤ .01
-1.0
-.32
-.46
-.55
-.35
-.30
-.40
-.37
-.5
Correlation Coefficient
.0
Commitment
Job Satisfaction
Stress & Workload
Organization Satisfaction
Respectful Environment
Staffing Practices
Teamwork
Recognition
Physical Environment & Tools
Supervisory-level Mgmt
Professional Development
Pay & Benefits
Executive-level Mgmt
Empowerment
Vision, Mission & Goals
-.32
-.42
-.42
-.47
.28
-1.0
-.5
Correlation Coefficient
.0
Proportion of WFA
-.87
-.59
-.71
-.81
-.50
-.79
-.16
-.53
-.44
-.55
-.71
-.43
-.71
-.58
-.80
Commitment Difference (09-10)
Job Satisfaction Difference (09-10)
Stress & Workload Difference (09-10)
Organization Satisfaction Difference (09-10)
Respectful Environment Difference (09-10)
Staffing Practices Difference (09-10)
Teamwork Difference (09-10)
Recognition Difference (09-10)
Physical Environment & Tools Difference (09-10)
Supervisory-level Management Difference (09-10)
Professional Development Difference (09-10)
Pay & Benefits Difference (09-10)
Executive-level Management Difference (09-10)
Empowerment Difference (09-10)
Vision, Mission & Goals Difference (09-10)
-1.0
-.5
.0
Correlation Coefficient
Page x
TABLE OF CONTENTS
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1.
INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................... 1
1.1 Relevance of Organizational Characteristics in the Employees‟ Perceptions of
their Work Environment ................................................................................... 1
1.2 Key Research Questions ................................................................................. 2
2.
KEY FINDINGS ................................................................................................................. 4
2.1 Does the size of the organization influence employee perceptions on
engagement and its model drivers? ................................................................. 4
2.2 Do employee engagement and perceptions of their work environment vary with
respect to the number of reporting levels present in their organizations? ......... 8
2.3 Does the degree of employee dispersion/centralization by work location in
organizations have a relationship with employee engagement and perceptions
of the work environment?............................................................................... 14
2.4 Does the number of leaders in the organization matter? ................................ 18
2.5 How did the recent workforce adjustments impact employee engagement and
perceptions of the work environment? ........................................................... 22
3.
CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS ................................................................ 29
APPENDIX A: MORE ON THE EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT MODEL .................................... 34
APPENDIX B: ADDITIONAL RESULTS................................................................................... 36
APPENDIX C: DRIVER DESCRIPTIONS ................................................................................. 41
TESTING THE ORGANIZATIONAL LANDSCAPE
Page xi
INTRODUCTION
1. Introduction
The BC Public Service employee engagement model established the importance
of the 12 model drivers in influencing the three characteristics that make up the
overall employee engagement (i.e., BC Public Service Commitment, Job
Satisfaction and Organization Satisfaction). The model drivers themselves were
based on employee responses to specific survey questions contained in the Work
Environment Survey (WES) questionnaire, which gave indications on what the
respondents‟ perceptions were with regards to specific areas in their work
environment. This study aims to explore the possible role of the structural
aspects of the organization in influencing employee responses to the survey
questions that make up the engagement model.
Specifically, this study investigates whether employee perceptions of their work
environment or their responses in the WES questions are in some way linked to
certain characteristics of the organizations that they belong to. The organizational
characteristics investigated include organization size, number of reporting levels,
geographic dispersion by work location, number of leaders within the organization
and specific organizational changes that impact the work environment, such as
workforce adjustments (WFA).
1.1 Relevance of Organizational Characteristics in the Employees’
Perceptions of their Work Environment
A literature review conducted by Helfrich (2009) cited studies which showed that
organizational characteristics which operate at the macro level (e.g., level of
bureaucracy, type of leadership, and organizational culture) and other
organizational characteristics operating at a unit or team-level (e.g., climate within
the team, responsiveness of supervisor, support from other workers and inclusion
or involvement in client planning) were highly influential in determining the
outcome of the services delivered4. Yoo, Brooks, & Patti (2007) presented a
conceptual framework for examining organizational constructs as predictors of
service effectiveness. Their framework contained four domains, three of which
were based on human relations theory (e.g., worker responses to work
conditions, such as job satisfaction and organizational commitment, and worker
attributes) while one domain was based on contingency theory (e.g.,
centralization and routinization)5. What is interesting about their framework is that
it combines the role of organizational structure as well as contingency factors with
factors involving worker characteristics, work conditions and worker perceptions
of their work environment and establishes their relationship to service
effectiveness. The organization structure part of their framework was based on
the results from studies conducted by Crook (20016); Arches (19917); Weinman,
Helfrich, W. (2009). Does the Organization Matter? An Examination of the Link Between Organizational Management Practices and Client
Outcomes. Victoria, BC: Federation of Child & Family Services of BC Research to Practice Network.
5 Yoo, J., Brooks, D.,& Patti, R. (2007). Organization Constructs as Predictors of Effectiveness in Child Welfare Interventions. Child Welfare,
86(1), 53-78.
66 Crook, W.P. (2001). Trickle-down bureaucracy: Does the organization affect client responses to program? Administration in Social Work, 26,
37-59.
7 Arches, J. (1991). Social structure, burnout, and job satisfaction, Social Work, 35, 202-206.
4
 TESTING THE ORGANIZATIONAL LANDSCAPE
Page 1
INTRODUCTION
Grimes, Hsi, Justice & Schoolar (19798) and Schmid (1992a9), which showed that
structural characteristics such as centralization, role specialization and
formalization were found to be related to efficiency in service delivery and worker
responses. While their framework is mainly geared towards child welfare
organizations and related fields, its application to organizations which provide
client services in general is apparent.
Relationships between characteristics of the organization and worker responses
have also been posed by several studies. For example, Gupta (2008) indicates
that employee job satisfaction decreases as the size of the organization
increases. He posits that as the amount of task specialization increases with size,
more specialization and focused work design increases peer competition and
reduces career growth opportunities10.
In the BC Public Service, while the link between employee engagement and
citizen‟s service satisfaction has been well established, the possible connection
between employee engagement and the characteristics of the organizations is
still to be explored.
1.2
Key Research Questions
This study examines the possible relationships that may exist between
organizational characteristics and employees‟ perceptions of their work
environment as represented by the three engagement characteristics and 12
model drivers within the BC Public Service Engagement Model. More details on
the model can be found in Appendix A. Organizational data from the CHIPS11
database were combined with the WES 2010 results to enable the analysis of the
engagement model drivers with respect to certain organizational characteristics.
The selection of organizational characteristics was determined based on what
were conceptually possible predictors of employee responses according to
related literature as well as the availability of the information in CHIPS. Table 1
summarizes the different organizational characteristics tested in the analysis and
the corresponding CHIPS variables that were used to calculate them.
These six organizational characteristics were investigated in the context of their
possible relationships with the three engagement characteristics and the 12
model drivers. While most of the correlation results in the succeeding sections
show the correlation coefficients for all the engagement characteristics and
drivers, only those drivers and characteristics which had the highest correlations
were discussed in further detail to illustrate the general trends.
Weinman, M.L., Grimes, R.M., Hsi, B.P., Justice, B., & Schoolar, J.C. (1979). Organizational structure and effectiveness in general hospital
psychiatry departments. Administration in Mental Health, 7, 32-42.
9 Schmid, H. (1992a). Relationships between decentralized authority and structural properties in human service organizations: Implications for
service effectiveness. Administration in Social Work, 16(1), 25-39.
10 Gupta, A. (2008). Organization’s Size and Span of Control. Practical Management. Retrieved December 15, 2010, from http://www.practicalmanagement.com/pdf/Organization-Development/Organization-s-size-and-span-of-control.pdf?format=phocapdf
11 BC Government Corporate Human Resources Information and Payroll System
8
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Page 2
INTRODUCTION
Table 1. Organizational Characteristics Investigated in this Study and their Source
Variables in the CHIPS database
Organizational Characteristics
Source Variable in CHIPS
1.
Size of Organization
Count of in-scope employees per Ministry
2.
Number of Reporting levels
Employee Supervisor column
3.
Geographic dispersion by Region
Work City
FSA12
4.
Geographic dispersion by
Postal Code
5.
Proportion of leaders in the organization
Job classification
6.
Proportion of WFA impact
Identified by Ministry13
The five key research questions which guided the analysis in this report were:
1.
Does the size of the organization influence employee perceptions on
engagement and its model drivers?
2.
Do employee engagement and perceptions of the work environment vary
with respect to the number of reporting levels present in organizations?
3.
Does the degree of employee dispersion/centralization by work location in
organizations have a relationship with employee engagement and
perceptions of the work environment?
4.
Does the number of leaders14 in the organization matter?
5.
How did the recent (2010) workforce adjustments impact employee
engagement and perceptions of the work environment?
Forward sorting area (FSA) refers to the first three characters in the postal code.
