Abstract
What role do financial rewards play as predictors of work engagement? To address this question, based on the Job Demands-Resources Theory (JD-R), the relationship between financial rewards and work engagement on a large sample (N = 1201) of multi-occupational employees was investigated. Through three steps of hierarchical regression, salary, fringe benefits, and bonuses were added to a JD-R model predicting work engagement via job resources and job demands; however, this did not lead to any significant improvement in model fit, and all new predictors were not significant. It may be concluded that financial rewards do not explain an additional amount of variance in work engagement over job demands and job resources. These results offer insights into the relationship between financial rewards and work engagement, and suggest that there is insufficient evidence to claim that pay, benefits, and bonuses are related to employee work engagement level.
Highlights
Why Work Engagement may be ImportantThe attention of occupational scientists and human resource management (HRM) specialists has been focused on work engagement due to the increasing body of research demonstrating that it may lead to increase in employee performance, health, and wellbeing, and nowadays it seems clear that work engagement has a sizeable impact on organizational business outcomes (Harter et al 2002; Harter et al 2010)
In the third step of analysis, to test hypothesis 2, fringe benefits were introduced into the model, but this showed that employees receiving fringe benefits do not differ from those not receiving benefits in terms of levels of work engagement (b = −.046; p = .518) and introducing benefits as a predictor did not result in significant change in the explained variance in work engagement (ΔR2 < .001); hypothesis 2 cannot be confirmed
According to the Job DemandsResources Theory (JD-R) theory rewards might possibly act as job resources - fostering work goals attainment and reducing job demands and, at least on a theoretical level, might be positively related to work engagement (Bakker et al 2003; Bakker and Demerouti 2007)
Summary
Why Work Engagement may be ImportantThe attention of occupational scientists and human resource management (HRM) specialists has been focused on work engagement due to the increasing body of research demonstrating that it may lead to increase in employee performance, health, and wellbeing (see Bakker and Bal 2010; Shantz et al 2012; Shimazu et al 2015; Shimazu et al 2012; Xanthopoulou et al 2009), and nowadays it seems clear that work engagement has a sizeable impact on organizational business outcomes (Harter et al 2002; Harter et al 2010). When investigating the role of rewards in work engagement it is advisable to start by taking a look at motivational processes leading to work engagement, as described by the JD-R theory This process assumes that job resources - those aspects of job which are functional in achieving work goals, reducing job demands, and stimulating personal development - lead to work engagement, represented by energy and identification (Bakker and Demerouti 2007). Within the framework of JD-R, it is reasonably well documented that non-financial rewards (e.g. supervisor support, opportunities for development, and positive feedback) play the role of job resources, predicting work engagement and mitigating demanding work conditions (Bakker and Demerouti 2014), whereas it is still not clear what role direct (e.g. pay, bonuses) and indirect financial rewards (e.g. fringe benefits) play in predicting work engagement
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