Antecedents and consequences of employee engagement revisited

By A. Saks. Journal of Organizational Effectiveness, 2019

402 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Purpose In 2006, Saks (2006) published one of the first empirical studies of the antecedents and consequences of employee engagement. Since then dozens of studies on engagement have been published and most of them have used the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES) to measure work engagement. The purpose of this paper is to revisit Saks (2006) to try and address some issues that have arisen during the last ten years and to assess the generalizability of his findings and model using the UWES measure of work engagement and single-item measures of job and organization engagement. Design/methodology/approach Additional analyses was conducted using the data from Saks (2006) including measures of each job characteristic, the use of the UWES measure of work engagement, and single-item general measures of job engagement and organization engagement. In addition, a review of engagement research was conducted as well as research that used Saks’ (2006) measures of job engagement and organization engagement. Findings The results indicate that skill variety is the main job characteristic that predicts job engagement. The results of the analysis using the UWES measure of work engagement found that job characteristics and perceived organizational support are significant predictors of work engagement, and work engagement predicts job satisfaction, organizational commitment, organizational citizenship behavior and intentions to quit and mediates the relationship between the antecedents and the consequences. Similar results were found using the single-item measures of job engagement and organization engagement. A review of the engagement literature indicates general support for the Saks (2006) model of the antecedents and consequences of employee engagement and for his measures of job and organization engagement. A revised and updated model is provided with additional antecedents and consequences. Practical implications The results indicate that organizations can drive employee engagement by focusing on skill variety as well as providing social support, rewards and recognition, procedural and distributive fairness, and opportunities for learning and development. In addition, organizations can assess employee engagement more frequently and easily by using single-item measures of job and organization engagement. Originality/value This paper provides an update and revision of the Saks (2006) model of employee engagement and suggests that the main findings are similar when using the UWES measure of work engagement and single-item general measures of job engagement and organization engagement.

Subfields: Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/115891e91653b08da0c7a310fce565adfc494b14

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In Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management

In Social Psychology

Citations in the corpus

Impact of Perceived Organizational Support on Work Engagement: Mediating Mechanism of Thriving and Flourishing (2020, background): “Furthermore, the significant influence of POS on work engagement was consistent with past findings of Saks [37], who showed that perceived organizational support is an essential factor that enhances employee engagement.”
Student Engagement: Current State of the Construct, Conceptual Refinement, and Future Research Directions (2021, background): “This dual-component perspective coincides with Saks’ (2019) multidimensional model of employee engagement, which defines employee engagement as the extent to which a person is psychologically present in their role as an employee.”
The influence of perceived organizational support on employee creativity: The mediating role of work engagement (2021, background): “Several dozen studies on engagement have been published, the majority of them adopting the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES) to measure work engagement (Saks, 2019).”
Examining the Predictors of Resilience and Work Engagement during the COVID-19 Pandemic (2021, background): “Employee engagement is composed of work and organizational engagement [27,28].”