WFA information was not contained in CHIPS and was obtained separately from the BC Public Service Agency
14 Employees within the Applied leadership, Business leadership and Strategic leadership & Executives job classifications
12
13
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Page 3
KEY FINDINGS
2. Key Findings
2.1
Does the size of the organization influence
perceptions on engagement and its model drivers?
employee
Organization size is generally determined by the number of employees within the
organizations. This section investigates possible connections between the size of
the organizations within the BC Public Service and the engagement
characteristics and model drivers. For WES 2010, there were 28 organizations in
the BC Public Service that were considered as in-scope for the survey, totalling
25,436 employees. To create the organization size variable, each of the 28
organizations is assigned an organization size value which is equal to the total
employee count within each organization as of March 2, 2010, when the WES
2010 population frame was finalized. The size of each organization used for this
analysis can be found in Table 11 (Appendix B). Only 25 of the 28 organizations
were included in all succeeding analyses, as organizations whose in scope
populations were ≤ 50 employees were excluded15 (i.e., Environmental
Assessment Office, Office of the Premier and Olympic Games Secretariat). The
organization size variable was then correlated16 with the engagement
characteristics as well as the model driver average scores for each of the 25
organizations17. Table 2 shows the resulting correlation coefficients between
organization size and the engagement drivers.
Table 2. Correlation coefficients for Organizational Size and Engagement Model
Drivers and Characteristics Ranked According to Strength
Engagement and Model Drivers
Respectful Environment
Staffing Practices
Teamwork
Recognition
Physical Environment & Tools
Supervisory-level Management
Professional Development
Pay & Benefits
Executive-level Management
Empowerment
Vision, Mission & Goals
Organization Satisfaction
Stress & Workload
Job Satisfaction
Commitment
Organization Size Correlation
-0.75
-0.72
-0.71
-0.69
-0.68
-0.66
-0.66
-0.59
-0.58
-0.52
-0.51
-0.48
-0.45
-0.23
-0.19
Very Strong
Relationship with
Organization size
Weak or No
Relationship with
Organization size
* Blue highlighted cells indicate significant correlations at p ≤ 0.01 level.
Organizations with less than fifty in scope employees are excluded in the analysis to maintain confidentiality of individual results. Further
break down into sub-categories would lead to very small group counts.
16 Correlation indicates the presence, direction and strength of the relationship between organization size and the model drivers. Correlation
coefficients range from -1 to 1 where values nearer to 1 or -1 indicate moderate to strong relationships and values nearer to zero indicates
weak or no relationship.
17 Assumption was made that there was no bias in response rates.
15
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KEY FINDINGS
Employees who belong to large organizations (≥ 2,000 employees) tend to
have more negative perceptions on survey questions related to the
Respectful Environment, Staffing Practices, Teamwork, Recognition and
Physical Environment & Tools drivers than employees who belong to
smaller organizations (< 2,000 employees).
The results in Table 2 show that eleven out of fifteen model drivers and
characteristics have significant negative relationships with organization size. As
the size of the organization increases, the average scores for these eleven
drivers tend to decrease. The top five drivers with the strongest relationship with
the size of the organization were Respectful Environment, Staffing Practices,
Teamwork, Recognition and Physical Environment & Tools. Interestingly, the
three characteristics of engagement, namely, BC Public Service Commitment,
Job Satisfaction and Organization Satisfaction, did not have any significant
correlation with organization size.
Focusing on the driver with the strongest relationship with organization size as an
example, Figure 1 shows the plot of organization size as represented by the
count of employees within the organizations and each organization‟s WES 2010
average score for Respectful Environment.
Figure 1. Larger Organizations tend to have lower Respectful Environment average
scores as compared to Smaller Organizations
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KEY FINDINGS
The trend shows that as the size of the population within the organizations
increase, the average scores for the Respectful Environment driver decrease.
Large organizations with employee populations equal or greater than 2,000, tend
to have Respectful Environment average scores which are ≤ 71 points, while
small organizations with population counts of less than 2,000, tend to have
Respectful Environment driver average scores ≥ 71 points. As an example,
smaller organizations such as Tourism, Culture & Arts and Healthy Living &
Sport, whose employee populations counts were less than 200, had average
Respectful Environment scores of 77 points and 82 points respectively. Larger
organizations on the other hand, such as Children & Family Development and
Public Safety & Solicitor General, whose populations were more than 2,500
employees, have Respectful Environment average scores of 69 points and 66
points respectively. Based on the survey questions that compose the Respectful
Environment driver, this indicates that in comparison with employees who belong
to smaller organizations, employees belonging to larger organizations are less
likely to agree that a healthy atmosphere exists in their work units and that their
work units value diversity and are free from discrimination and harassment.
Some deviations from the general trend were observed. A few smaller
organizations were found to have similar or lower Respectful Environment
average scores than the large organizations. Within the large organizations, one
organization with a population of approximately 2,500 showed a lower Respectful
Environment score (66 points) as compared to an organization with greater than
4,000 employees (69 points). However, when all small organizations (20
organizations) and all large organizations (5 organizations) were grouped and the
average scores for the Respectful Environment driver between the two groups
were compared, the small organizations showed statistically significant higher
average scores than large organizations18 (Table 14 in Appendix B).
In addition, while some small organizations were found to have low Respectful
Environment scores, there were no large organizations which had average
scores greater than 71 points.
Similar results were found in the other drivers which showed significant
correlations with organization size. For example, the results for Staffing Practices
(Figure 2) also showed that the average scores decrease as organization size
increase. Specifically, the Staffing Practices average scores for small
organizations ranged from 54 to 77 points while for larger organizations, the
Staffing Practices average scores ranged from 50 to 56 points. Employees in
most of the small organizations tend to have more positive perceptions on survey
questions which indicate that “in their work units, the selection of a person for a
position is based on merit” and “the process of selecting a person for a position is
fair” as compared to employees who belong to large organizations.
18
Significance was determined at p value <0.01.
 TESTING THE ORGANIZATIONAL LANDSCAPE
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KEY FINDINGS
Figure 2. Average Scores for Staffing Practices decreased as Organization Size
Increased
It is likely that factors associated with organization size may also play are role in
influencing this trend. One possible factor could be the differences in the nature
of work or type of jobs within small or large organizations. For example, large
organizations may be composed of jobs (e.g. enforcement corrections or social
work) which pose certain challenges on having a respectful work environment as
compared to the type of jobs that are prevalent in small organizations. Further
investigation is needed to pinpoint these factors and their relationship with
organization size.
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KEY FINDINGS
2.2 Do employee engagement and perceptions of the work
environment vary with respect to the number of reporting levels
present in organizations?
Communication is one of the key elements present in some drivers in the
engagement model. The Vision, Mission & Goals, Supervisory-level Management
and Executive-level Management drivers are composed of survey questions
around communication. These drivers in turn strongly influence Organization
Satisfaction, which for WES 2010 had the lowest mean score (60 points) as
compared to the two other engagement characteristics, namely Job Satisfaction
(67 points) and BC Public Service Commitment (67 points). Conceptually, one
organizational characteristic that could potentially influence the responses to
survey questions that involve communication at the organizational level is the
degree of reporting hierarchy present within organizations.
The more reporting levels that are present in an organization, the larger the gap
is between employees and the top executives. It is hypothesized that as one
goes further down the reporting levels in the organizations, a decrease in some of
the model driver average scores is likely to occur, specifically on those drivers
where communication is one of the key components. This section tests this
hypothesis and looks at how the number of reporting levels present in
organizations could be linked to employee engagement and employee
perceptions of their work environment.
Two types of analyses were conducted: comparison of model driver scores
between different employee reporting levels19 in the overall BC Public Service
and comparison of driver scores between organizations with different highest
reporting level values. In the first analysis, the reporting level information for each
of the WES 2010 respondents is identified and respondents with the same
reporting level value within the overall BC Public Service are grouped.
Comparison of average scores between these groups of different reporting levels
is then conducted20. The process of identifying reporting level values for each
respondent is illustrated in Figure 3, where the Deputy Minister (DM)/Head of the
BC Public Service was designated as Level 1, employees who directly report to
the Level 1 position according to the data in CHIPS were then identified as Level
2, employees who directly report to Level 2 employees were designated as Level
3, and so on. The larger the reporting level value, the farther away that level is
from the DM/Head of the BC Public Service and the lower it is in the
organization‟s reporting hierarchy chain. Each employee is only counted once
and belongs to a single reporting level value.
The term reporting levels as used in this report refer to the hierarchical groupings within the organizations that were based on the
management/supervisory chain. The variable was created using the employee supervisors’ data from CHIPS where a reporting level hierarchy
at the respondent level was then mapped out starting from the top level of the BC Public Service organization.
20 Reporting levels 1, 11, 12 and 13 were excluded in the analysis due to small sample count.
19
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KEY FINDINGS
Figure 3. Reporting Level Designations within the BC Public Service
Organization
DM / Head of the BC Public Service
Level 1
DM
DM
ADM
ADM
ADM
ADM
DM
ADM
Etc.
Level 2
Level 3
Level 13
Mapping out the reporting levels for the WES 2010 respondents (N = 21,421)
showed that there are thirteen reporting levels in the overall BC Public Service.
The count of respondents within each reporting level is shown in Table 3. For
example, there are 30 respondents belonging to the second reporting level which
make up .1% of the BC Public Service respondents. The BC Public Service
respondent population was found to be normally distributed across levels with
52% of the respondents clustered within levels six and seven21.
Table 3. Distribution of WES 2010 Respondents across the Different Reporting
Levels within the BC Public Service
Organization Level Number
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
Respondents Included in the Analysis
Respondents Excluded in the Analysis
Count of Respondents
*
30
198
890
2650
4615
6579
3815
896
73
*
*
*
19748
1673
Percent of Respondents
*
0.1
1
4
12
22
31
18
4
0.3
*
*
*
92
8
* Level 1, 11, 12 and 13 respondents were excluded from the above table due to small sample count.
