Part One and Two Engagement Document

How Engagement Predicts Performance

In this video, Professor Nishii explains the differences between the drivers that promote job satisfaction and the drivers that promote engagement, as well as the research that demonstrates that engagement is a far greater predictor of individual performance than is satisfaction. The factors that drive engagement are focused much more on the facets of the work that people do and their immediate work context. These are more within the control of immediate managers than are the drivers of satisfaction.

So, engagement is important because it predicts performance. And making this distinction that we've talked about between engagement and other employee attitudes, like satisfaction, is important because it is engagement, and not satisfaction, that predicts performance. What you see here in this table, are the results of some research that link satisfaction and engagement on the one hand, with firm-level performance on the other. And what you'll see here is that although satisfaction and engagement are related concepts, they're correlated about .6, it turns out that only engagement is associated with return on assets and with profits at the firm level and satisfaction is not. And this is because engagement refers to the psychological and behavioral energy, associated with work. It's that energy that yields performance. Satisfaction as I've said refers more to how people feel about the organization, what the organization does for them, and how content they are with the employment kind of arrangement that they have with the organization. It tells us nothing about their work-related behaviors or engagement. Here's another graphic. This is from a research study that looks at how engagement versus other attitudes, and satisfaction is one of the attitudes in this study, are associated with individual level employee performance. And what you'll see here is that there's some drivers in the three circles in the left column, and it's not that important for us to delve into what these really mean, but what you'll see is that these drivers influence engagement there on the top, and satisfaction. And for now, we'll just focus on those two. But it is only engagement that significantly predicts performance, satisfaction does not. You can identify which relationships or paths, are statistically significant by looking for the ones with the little asterisks on them. So you'll see here that engagement is associated with, predicts performance, task performance, as well as what some people refer to as citizenship behaviors. These are the kinds of behaviors that go above and beyond the call of duty. They might not be part of one's formal job description. But research is pretty clear in showing that the difference between an average worker and a great worker. The difference between a mediocre company and a super company is the willingness of employees to engage in these discretionary behaviors, the above and beyond the call of duty kinds of behaviors. And it is engagement that predicts employees' willingness to engage in these citizenship behaviors.

Two Forms of Engagement Energy

There are two forms of engagement energy, as Professor Nishii explains: psychological energy and behavioral energy. Psychological energy refers to psychological absorption and focus. Being fully absorbed in one’s work comes close to what has been called  flow, a state of optimal experience that is characterized by focused attention, clear mind, mind and body union, effortless concentration, complete control, loss of self-consciousness, distortion of time, and intrinsic enjoyment. Behavioral energy refers to people's actions. It may be useful to keep in mind that sometimes people experience psychological and behavioral engagement in some but not all aspects of their jobs.

So when it comes to engagement, it's important to realize that there are really two forms of engagement energy. The first is psychological, and refers to things like absorption and focus and intensity of your attention. Flow, mental resilience and enthusiasm. And the other is behavioral energy. So that's when that psychological engagement gets translated into behaviors. Ideally, behaviors that are strategically focused and help the organization to fulfill its mission. These engagement behaviors refer to things like being willing to and able to anticipate opportunities to take action. And taking action rather than feeling like problems are something that management should take care of. Involves being proactive, and taking initiative and actively finding ways to expand ones skills. And also persisting in the face of obstacles. And the reason it's important to distinguish between psychological engagement and behavioral engagement, is that the psychological experience of engagement can be expressed in various ways. And so knowing whether or not it is translated into the types of behaviors that drive organizational performance is really important for organizations to know. So, if you see that employees are highly engaged from the psychological perspective, but the behavioral outcomes of engagement don't follow, that could be because of a number of different things. It could be because employees are not totally clear on how to channel that energy in a way that would be most beneficial for the organization. But it could also be because there are constraints in the environment that make it difficult for the employee to actually be able to engage in the behaviors that are desired by the organization. That's why it's important to distinguish between the two.