Meaningful Work, Job Resources, and Employee Engagement

Camille R Green,Simon L Albrecht,Andrew Marty

doi:10.3390/su13074045

Camille R Green, Simon L Albrecht + Show 1 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/su13074045

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Abstract

Meaningful work and employee engagement have been the subject of increasing interest in organizational research and practice over recent years. Both constructs have been shown to influence important organizational outcomes, such as job satisfaction, wellbeing, and performance. Only a limited amount of empirical research has focused on understanding the relationship within existing theoretical frameworks. For this study, meaningful work is proposed as a critical psychological state within the job demands-resources (JD-R) model that can therefore, in part, explain the relationship between job resources and employee engagement. Survey data collected from 1415 employees working in a range of organizations, across a number of industries, were analyzed with confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and structural equation modelling (SEM). In support of expectations, job variety, development opportunities, and autonomy, each had a significant and positive direct association with meaningful work. These job resources also had a significant and positive indirect effect on employee engagement via meaningful work. Although job variety, development opportunities, autonomy, and feedback had significant positive direct associations with engagement, contrary to expectations, supervisor support had a negative association with engagement. The final model explained a sizable proportion of variance in both meaningful work (49%) and employee engagement (65%). Relative weights analyses showed that job variety was the strongest job resource predictor of meaningful work, and that meaningful work was more strongly associated with employee engagement than the job resources. Overall, the results show that meaningful work plays an important role in enhancing employee engagement and that providing employees with skill and task variety is important to achieving that goal. Practical implications, study limitations, and future research opportunities are discussed.

Highlights

People can spend more than half of their waking lives at work
The purpose of this paper is to examine whether meaningful work functions as a critical psychological state within the job demands-resources (JD-R) model that can, in part, explain the relationship between job resources and employee engagement
The validity of the same or similar measures had previously been established through other research, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) in AMOS version

Summary

Introduction

People can spend more than half of their waking lives at work. Work can be a source of stress, dissatisfaction, and burnout, and a source of meaning, satisfaction, and engagement [1]. Over the past twenty years, with the recognition of the importance of focusing on the positive dimensions of the employee experience [2,3], there has been an increasing researcher and practitioner focus on constructs, such as meaningful work and employee engagement. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether meaningful work functions as a critical psychological state within the job demands-resources (JD-R) model that can, in part, explain the relationship between job resources and employee engagement. This paper contributes a theoretically grounded explanation for how organizations can measure and achieve sustainable employee engagement through the provision of resources that contribute to the experience of meaningful work. Increasingly, the role of meaningful work and employee engagement is being considered in the research and

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