There were 1,673 respondents who were excluded in Table 3. These respondents either did not have supervisor names identified in CHIPS
as of March 2, 2010 or were part of a chain where the supervisor at the higher level did not have a supervisor name identified in CHIPS. These
blank supervisor entries were mainly due to supervisors who have exited out of the BC Public Service or moved to another organization with no
replacement identified in the database at the time the data was pulled.
21
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KEY FINDINGS
Respondents’ reporting levels comparison of engagement and model driver
scores
The results from the first analysis showed that there was a distinct trend present
at the overall BC Public Service level when the average scores for the
engagement characteristics and model drivers were plotted by the respondent
reporting level variable.
Employees who are farther away in terms of reporting hierarchy from the
Head of the BC Public Service tend to have more negative perceptions on
all engagement characteristics and model drivers as compared to
employees who are closer to the Head of the BC Public Service.
The average scores for employee engagement and its drivers decreased as the
reporting level increased (Table 12 in Appendix B). Employees who were farther
away from the DM/Head of the BC Public Service tend to have lower average
scores in all model drivers including overall engagement, as compared to those
who were nearer to the top of the reporting hierarchy chain. For example,
employees at level nine had an average score of 52 points on the Recognition
driver while employees at level 4 had an average score of 74 points in the same
driver.
A slight deviation from the trend was found on the Stress and Workload driver,
where the decrease plateaus between levels seven to nine and begins to slightly
increase in level ten. This may suggest that when it comes to having workload
and work-related stress that is manageable, respondents in levels seven, eight
and nine felt the highest pinch as compared to the other levels.
Comparison of average score differences between adjacent reporting levels
further show that the largest statistically significant decreases in mean scores
between two adjacent levels occur at levels three to four and levels nine to ten22
(Refer to cells marked in blue in Table 13, Appendix B23). In light of these results,
limiting the organization to be equal to or less than nine levels may be an option
for consideration. Further investigation may also be needed to understand why
larger gaps in employee perceptions on these drivers are occurring between
these adjacent reporting levels as compared to the other adjacent reporting
levels.
The largest declines in scores across reporting levels for Organization
Satisfaction, Vision, Mission & Goals and Executive-level Management
drivers occur at the outer boundaries of the BC Public Service reporting
levels.
Focusing on the three drivers in which communication is a key component
(namely Organization Satisfaction, Vision, Mission & Goals and Executive-level
Management drivers), the results showed that the highest average score declines
occurred between levels two to four and levels nine to ten, as can be observed
Comparison of mean scores was done using one way analysis of variance (ANOVA).
Although the differences in value between levels two and three were also large, these were not found to be statistically significant due to
higher standard errors associated with smaller sample size present at these levels.
22
23
 TESTING THE ORGANIZATIONAL LANDSCAPE
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KEY FINDINGS
from the slope of the lines in Figure 4. The average score declines between
levels four to nine weren‟t as steep in comparison. Specifically, the average
scores for Organization Satisfaction, Vision, Mission & Goals and Executive-level
Management decreased by approximately 11, 12 and 14 average points
respectively per level increase between reporting levels two to four. Similarly,
from level nine to ten, the slope decreased by 10, 13 and 9 average points in
Organizational Satisfaction, Vision, Mission & Goals and Executive-Level
Management scores respectively. However, between reporting levels four to nine,
the decreases in average scores per reporting level increase weren‟t as large, at
approximately 3 to 4 average points decrease for the three engagement
characteristic and model drivers.
Figure 4. Largest decreases in Scores for Organization Satisfaction, Vision,
Mission & Goals and Executive-level Management Occur at the Outer Reporting
Levels
100
Organization Satisfaction 2010
90
Vision, Mission & Goals 2010
Driver Mean Score
80
Executive Level 2010
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
2
3
4
5
6
Reporting Level
7
8
9
10
These results suggest that there may be differences in the work environment
between the top reporting levels (levels two to four) as compared to that found in
the lower reporting levels (levels four to nine) that are associated with the steep
decline of scores between these levels. The inflection points may represent a
change in the organizational level work environment, such as functional breaks
wherein respondents at the division level (reporting level four) may break out into
different branches (reporting level five) that perform separate functions and which
could result in a different set of dynamics in the work environment. The inflection
points could also represent a difference in interaction between employees and
their executives, where most employees in levels four to nine may be located
near or in the same location as their executives and could visually see or interact
with them, while those in levels two to four may not have the same set-up.
Further investigation needs to be done to further pinpoint what these inflection
points represent.
 TESTING THE ORGANIZATIONAL LANDSCAPE
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KEY FINDINGS
Organizational reporting level comparison of engagement and model driver
scores
In the second analysis, each organization within the BC Public Service is
assigned the reporting level value equal to the highest reporting level of the
respondents within each organization. Organizations with the same number of
highest reporting levels are then grouped and comparison of driver scores
between these organizational groups is conducted. The highest reporting level
values for each of the organizations within the BC Public Service can be found in
Table 11 (Appendix B). For example, the Ministry of Education goes down to
eight reporting levels, therefore this organization was assigned a value of 8. The
Ministry of Education is then grouped with other organizations which also have
eight reporting levels and compared with other groups of organizations with
different maximum reporting levels.
The results from the second analysis showed that there is a negative relationship
between the number of reporting levels present in the organizations and the
average engagement and model driver scores. Organizations which contain more
reporting levels tend to show lower average scores on the engagement
characteristics and model drivers highlighted in Table 4 below.
Table 4. Correlation Results for the Number of Reporting Levels in Organizations
and the Engagement Model Drivers showing the strongest correlation occurring in
the Pay & Benefits driver
Engagement and Model Drivers
Pay & Benefits
Physical Environment & Tools
Teamwork
Recognition
Respectful Environment
Professional Development
Staffing Practices
Supervisory-level Management
Empowerment
Executive-level Management
Vision, Mission & Goals
Organization Satisfaction
Job Satisfaction
Stress & Workload
Commitment
Correlation for Organizational Reporting Level
-0.75
-0.69
-0.69
-0.67
-0.64
-0.59
-0.58
-0.57
-0.56
-0.52
-0.48
-0.47
-0.42
-0.42
-0.32
Very Strong
Relationship with
Number of Reporting
Levels within
Organizations
Weak or No
Relationship with
Number of Reporting
Levels within
Organizations
* Blue highlighted cells indicate significant correlations at p ≤ 0.01 level.
Among the fifteen engagement characteristics and model drivers, the Pay &
Benefits driver showed the strongest negative relationship with the number
of reporting levels present within organizations.
While ten engagement model drivers showed moderate to strong correlations
with the organizational reporting level variable, the Pay & Benefits driver was
found to have the highest negative correlation. The Pay & Benefits driver is
composed of two survey questions: “I am fairly paid for the work I do” and “My
 TESTING THE ORGANIZATIONAL LANDSCAPE
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KEY FINDINGS
benefits meet my (and my family’s) needs well.” This result indicates that
respondents belonging to organizations with higher numbers of reporting levels,
on the average, tend to have more negative perceptions that they are fairly paid
for the work they do and that their benefits meet their/their family‟s needs. Figure
5 plots out the average scores for the Pay & Benefits driver and the different
groups of organizations within the BC Public Service based on the number of
reporting levels present within these organizations. Organizations whose
reporting hierarchy reached up to ten levels showed significantly lower Pay &
Benefits average scores as compared to organizations which only had a
maximum number of five to eight reporting levels24.
However, while the relationship between the number of reporting levels and the
Pay & Benefits driver is strong, it is also likely that other organizational
characteristics and factors are also playing a role. For example, large
organizations would likely also tend to have higher numbers of reporting levels
and may also contain higher proportions of specialized occupations that may
have issues with Pay & Benefits. Analysis on interconnections between these
organizational characteristics is currently not covered within the scope of this
report.
Mean Score for Pay & Benefits 2010
Figure 5. Organizations with More Reporting Levels tend to have lower Pay &
Benefits Average Scores
85
75
75
65
59
60
59
55
55
50
45
35
25
15
5
6
7
8
9
10
Number of Reporting Levels within Organizations
The other nine model drivers and engagement characteristics that showed
moderate to strong relationships with the number of reporting levels within the
organizations also showed similar results as that found on the Pay & Benefits
driver. The average scores on these model drivers tend to decrease when the
number of reporting levels within organizations increased.
24
Comparison of means was done using one way analysis of variance (ANOVA). Significance was determined at p≤ 0.01.
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KEY FINDINGS
2.3 Does the degree of employee dispersion/centralization by work
location in organizations have a relationship with employee
engagement and perceptions of the work environment?
In this section, the possible relationship between employee engagement and the
degree to which organizations are dispersed across various work locations or are
centralized within one location is explored. An organization where the majority of
its employees are clustered within one work location may tend to present a
different work environment as compared to an organization where employees are
spread across various geographic work locations. This difference in work
environment may result in differences in employee perceptions.
Two variables were used to represent the degree of dispersion or centralization
of organizations in the analysis: by region and by count of FSA25. The region
variable identified the organizations by the number of regions (from one to four) in
which the respondents within an organization were located (i.e., Southern
Interior, Northern British Columbia, Vancouver Island and South Coast). The
count of FSA variable on the other hand, contains the total count of FSAs in
which the employees within an organization were located. The FSA variable was
taken from the respondents‟ postal code data, while the region variable was
derived from the respondents‟ work city information in CHIPS. Table 11 in
Appendix B provides further details on these two variables by organization.
