 Catherine Twiss has been with ResolutionsRTK for almost three years as Principal Consultant within the Develop Resolve team. She has a specific interest in positive psychology and positive organisational behaviour and its impact on employee well-being. Catherine recently completed a Masters of Organisational Psychology at Monash University, where the focus of her research was employee engagement and its effects on turnover. A brief overview of her research is summarised below.
Background
Voluntary turnover places a significant financial and disruptive burden on Australian organisations. Indeed, it has been estimated to cost Australian organisations in excess of $20 billion per annum and will continue to grow unless serious attention is given to the issue. Although numerous psychological constructs have been researched in an effort to better understand turnover and its antecedents, one that has received considerable research attention over the past decade has been employee engagement. Employee engagement is not a new concept and is in part borne out of the research on burnout. As such, engagement has been defined as the "antipode of burnout" and is broadly characterised as a positive, fulfilling, affective-motivational state of work-related well-being. Over the past decade the dominant theoretical framework in engagement research has been the Job-Demands-Resources (JD-R) model. Briefly, this theory posits that although employees in different organisations may be confronted with different working environments, it is generally accepted that the characteristics of these environments can be classified into two general categories – (1) job demands such as high workload, organisational change, and role ambiguity for example, and (2) job resources such as social support, professional development, and autonomy. High job demands are thought to contribute to low levels of engagement but may be mitigated by the availability of job resources as they motivate employees to meet their goals which in turn foster work engagement. As such job resources are considered to buffer the effects of job demands. Applying the JD-R model, researchers have begun to examine the role of personal resources. Personal resources are positive self-evaluations that are linked to resiliency and refer to individuals' sense of their ability to control and impact upon their environment successfully. Examples include optimism, self-efficacy, and resilience. Like engagement, these are considered state like and as such developable. Early findings suggest that the presence of job resources may activate personal resources which in turn have a positive impact on engagement.
Present Study
The present study examined engagement as a potential mediator between job demands (organisational change, work demands, role ambiguity), job resources (autonomy, supervisor social support, co-worker support, professional development) and personal resources and employee turnover intention. In examining personal resources this study specifically drew on the positive psychology movement and emergent study of positive organisational behaviour by examining the effects of psychological capital (PsyCap), namely self-efficacy, optimism, hope, resilience. PsyCap was hypothesised to mitigate the effects of high job demands on low levels of engagement and turnover intent.
A total of 220 employees working in a diverse range of organisations completed an on-line survey. One hundred and fifty two respondents were female (69%), and 68 (31%) were male, with an average tenure of 7.3 years. Most respondents were permanent full time employees (61.9%), 17.9% permanent part-time, 9.2% contract part-time, 8.2% contract full-time and 2.7% were employed casually.
Results & Implications
The results of the present study showed that engagement mediates the relationship between PsyCap as a personal resource and turnover intention. These results imply that individuals possessing PsyCap are more likely to feel in control of their environment, confident they can achieve their goals and navigate through obstacles encountered, be engaged, and consequently less likely to have intentions to leave their job. As a retention strategy, HR managers who recognise positive PsyCap as an important personal resource that can enhance engagement and impact turnover intentions could implement cognitive-behavioural approaches to increase the level of PsyCap among employees. Recent evidence has found that through the introduction of short training interventions, participants experience an increased overall result across the four components of PsyCap (self-efficacy, optimism, hope and resilience).
Of the three job demands (work demands, change, role ambiguity), contrary to expectations, engagement only partially mediated the relationship between change and turnover intention. The findings in the present study suggest that change demands indirectly affect turnover intention through its influence on engagement. Typical job demands that have received attention in the literature on engagement include those used in the present study, with the exception of change. These findings suggest more research is needed on the direct effects of change on engagement. This is especially important given that change is all pervasive in the current economic climate and if not well managed has the propensity to result in voluntary turnover. HR Practitioners need to be cognisant of the impact of change when devising an organisational change strategy.
Although the present study did not find support for the relationship between engagement, job resources and turnover intention, previous research has done so. However, mixed findings have been reported for job resources especially when research participants come from a broad array of occupations, as was the case in this study. These mixed findings suggest further examination of job resources as antecedents of engagement in different contexts is warranted. From a practitioner perspective it would seem important to understand what resources are most desired by their employees and which will best address their psychological needs in order to more effectively promote greater levels of engagement and ameliorate turnover.
Curiously in the present study, supervisor support as a job resource was neither related to engagement or turnover intention. Additionally, co-worker support, although related to turnover intention, was not related to engagement. One possible explanation for this is the participants in this study could have been either supervisors or managers themselves. The mean age was between forty one and fifty years, and one might expect that being mid-career they may have achieved a level of seniority i.e. reached supervisory or management status.
Previous research has shown that autonomy was the most prominent determinant of overall engagement with higher correlations than other job resources. This was confirmed in the current results. One potential explanation is that when employees perceive they have the autonomy to execute their tasks, they are more willing to dedicate more time and effort in their job and consequently be engaged. Although in regression analysis, autonomy was not related to turnover intention; it was negatively correlated with turnover intention.
Employee engagement has far-reaching implications for employees' performance, enabling them to strive and reach their full potential on the job. Understanding the interplay between personal resources, job demands and resources and their influence on engagement and turnover intention may be useful for organisations when designing interventions to increase employee engagement, as well as producing better outcomes for their employees by enabling them to better cope with their jobs.
Bibliography
Albrecht, S. L. (2010). Employee engagement: Ten key research questions. In, S. L. Albrecht, (Ed.). The Handbook of Employee Engagement: Perspectives, Issues, Research and Practice (pp. 3-19). Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishers.
Bakker, A. B, Albrecht, S. L., & Leiter, M. P. (2011). Key questions regarding work engagement. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 20 (1), 4-28.
Bakker, A. B, Albrecht, S. L., & Leiter, M. P. (2011). Key questions regarding work engagement. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 20 (1), 4-28.
Hakanen, J.J. & Roodt, G. (2010). Using the job demands-resources model to predict engagement: Analysing a conceptual model. In Bakker, A.B. & Leiter, M.P. (Eds). Work engagement: A handbook of essential theory and research (pp.85-101). East Sussex, UK: Psychology Press.
Halbesleben, J.R.B., (2010). A meta-analysis of work engagement: Relationships with burnout, demands, resources, and consequences. In Bakker, A.B. & Leiter, M.P. (Eds). Work engagement: A handbook of essential theory and research (pp.85-101). East Sussex, UK: Psychology Press.
Luthans, F, Youssef, C.M., & Avolio, B.J. (2007). Psychological capital: Developing the human competitive edge. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Salanova, M., Schaufeli, W.B., Xanthopoulou, D., & Bakker, A.B., (2010). The gain spiral of resources and work engagement: Sustaning a positive worklife. In Bakker, A.B. & Leiter, M.P. (Eds). Work engagement: A handbook of essential theory and research (pp.85-101). East Sussex, UK: Psychology Press.
 
© ResolutionsRTK 2011 | Ezine | Volume 5 | Issue 3 | October 2011
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