As the degree of dispersion by region within organizations increases, the
average scores for the Respectful Environment, Staffing Practices,
Recognition, Professional Development and Stress & Workload drivers
tend to decrease.
Correlation results between the engagement characteristics and model drivers
and the number of regions within organizations showed that there is a negative
and moderate relationship between the number of regions that the employee
population within each organization are dispersed and five of the engagement
model drivers (Table 5). Organizations which are more regionally dispersed
tended to have lower average scores in the Respectful Environment, Staffing
Practices, Recognition, Professional Development and Stress & Workload
drivers. Among these five model drivers, the top two drivers showing the highest
significant correlations with the number of regions within organizations were
Respectful Environment and Staffing Practices.
25
Forward sorting area (FSA) refers to the first three characters in the postal code.
 TESTING THE ORGANIZATIONAL LANDSCAPE
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KEY FINDINGS
Table 5. Correlation Results for Dispersion by Region Variable showing Moderate
Relationship with Five Model Drivers
Engagement and Model
Drivers
Respectful Environment
Staffing Practices
Recognition
Professional Development
Stress & Workload
Teamwork
Supervisory-level Management
Empowerment
Vision, Mission & Goals
Pay & Benefits
Organization Satisfaction
Physical Environment & Tools
Executive-level Management
Job Satisfaction
Commitment
Dispersion by Region
-0.64
-0.63
-0.56
-0.55
-0.52
-0.48
-0.46
-0.40
-0.37
-0.35
-0.33
-0.32
-0.30
-0.12
-0.08
Moderate to Strong
Relationship with
Number of Regions
Weak or No
Relationship with
Number of Regions
* Blue highlighted cells indicate significant correlations at p ≤ 0.01 level.
Employees who belong to more geographically dispersed organizations
tend to have more negative perceptions on the Respectful Environment and
Staffing Practices drivers as compared to employees who belong to
centralized organizations.
Focusing on the top two drivers which showed the highest correlation with the
dispersion by region variable as examples, Figure 6 presents the average scores
for the Respectful Environment and Staffing Practices drivers by number of
regions within organizations. The graph shows the decreasing trend in average
scores as the number of regions in which employees within organizations were
dispersed increased. The average score differences between adjacent region
variables (e.g., one region in comparison with two regions) were found to be
statistically insignificant26. The difference in average scores however was
substantial and significant when the scores for organizations centralized within
one region were compared against the scores for organizations which are
dispersed in four regions. Organizations centralized in one region showed
significantly higher average scores for both the Respectful Environment (82
points versus 74 points) and Staffing Practices drivers (72 points versus 59
points) than organizations dispersed in four regions27.
26
27
Comparison of mean scores was done using one way analysis of variance (ANOVA).
Significance determined at p ≤ 0.05.
 TESTING THE ORGANIZATIONAL LANDSCAPE
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KEY FINDINGS
Figure 6. Respectful Environment and Staffing Practices driver scores decreased
as the number of regions in which employees are located within organizations
increased
85
82
80
Mean Scores 2010
76
72
75
74
69
65
65
59
55
45
Respectful Environment
35
Staffing Practices
25
15
1
2
3
4
Number of Regions Within Organizations
Although the result may suggest that regional dispersion in itself has some
relationship to the average scores for these model drivers, it is also possible that
the region variable may be representing other factors in the organization, such as
nature of work or functions present in organizations that are more dispersed
rather than just the geographical work location itself. As an example, while the
Public Safety and Solicitor General (PSSG) organization may tend to be more
dispersed (4 regions), it also has correctional facilities which may impact the work
environment differently than other organizations which are composed mostly of
offices. This difference in work environments may influence the driver scores
more as compared to regional dispersion per se.
A similar trend on the engagement model driver scores was found when the FSA
variable was used. The degree of dispersion by count of FSAs within
organizations showed negative correlations with eight out of fifteen engagement
model drivers and characteristics (Table 6). Organizations with employees
dispersed in more FSA work locations tended to have lower scores in the
Respectful Environment, Staffing Practices, Physical Environment & Tools,
Teamwork, Pay & Benefits, Recognition, Professional Development and
Supervisory-level Management drivers. While both the Respectful Environment
and Staffing Practices drivers were still the top two drivers with the highest
correlations, there were some differences observed in the strength of
relationships found for other drivers. For example, the Physical Environment
driver did not have any correlation with organization dispersion by region but
showed a moderate correlation when the count of FSAs was employed.
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KEY FINDINGS
Table 6. Correlation Results for Dispersion by Count of FSA and Engagement
and its Model Drivers
Engagement and Model Drivers
Respectful Environment
Staffing Practices
Physical Environment & Tools
Teamwork
Pay & Benefits
Recognition
Professional Development
Supervisory-level Management
Stress & Workload
Executive-level Management
Empowerment
Vision, Mission & Goals
Organization Satisfaction
Commitment
Job Satisfaction
Dispersion by FSA
-0.62
-0.60
-0.57
-0.57
-0.55
-0.55
-0.53
-0.53
-0.42
-0.38
-0.36
-0.32
-0.31
-0.07
-0.05
Moderate to Strong
Relationship with
Number of FSA
Weak or No
Relationship with
Number of FSA
* Blue highlighted cells indicate significance at p ≤ 0.01 level.
As a sample comparison, Figure 7 shows the general decreasing trend in the
Respectful Environment driver average scores as the count of FSAs in
organizations increased. There were a number of overlaps observed where
organizations dispersed in fewer FSAs showed lower Respectful Environment
average scores than those which had higher FSA counts. Due to this variability,
the count of regions discussed earlier in this section provides more distinct
results and better represents the organizational level relationships between the
employee engagement model and geographic dispersion by work location than
the count of FSA.
Figure 7. Respectful Environment Mean Scores by Count of FSAs within
Organizations showing decreasing trend with increased FSA dispersion
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KEY FINDINGS
2.4 Does the Number of Leaders in the Organization Matter?
The impact of leaders on employee engagement and its drivers has been well
established in the BC Public Service engagement model, where both the
Executive-level Management and Supervisor-level Management drivers serve as
the foundation blocks strongly influencing the rest of the drivers. The higher the
organization‟s scores on the Executive-level Management and Supervisory-level
Management drivers, the higher the scores would be on the three engagement
characteristics. This section explores the quantitative aspect of leadership by
looking at the possible influence that the proportion or number of leaders present
within the organizations might have on the organization‟s engagement and model
driver scores.
The proportion of leaders for each of the organizations28 within the BC Public
Service was calculated by taking the percentage of employees who were in the
Applied Leadership, Business Leadership and Strategic Leadership & Executives
job classifications with respect to the total population of employees within the
organizations. Each organization was then assigned a value equivalent to the
percentage of leaders within the organization (Table 11 in Appendix B).
Organizations with similar proportions of leaders were then grouped together. All
analyses were done using average scores which excluded scores based on
survey responses from the leaders themselves to minimize bias. Only data from
respondents who were not in leadership positions were included and compose
the organization‟s average scores. The analysis led to some revealing trends.
Employees29 who belong to organizations with more leaders tend to have
more positive perceptions on twelve engagement model drivers and
characteristics.
Among the twelve engagement model drivers and characteristics which showed
moderate to strong positive correlations with the proportion of leaders in
organizations, the Professional Development, Pay & Benefits and Physical
Environment & Tools drivers were found to have the strongest relationship with
the number of leaders in the organizations. Focusing on these three drivers, this
indicates that in general, employees belonging to organizations which have more
leaders within their organizations tend to agree that their organizations support
their work related learning and development, that they have adequate
opportunities to develop their skills and that the quality of training and
development they have received is satisfactory. Similarly, these employees also
have more positive perceptions on questions related to fair pay and on their
benefits meeting their (and their family‟s) needs well. They also are more
satisfied with their physical work environment and indicate stronger agreement
that they have the tools they need to do their jobs well as compared to
employees who belong to organizations with lower proportions of leaders.
Excluding organizations with population ≤50 employees.
Within this section (section 2.4), the term “employees” refer to respondents who are in non-leadership positions. Responses coming from
those in leadership positions were excluded from the analysis.
28
29
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KEY FINDINGS
The results for the other nine drivers and characteristics also show the same
trend. As the number of leaders within the organizations increase, the average
scores for these drivers tend to increase.
Table 7. The Proportion of Leaders in Organizations showed strong correlations
with Professional Development, Pay & Benefits and Physical Environment & Tools
Drivers
Engagement and Model Drivers
(Leaders Scores Excluded)
Professional Development
Pay & Benefits
Physical Environment & Tools
Vision, Mission & Goals
Executive-level Management
Stress & Workload
Recognition
Respectful Environment
Organization Satisfaction
Commitment
Teamwork
Staffing Practices
Empowerment
Supervisory-level Management
Job Satisfaction
Proportion of Leaders
0.79
0.79
0.79
0.74
0.71
0.67
0.65
0.59
0.59
0.57
0.51
0.51
0.44
0.32
0.28
Very Strong
Relationship with
Proportion of Leaders
within Organizations
Weak or No
Relationship with
Proportion of Leaders
within Organizations
* Blue highlighted cells indicate significance at p ≤ 0.01 level.
To further illustrate this relationship, the next sections discuss two of the drivers
which have strong correlations with the proportion of leaders in the organizations
namely Professional Development and Pay & Benefits drivers.
An increasing trend in the Professional Development average scores was
observed as the proportion of leaders within the organizations increased (Figure
8). Focusing on the extreme ends of the data, the organization with 95% of its
employee population belonging to leadership positions showed the highest
Professional Development average score of 86 points out of 100. The
organization with the lowest proportion of leaders on the other hand (7.5%),
showed a Professional Development score of 46 points.
Similarly, the other two organizations with greater than 50% leaders also showed
higher Professional Development scores than organizations with less than 20%
proportion of leaders in their organizations. However, some deviations from this
trend were also observed. For example, the Public Service Agency organization,
which had 60% of its population belonging to leadership positions, showed a
much lower average score on the Professional Development driver than would
have been expected. Unlike the other organizations with greater than 50%
leaders, employees in the Public Service Agency showed a slightly more
negative perception on their organization‟s support in their work related learning
and development, on the quality of training and development they receive and on
the adequacy of opportunities to develop their skills.
 TESTING THE ORGANIZATIONAL LANDSCAPE
Page 19
KEY FINDINGS
Figure 8. As the proportion of leaders within organizations increased, the
Professional Development average scores also tended to increase
PSA
Plotting the Pay & Benefits average scores against the proportion of leaders in
the organizations also showed the positive correlation between the proportion of
leaders and the Pay & benefits average scores. In addition, distinct differences
between organizations belonging to the extreme ends of the proportion of
leaders‟ values (refer to the encircled data points in Figure 9) were also
observed. Similar to the result on the Professional Development driver,
employees who belong to organizations with greater than 50% leaders tend to
have more positive perceptions on being fairly paid for the work they do and on
their benefits meeting their (and their family‟s) needs well as compared to
organizations with less than 15% leaders.
While these results could suggest that having a greater than 15% proportion of
leaders in the organizations may be ideal, it is also possible that there are other
distinct differences in work environment factors that could be associated with the
number of leaders in the organizations, which could impact how employees
perceive Professional Development, Pay & Benefits and the other ten drivers in
the model. For example, the type of jobs in an organization like the Public Affairs
Bureau, which has a high proportion of leaders, may tend to provide more
opportunities for work related learning as compared to the type of jobs that the
Children & Family Development organization may have, which also happens to
have a lower proportion of leaders. Further investigation and isolation is needed
to determine what factors related to having more leaders in organizations could
have a positive influence on the twelve model drivers.
 TESTING THE ORGANIZATIONAL LANDSCAPE
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KEY FINDINGS
Figure 9. Distinct difference in Pay & Benefits average scores between
organizations with greater than 50% leaders and organizations with less than 15%
leaders.
It is interesting to note that there were three drivers which did not have any
correlation with the proportion of leaders in the organizations. These were Job
Satisfaction, Empowerment and Supervisory-level Management drivers.
Regardless of the number of leaders present within an organization, there
appears to be no connection with the degree of satisfaction respondents have
with their jobs or with their agreement on survey questions indicating that their
supervisors consult them on decisions that affect them and informed them of
things they need to know. The proportion of leaders also has no significant
correlations with the level of agreement that respondents have on questions
pertaining to Empowerment namely “having opportunities to provide input into
decisions that affect my work”, “having the freedom to make decisions necessary
to do my job well” and “having the opportunities I need to implement new ideas.”
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KEY FINDINGS
2.5 How did the recent workforce adjustments impact employee
engagement and perceptions of the work environment?
An earlier study by BC Stats30 indicated that changes in the workplace, such as
the change in staff resulting in net gain or net loss of talent/experience tend to
influence employee engagement migrations from the engaged state towards the
lower states of engagement (e.g., disengaged, unhappily dedicated etc.)
Between 2009 and 2010, along with limited resources and tight budgets, several
organizations in the BC Public Service substantially reduced their size in terms of
number of employees as part of workforce adjustments (WFA)., This section
explores the impact of workforce adjustments as an organizational change on
employee engagement and its drivers. The proportions of WFA were calculated
by taking the ratio of the number of employees impacted over the organizations‟
total population. Table 11 (Appendix B) shows the list of organizations and the
proportion of staff change due to workforce adjustments between 2009 and 2010
for each of these organizations in the proportion of WFA column. As an example,
the Citizen‟s Services organization has a value of .03 in the proportion of WFA
column as it had decreased by 3% of its population between 2009 and 2010.
Other organizations which were not impacted by WFA were assigned a value of
zero.
Correlation analysis between the WES 2010 engagement model driver scores
and the proportion of workforce adjustments showed that the two engagement
model driver and characteristic which have significant negative relationships with
the proportion of WFA were Organization Satisfaction and Vision, Mission &
Goals (Table 8).
Table 8. Correlation Values for the Proportion of WFA and the WES 2010
31
Engagement Model Driver Scores
WES 2010 Engagement and Model Drivers
Organization Satisfaction
Vision, Mission & Goals
Executive-level Management
Professional Development
Empowerment
Stress & Workload
Job Satisfaction
Staffing Practices
Supervisory-level Management
Recognition
Commitment
Respectful Environment
Physical Environment & Tools
Teamwork
Pay & Benefits
Proportion of WFA
-0.52
-0.51
-0.48
-0.43
-0.42
-0.42
-0.38
-0.38
-0.36
-0.32
-0.28
-0.27
-0.24
-0.22
-0.03
Moderate to Strong
Relationship with
Proportion of WFA
Weak or No
Relationship with
Proportion of WFA
BC Stats. (2010). Exploring Year-to-Year Migration Patterns. Retrieved December 20, 2010, from
http://www.bcstats.gov.bc.ca/data/ssa/reports/WES/2009/analytics09_12.pdf
31 Blue highlighted cells indicate significant correlations at p ≤ 0.01 level.
30
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Page 22
KEY FINDINGS
This result indicates that in organizations with a larger proportion of workforce
adjustments, employees belonging to these organizations tend to be less
satisfied with their organizations and are less positive that their organization‟s
vision, mission & goals were communicated well and that their organizations are
taking steps to ensure the long term-success of their vision, mission & goals.
These findings suggest that for organizations that are impacted by workforce
adjustments, timely communication on the organizations‟ vision, mission & goals
and directions for the future is one of the key factors in maintaining employees
engaged within their organizations.
There were no significant correlations found between the proportion of WFA
impact and the rest of the thirteen model drivers and engagement characteristics.
This suggests that the proportion or degree of WFA has no significant
relationship with the average organizational scores on these thirteen drivers and
characteristics within the single year (WES 2010) results.
The impact of workforce adjustments however becomes highly significant when
looking at the organizations‟ average score changes between the years before
and after workforce adjustments (2009 and 2010).
Substantial decreases in model driver average scores between 2009 and
2010 were observed for organizations impacted by workforce adjustments
as compared to organizations that were not impacted.
Comparison between the WES 2009 and WES 2010 average scores for
organizations impacted by WFA and those that were not impacted by WFA
(Table 9) showed substantial decreases in average scores on most drivers and
engagement characteristics for organizations which had work force adjustments.
For example, while the overall BC Public Service engagement score fell 4 points
between 2009 and 2010, the score decreased by 9 points for organizations
impacted by WFA, but dropped by only 1 point for organizations that were not
impacted.
Vision, Mission & Goals, Executive-level Management, Professional
Development drivers and Organization Satisfaction have the largest
decrease between 2009 and 2010 among all model drivers for organizations
which had workforce adjustments.
Comparison of average driver scores between 2009 and 2010 showed that the
largest decreases (>10 points) for organizations that experienced WFA occurred
in the Organization Satisfaction, Vision, Mission & Goals, Professional
Development and Executive-level Management drivers (Table 9). While
organizations that did not experience WFA also saw decreases in these drivers,
they were not as large. For example, while the largest drop for organizations
without WFA also occurred in the Vision, Mission & Goals driver, the decrease
was only 5 points while organizations with WFA decreased by 16 points between
2009 and 2010.
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KEY FINDINGS
Table 9. Engagement and Model Drivers (2009 /2010) by WFA Organization Groups
32
2009
ENGAGEMENT
BUILDING BLOCKS
FOUNDATION
32
2010
Year-over-year Change
BC PS
WFA
NonWFA
BC PS
WFA
NonWFA
WFA NonWFA
Engagement
68
71
66
64
62
65
-3
-4
-9
-1
Public Service Commitment
70
73
68
67
65
67
-2
-3
-8
-1
Job Satisfaction
69
70
68
67
65
67
-2
-2
-5
-1
Organization Satisfaction
64
68
62
60
56
60
-4
-4
-12
-2
Empowerment
67
71
65
65
64
65
-1
-2
-7
0
Stress & Workload
59
62
58
57
57
57
0
-2
-5
-1
Vision, Mission & Goals
63
66
62
56
50
57
-7
-7
-16
-5
Teamwork
75
76
75
75
75
75
0
0
-1
0
Physical Environment & Tools
67
70
66
66
67
66
1
-1
-3
0
Recognition
61
64
59
60
60
59
1
-1
-4
0
Professional Development
62
68
59
55
54
55
-1
-7
-14
-4
Pay & Benefits
55
59
54
54
57
52
5
-1
-2
-2
Staffing Practices
60
63
57
56
56
56
0
-4
-7
-1
Respectful Environment
73
75
71
72
72
71
1
-1
-3
0
Executive-level Management
59
61
58
53
46
54
-8
-6
-15
-4
Supervisory-level Management
68
71
67
68
68
68
0
0
-3
1
Source: BC Stats. (2010). Special Focus Ministry Analysis: A deeper look at the results of the 2010 Work Environment Survey, 15.
 TESTING THE ORGANIZATIONAL LANDSCAPE
Page 24
BC PS
WFA
NonWFA
KEY FINDINGS
These specific engagement characteristic and model drivers (namely
Organization Satisfaction, Vision, Mission & Goals, Professional Development
and Executive-level Management) make up one of the top ten pathways in the
BC Public Service Engagement Model, which is the Development Path (refer to
Appendix B for further details on the Development Path). The large decrease
observed on these specific drivers shows that in order to counteract the effects of
an organizational level change such as workforce adjustments, one of the key
areas of focus for maintaining or improving employee engagement is the
Development Path. The path suggests that while timely communication of the
vision, mission & goals and future directions is key, it also points out the
importance of making the connection between these organizational level changes
and the more personal and individual aspects of the organization, which is that of
employee development. It is likely that employees may tend to have more
negative perceptions on their organizations‟ “support on their work related
learning and development”, the “quality of training and development they
received” and “having adequate opportunities to develop their skills” partly due to
the resource and budget constraints that often come with workforce adjustments.
Correlation analysis was also done between the differences in average scores in
WES 2009 and WES 2010 and the proportion of WFA in the BC Public Service
organizations. The results validate the observation that the proportion of WFA is
related more to the change in scores between years (2009 and 2010) than to the
average scores within a single year alone (2010). Eleven engagement
characteristics and model drivers were found to have moderate to strong
significant correlations between the difference in average scores (2009 and 2010)
and the proportion of WFA (Table 10). The strongest negative relationships
between these differences were found in the Commitment to the BC Public
Service, Organization Satisfaction, Vision, Mission & Goals and Staffing Practices
drivers and characteristics.
Table 10. Correlation Results for the Proportion of WFA and the Average Score
Differences in the Engagement Model Drivers between 2009 & 2010 showed the
Strongest Relationships found in the BC Public Service Commitment, Organization
Satisfaction, Vision, Mission & Goals and Staffing Practices drivers
Engagement and Model Drivers
Difference between WES 2009 and
WES 2010
Proportion of WFA
Commitment
-0.87
Organization Satisfaction
-0.81
Vision, Mission & Goals
-0.80
Staffing Practices
-0.79
Executive-level Management
-0.71
Stress & Workload
-0.71
Professional Development
-0.71
Job Satisfaction
-0.59
Empowerment
-0.58
Supervisory-level Management
-0.55
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KEY FINDINGS
Engagement and Model Drivers
Difference between WES 2009 and
WES 2010
Proportion of WFA
Recognition
-0.53
Respectful Environment
-0.50
Physical Environment & Tools
-0.44
Pay & Benefits
-0.43
Teamwork
-0.16
* Blue highlighted cells indicate significant correlations at p ≤ 0.01 level.
Focusing on the four drivers with the highest correlations with proportion of WFA,
a more specific trend was also observed.
Employees belonging to organizations with a more than 5% decrease in
population due to workforce adjustments showed larger decreases in the
BC Public Service Commitment, Organization Satisfaction, Vision, Mission
& Goals and Staffing Practices average scores between 2009 and 2010 as
compared to employees in organizations with a less than 5% population
decrease due to workforce adjustments.
Taking the BC Public Service Commitment engagement characteristic as an
example, Figure 10 plots the difference in average scores between 2009 and
2010 for the BC Public Service Commitment characteristic in the y-axis and the
proportion of WFA for each organization in the x-axis. The graph reveals a
distinct trend: organizations that decreased in size by more than 5% of their
population due to workforce adjustments also showed larger decreases in the BC
Public Service Commitment driver (from 6 point to 10 points decrease) between
2009 and 2010. Similar results were also observed for the other three drivers
namely Organization Satisfaction, Vision, Mission & Goals and Staffing Practices.
A slight deviation on this trend occurs for the Ministry of Advance Education &
Market Development. The organization lost 8% of its population due to workforce
adjustment, but only showed a decrease of 3 average points on the BC Public
Service Commitment driver between 2009 and 2010. This is exception is due to a
factor that is specific only to this organization. While it lost employees through
workforce adjustment, it also gained employees through re-structuring. Thus in
net total, the Ministry of Advance Education & Market Development had gained
employees by 5% of its population in 2010, which may explain why the decrease
in scores for this organization was not as large as would have been expected.
Details on the proportion of WFA values for the other organizations can be found
in Table 11 (Appendix B).
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Page 26
KEY FINDINGS
Figure 10. A plot of the Differences in the BC Public Service Commitment Scores
between 2009 & 2010 and the Proportion of WFA by Organization showing larger
average score declines for organizations with ≥ 5% decrease in employee
population due to WFA
ALMD
Linear regression analysis was conducted to further determine which among the
five organizational characteristics (e.g. organization size, number of reporting
levels, dispersion by geographic locations- region & FSA, proportion of leaders,
proportion of WFA) best predicts the difference in average scores for the three
characteristics that make up overall engagement between 2009 and 2010.
Among the six organizational characteristics tested, the proportion of
workforce adjustments was found to best predict the decrease in average
scores between 2009 and 2010 for the three characteristics of engagement
namely BC Public Service Commitment, Organization Satisfaction and Job
Satisfaction.
The results shown in Table 15 (Appendix B) indicate that among the six
organizational characteristics, the proportion of workforce adjustments best
explains the differences observed in the decrease in BC Public Service
Commitment, Organization Satisfaction, and Job Satisfaction scores between
organizations from 2009 to 2010. As an example, for the BC Public Service
Commitment characteristic, 75% of the differences between organizations in
terms of the BC Public Service Commitment score changes between 2009 and
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Page 27
KEY FINDINGS
2010 could be explained by the employee population decrease due to workforce
adjustments.
This result indicates that an organizational change such as workforce
adjustments has a very significant impact on employee engagement. Employees
in organizations with larger proportions of workforce adjustments tend to have
larger decreases in the three engagement characteristics scores compared to the
previous year than employees in organizations with no workforce adjustments.
It is also important to note that not all decreases in the model driver scores are
associated with workforce adjustment. The Teamwork, Pay & Benefits, and
Physical Environment & Tools drivers for example, have no significant
relationship with the proportion of workforce adjustment (Table 10). Declines in
the average scores on these drivers between 2009 and 2010 are not likely to be
related to workforce adjustments.
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CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
3. Conclusions and Recommendations
The results show that organizational characteristics such as the size of the
organization, dispersion by geographic work location, degree of reporting level
hierarchy, proportion of leaders in the organization and organizational change
such as workforce adjustments have significant relationships with some of the
engagement characteristics and model drivers for WES 2010. The relationships
could be categorized broadly as positive or negative. Some of the key findings
and recommendations are outlined below.
Organizational characteristics such as the size of the organization,
dispersion by geographic work location, number of reporting levels
and workforce adjustments have a negative relationship with some of
the engagement characteristics and model drivers.
As the degree or proportion of these organizational characteristics increases, the
average scores for the engagement drivers in which these characteristics have
moderate to strong correlations with, tend to decrease.
For example, organizations with larger decreases in employee population due to
workforce adjustments also tend to have lower average scores on the drivers that
make up the Development Path (e.g. Organization Satisfaction, Vision, Mission &
Goals, Executive-level Management and Professional Development drivers).
Similarly, employees who belong to large organizations (≥ 2,000 employees) tend
to have more negative perceptions on eleven engagement drivers (e.g.
Respectful Environment, Staffing Practices, Teamwork etc.) as compared to
employees who belong to smaller organizations (< 2,000 employees). With
respect to degree of reporting hierarchy present in organizations, employees who
are farther away in terms of reporting levels from the Head of the BC Public
Service were found to have more negative perceptions on the engagement
characteristics and model drivers as compared to employees who are nearer to
the Head of the BC Public Service.
Among the organizational characteristics investigated, the
proportion of leaders in the organizations was the only characteristic
found to have a positive relationship with some of the engagement
characteristics and model drivers.
The more leaders there are in the organizations, the more positive the employee
perceptions are on twelve engagement characteristics and model drivers The
strongest relationships between the proportion of leaders and engagement
drivers were on the Professional Development, Pay & Benefits and Physical
Environment & Tools drivers.
It is possible that some of these organizational characteristics are interconnected
with each other and with the engagement model drivers through other factors that
affect both the model drivers and organizational characteristics in similar ways.
For example, large organizations also tend to have more reporting levels as well
and may contain higher proportions of job occupations such as social work or
frontline service work that may lead to common responses on questions
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Page 29
CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
associated with the Respectful Environment driver. Some of these large
organizations may also have had larger proportions of workforce adjustments.
Analysis on the complex interconnections between these organizational
characteristics and the engagement model is currently not within the scope of this
report. It is therefore recommended that more in depth studies be conducted to
further isolate and determine these relationships through the inclusion of these
factors and organizational characteristics in the BC Public Service Engagement
Model using structural equation modelling (SEM).
The greatest disparity in perceptions of the work environment is
found to occur between the opposite ends of the organizational
characteristics investigated.
Larger differences in scores were observed in the extreme end values of some of
the organizational characteristics investigated. This is true for organizational size,
geographic dispersion by location, degree of reporting hierarchy and proportion of
leaders present within the organizations.
For example, the steepest declines in the Organization Satisfaction, Vision,
Mission & Goals and Executive-level Management average scores occur in
reporting levels two to four and nine to ten and not as much in reporting levels
between four to nine. In terms of geographic dispersion, employees who belong
to organizations in which employees are dispersed across four regions tend to
have significantly more negative perceptions on the Respectful Environment,
Staffing Practices, Recognition, Professional Development and Stress &
Workload drivers as compared to employees who belong to organizations in
which employees were centralized in one region. Another example is found on
the proportion of leaders‟ characteristic where a larger disparity in the Pay &
Benefits average scores was observed between organizations with greater than
fifty percent leaders within their organizations as compared to organizations with
less than fifteen percent leaders in their organizations.
These findings suggest that the larger the difference in terms of the structure of
the organizations is, as represented by organizational size, number of reporting
levels, degree of centralization and proportion of leaders in organizations, the
more disparate employees‟ perceptions of the BC Public Service work
environment tend to be.
The proportion of workforce adjustments was found to be the
strongest predictor of the decline in averages scores between 2009
and 2010 on the three engagement characteristics (i.e., BC Public
Service
Commitment,
Organization
Satisfaction
and
Job
Satisfaction).
The proportion of workforce adjustments variable was found to have more
significant correlations with engagement and model drivers when the differences
in the organization‟s driver scores between 2009 and 2010 was used as opposed
to the organizations‟ model driver scores within a single year (i.e., WES 2010).
For example, when the proportion of WFA impact was correlated with the
organizations‟ engagement and model driver scores for WES 2010, results
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Page 30
CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
showed that only two drivers namely Organization Satisfaction and Vision,
Mission & Goals had significant correlations. However when the proportion of
WFA was correlated with the difference in the organizations‟ engagement and
model drives scores between WES 2009 and WES 2010, eleven drivers and
engagement characteristics showed significant correlations with the proportion of
WFA. This suggests that unlike the other organizational characteristics
investigated in this report, the proportion of WFA variable is more closely related
to the change in the organization‟s model driver scores between the two time
periods than with the differences in organizations‟ model driver scores for WES
2010 alone. The regression results also indicate that among the six
organizational characteristics, the proportion of WFA best predicts the decrease
in the engagement characteristics namely BC Public Service Commitment,
Organization Satisfaction and Job Satisfaction scores between WES 2009 and
WES 2010.
The results and general trends found in this report provide useful insights from an
organizational development perspective. Approaches to improvements can be
tailored to specific organizations while keeping organizational characteristics in
mind. Knowing that organizational size is negatively correlated with Respectful
Environment, Staffing Practices and Recognition for example may result in
having more focused attention around these drivers in large organizations.
Similarly, different approaches in staffing may be looked into when working with
centralized organizations as compared to organizations that are dispersed across
four regions. The opportunities for benchmarking can also be widened by looking
at some best practices on specific drivers between organizations with similar
organizational characteristics.
Limitations of the Study
Analysis between the two variables, namely organization size and reporting
levels, showed that they are highly correlated with each other, indicating that as
organization size increases, more hierarchy levels are also present within the
organization. A key challenge in fully understanding the effects of both
organizational characteristics, organization size and reporting level hierarchy, on
employee engagement is the distribution of employees within organizations.
Broken out by hierarchy levels, the majority of the employees would fall into
reporting levels six and seven. Therefore, the strong relationships found between
the reporting level variable and some of the drivers such as Pay & Benefits might
also be a reflection of the larger proportion of employees in these hierarchy levels
compared to levels one to five. Further research is needed to determine whether
the observed relationships hold true when a potential effect of employee
distribution across hierarchy levels is removed through additional analyses.
Most of the analysis done in this study made use of the organizations‟ average
scores. While this is useful in providing an organizational level perspective of the
trends present between the drivers and characteristics of employee engagement
and the organizational characteristics investigated, the applicability of the results
at the work unit34 level or respondent level is greatly impacted by the variability of
scores around each organization‟s average. For this reason, it may be worthwhile
34
Work unit is defined as the section or program area in which a respondent works.
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Page 31
CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
to validate in future studies, if the strength of the organizational level relationships
and trends found still hold true at the work unit and respondent levels as well.
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Page 32
APPENDIX
APPENDIX
APPENDIX A: MORE ON THE EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT MODEL
In the Work Environment Survey, there are over 70 questions that cover a wide range of topics
in the workplace. The questionnaire topics were developed from an extensive literature review
of public and private sector research, and in consultation with other jurisdictions across Canada
and leading experts in the field. In 2008, the questionnaire was further refined based on the
growing expertise in BC Stats and feedback from the program partners. Each question is
important and provides useful information, but some questions have a greater impact on
engagement than others. However, it is difficult to know which questions are most strongly
linked to engagement. BC Stats uses a sophisticated analysis technique, called structural
equation modeling, to determine which questions or groups of questions have the biggest
impact on engagement. The analysis uses the responses of all employees to develop a model
of what matters most to employees. Model building has two main steps:
1. Identifying the important survey questions and grouping them into drivers
2. Uncovering the links and connections between the workplace concepts
The researchers who built the model started with a deep theoretical and practical knowledge of
what contributes to engagement in the workplace. Their knowledge helped identify workplace
concepts and relationships for testing during model building. The initial model was built from the
survey responses of 17,400 BC Public Service employees in 2006. A software program uses
the survey responses to identify groups of survey questions that predict patterns in the
engagement characteristics. The resulting model is custom designed for the BC Public Service.
The model is re-tested with each year‟s survey results to ensure it accurately represents the
work environment experiences of employees.
Once the modeling process identified the drivers, the next step was to identify connections
within the model. The parts of the model are all interconnected, like a spider web. The pattern of
connections between drivers and characteristics form the overall structure of the engagement
model.
The structure of the engagement model was graphically introduced in the Exploring Employee
Engagement reports as a „house‟, with a foundation, building blocks, and a roof. The house
diagram is a visual metaphor that describes the relationships between the different parts of the
work environment.
The model rests on two drivers – Executive and Supervisory-level Management – which are
connected to every other driver in the model. As management is the foundation of the
engagement model, it is depicted as the foundation of the „house‟ diagram. The building blocks
identify the workplace functions and concepts influencing engagement. The characteristics of
engagement – BC Public Service Commitment, Job Satisfaction, and Organization Satisfaction
– are the outcomes of the model. The Engagement score is a single number, calculated from
the three engagement characteristics.
To visually represent the model, the house diagram was designed to show what is most
important in the workplace and how all the pieces fit together. The model is complex and should
be thought of as multi-dimensional.
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Page 34
APPENDIX
Figure 11: The Model as a House Diagram
THESE OVALS ARE THE ENGAGEMENT
CHARACTERISTICS
BC
Public Service
Commitment
The characteristics are made from
questions, which express the concept of
engagement.
Job
Satisfaction
Organization
Satisfaction
Stress &
Workload
Empowerment
Vision, Mission &
Goals
Physical Enviro &
Tools
Teamwork
Professional
Development
Recognition
Pay & Benefits
… And they are used
to calculate the engagement
state and the engagement
score.
Staffing
Practices
Executive-level
Management
Respectful
Environment
THESE BOXES
ARE DRIVERS
Drivers are made from
questions with the
biggest impact on the
characteristics
of engagement.
Supervisory-level
Management
For more specific details on the statistical processes and results guiding the development and
testing of this model, please refer to the technical report produced in April 2010 called Modelling
the 2009 Work Environment Survey Results.35
35
Available online at: http://www.bcstats.gov.bc.ca/data/ssa/analysis.asp
 TESTING THE ORGANIZATIONAL LANDSCAPE
Page 35
APPENDIX
APPENDIX B: ADDITIONAL RESULTS
Table 11. Organizations in the BC Public Service and the Different Organizational Characteristic Values Used in the Analysis
Organization
Aboriginal Relations and
Reconciliation
Agriculture and Lands
Attorney General
BC Public Service Agency
Children and Family Development
Citizens' Services
Education
Energy, Mines and Petroleum
Resources
Environment
Environmental Assessment Office
Finance
Forests and Range
Integrated Land Management Bureau
Labour
Office of the Premier
Public Affairs Bureau
Public Safety and Solicitor General
Advanced Education and Labour
Market Develop
Community & Rural Development
Health Services
Healthy Living and Sport
Housing and Social Development
Olympic Games Secretariat
Small Business, Technology and
Economic Development
Tourism, Culture and the Arts
Transportation and Infrastructure
Shared Services BC
Tourism BC
Total
Population
Count
Highest Organizational
Reporting Level
Dispersion by
Region
Dispersion by
Count of FSAs
Proportion of Leaders %
Proportion of WFA
177
349
2947
398
4341
616
290
6
8
10
7
9
8
8
1
4
4
4
4
4
2
1
16
48
11
91
41
3
38%
17%
11%
60%
7%
29%
22%
0
0
.01
.08
0
.03
0
277
1318
50
1241
2794
495
207
49
214
2549
7
9
*
8
10
9
7
*
5
10
4
4
*
4
4
4
4
*
2
4
10
40
*
16
47
13
15
*
6
58
29%
13%
*
31%
11%
19%
68%
*
95%
12%
.19
0
*
.01
.11
.08
0
*
.04
0
359
240
892
174
2328
34
8
7
9
8
10
*
2
4
3
1
4
*
4
13
5
1
74
*
30%
35%
24%
39%
14%
*
.08
0
176
132
1327
1325
137
8
7
9
9
8
2
4
4
4
2
3
20
54
16
2
55%
26%
18%
20%
35%
0
0
0
.16
0
0
.01
*
25436
 TESTING THE ORGANIZATIONAL LANDSCAPE
Page 36
APPENDIX
Reporting
Level
Engagement
Commitment
Job
Satisfaction
Organization
Satisfaction
Empowerment
Stress &
Workload
Vision, Mission
& Goals
Teamwork
Physical
Environment &
Tools
Recognition
Professional
Development
Pay & Benefits
Staffing
Practices
Respectful
Environment
Executive
Level
Supervisory
Level
Table 12. Engagement and Model Driver Average Scores by Reporting Levels
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
96
83
74
69
66
63
61
60
95
83
75
70
68
65
63
63
97
84
75
71
68
66
63
63
97
81
71
66
62
58
55
54
93
87
77
71
67
63
60
56
80
72
64
61
58
56
53
55
94
81
70
62
57
53
52
52
96
89
84
79
77
73
73
69
92
85
79
74
70
64
61
58
92
82
74
66
63
57
54
52
89
78
68
62
58
52
51
51
89
79
68
63
56
51
47
42
100
84
80
69
63
52
46
41
95
89
85
79
76
69
66
61
95
81
67
58
53
50
48
49
93
82
76
72
71
66
65
62
10
49
N = 19,746 respondents
48
53
44
43
59
39
62
51
41
41
35
26
51
40
51
Staffing
Practices Mean
Difference
Respectful
Environment
Mean
Difference
Executive
Level Mean
Difference
Supervisory
Level Mean
Difference
-6.3
-5.7
-3.7
-5.2
-1.1
-5.0
-11.0
-6.4
-2.6
-4.4
-1.2
-4.3
-6.7
-2.9
-1.6
-1.4
Professional
Development
Mean
Difference
-4.4
Recognition
Mean
Difference
-5.4
-8.9
Physical
Environment &
Tools Mean
Difference
-14.4
-5.7
Teamwork
Mean
Difference
-3.7
-10.6
Vision, Mission
& Goals Mean
Difference
-4.6
-5.4
Stress &
Workload
Mean
Difference
-11.3
Empowerment
Mean
Difference
-11.2
Organization
Satisfaction
Mean
Difference
-13.9
Job
Satisfaction
Mean
Difference
-6.0
Commitment
Mean
Difference
-15.3
Engagement
Mean
Difference
-9.9
Adjacent
Reporting
Level
Comparison
Pay & Benefits
Mean
Difference
Table 13. Differences in Average Scores between Adjacent Reporting Levels across Engagement and its Model Drivers showing the
36
Largest Statistically Significant Gaps that may Require More Focused Attention
2-3
-13.2
-11.4
-13.0
-15.4
-6.7
-8.2
-13.2
-6.8
-6.4
-10.5
-11.6
3-4
-8.8
-7.9
-9.0
-10.1
-9.4
-8.1
-11.1
-5.2
-6.3
-7.8
-10.0
4-5
-5.0
-5.3
-4.1
-5.3
-5.8
-2.6
-7.6
-4.5
-5.3
-7.3
-5.5
5-6
-3.1
-2.1
-2.8
-4.3
-4.0
-2.8
-4.8
-1.9
-4.1
-3.5
-4.7
6-7
-2.8
-2.7
-2.1
-3.7
-4.8
-2.5
-4.1
-3.9
-5.9
-5.7
-5.6
7-8
-2.5
-2.0
-2.7
-2.6
-2.4
-2.7
-1.7
-0.6
-2.8
-3.5
36
8-9
-0.8
-0.6
-0.5
-1.3
-4.3
1.7
-0.1
-4.1
-3.0
-2.0
0.5
-5.2
-4.9
-5.3
0.2
-3.4
9-10
-11.2
-14.7
-9.4
-10.1
-12.7
4.6
-12.7
-6.2
-7.2
-11.0
-10.7
-6.5
-15.2
-9.8
-8.5
-10.2
Blue cells indicate statistically significant difference between adjacent organizational levels at p< 0.05.
 TESTING THE ORGANIZATIONAL LANDSCAPE
Page 37
APPENDIX
The Development Path
The sixth path is comprised of four drivers, and is focused on building a
professionally skilled, competent and fulfilled public service. The „Development
Path‟ can positively or negatively impact engagement through its connection to
Organization Satisfaction.
This pathway starts with communication from both levels of management in the
model‟s foundation. The strong relationship between Executive- and Supervisorylevel Management means that both drivers have a significant and combined
effect on Professional Development. The ways in which supervisors and their
senior leaders incorporate professional development into the work environment
offers a good indication of the organization‟s future direction and provides a basis
for numerous workplace decisions.
Arriving at Professional Development, the pathway then leads to the Vision,
Mission & Goals driver. Based on this relationship, employees‟ perceptions of an
organization‟s vision, mission and goals becomes partially dependent on the
availability, quality and support of career development opportunities. Through
these connections, the foundation can indirectly support the Vision, Mission &
Goals of their organization by offering adequate opportunities for high quality,
work-related training and learning to all employees. By supporting these
development opportunities, and allowing employees to become the best public
servants they can be, it may be possible to sustain the vision of the BC Public
Service.
From the Vision, Mission & Goals driver, the pathway finally reaches the roof of
the model by connecting with Organization Satisfaction. To increase employees‟
satisfaction with their organization, the vision, mission and goals of the
organization must be articulated well and provide sufficient detail as to what steps
are being taken to ensure its long term success. The satisfaction employees have
with their organization can be further supported by offering training and
development opportunities consistent with the organization‟s direction and
employees‟ interests.
Work units facing issues with either Organization Satisfaction or the Vision,
Mission & Goals driver, may wish to investigate ways to better support career
development opportunities. By doing so, it will be possible to develop a well
trained, skilled and engaged work unit.
 TESTING THE ORGANIZATIONAL LANDSCAPE
Page 38
APPENDIX
Figure 12. The Development Path Diagram
The Development Path
BC Public
Service
Commitment
Job
Satisf action
Organization
Satisf action
Empowerment
Vision, Mission &
Goals
Stress & Workload
Recognition
Pay & Benef its
Physical Environment
& Tools
Teamwork
Prof essional
Development
Staf f ing Practices
Executive-level Management
Respectf ul
Environment
Supervisory-level Management
Very Strong Path
Moderately Strong Path
Strong Path
Minimally Strong Path
 TESTING THE ORGANIZATIONAL LANDSCAPE
Page 39
APPENDIX
Table 14. Comparison of Respectful Environment Driver Scores showing
Significantly Higher Average Scores for Small Organizations as Compared to Large
Organizations
Organization Size
Small Organizations
(<2,000)
Large Organizations
(≥2,000)
95% Confidence
Interval for Mean
Number of
Organizations
Respectful
Environment
Mean
Standards
Deviation
Standard
Error
20
77.09
3.865
5
69.19
2.036
Lower
Bound
Upper
Bound
Min
Max
0.864
75.28
78.9
70
82
0.91
66.66
71.72
66
71
Table 15. Linear Regression Results on the Engagement Characteristics showed
that the Proportion of WFA is the Top Predictor for the Decrease in Average Scores
37
between 2009 and 2010
Difference in Engagement
Characteristics Average
Scores between 2009 & 2010
1. BC Public Service
Commitment
37
Top Organizational
Characteristic Predictor/s
R2
Unstandardized
Coefficients (B)
Standardized
Coefficient (β)
Significan
ce
a. Proportion of WFA Impact
0.752
-49.66
-0.867
0.000
2. Organization Satisfaction
a. Proportion of WFA Impact
0.651
-77.59
-0.807
0.000
3. Job Satisfaction
a. Proportion of WFA Impact
0.343
-28.42
-0.585
0.003
Data in the table excludes Olympic Games Secretariat, Office of the Premier, Environmental Assessment Office and Tourism BC.
 TESTING THE ORGANIZATIONAL LANDSCAPE
Page 40
APPENDIX
APPENDIX C: DRIVER DESCRIPTIONS
The engagement model drivers are defined as follows:
Empowerment
Employees believe they have opportunities and freedom to provide input, make
decisions to do their job well and implement new ideas.
Stress & Workload
Employees perceive that their work-related stress and workload are manageable.
Vision, Mission & Goals
Employees believe their organization‟s vision, mission, and goals are well
communicated and their organization is taking steps to ensure its long-term
success.
Teamwork
Employees experience positive working relationships, have support from their
team, and feel their team communicates effectively.
Physical Environment & Tools
Employees believe their physical surroundings are satisfactory and they have the
technology and/or equipment to do their job well.
Recognition
Employees experience meaningful and performance-based recognition.
Professional Development
Employees believe their organization supports their learning and development,
provides good quality training, and offers adequate opportunities to develop their
skills.
Pay & Benefits
Employees believe they are fairly paid for their work, and their benefits meet their
needs.
Staffing Practices
Employees believe staffing processes in their work unit are fair and based on
merit.
Respectful Environment
Employees experience a healthy
discrimination and harassment.
and
diverse
atmosphere
free
from
Executive-level Management
Employees believe that senior leaders communicate decisions in a timely
manner, and that they provide clear direction for the future.
Supervisory-level Management
Employees believe that the person they report to keeps them informed and
consults them on decisions that affect their work.
 TESTING THE ORGANIZATIONAL LANDSCAPE
Page 41
If you have any questions
about the information in this report,
please contact
BC Stats.
250-387-0359