Take a sector such as healthcare. I would venture that most employees there started their profession highly engaged on their first working day. But that engagement can decline, for example through too many energy drains. Record-keeping and administration were surely not the reason most care professionals chose their profession. Yet sometimes they make up a large share of the work. That comes at the expense of your engagement. If the imbalance between energy sources and energy drains lasts too long, health problems arise, such as burnout. This fits the Job Demands-Resources model of Wilmar Schaufeli and colleagues: when job demands outweigh job resources for a long time, you become exhausted. Schaufeli
What is the difference between satisfaction and involvement?
Work engagement is something different from satisfaction or involvement. Satisfaction is mainly about you. You are satisfied with your workplace, your chair or your employment conditions. That is pleasant, but the organisation doesn't gain much from it. Satisfied people don't necessarily work harder. It is something passive.
With involvement, that changes. I see myself as an involved employee. If something about my employer is in the news, it interests me, even if it concerns another part of the business. I simply think it is important that my employer is doing well, and I go the extra mile for our clients. Involvement makes you show enthusiasm, and that is good for the atmosphere at work and for your customer focus. You feel part of the whole. You could call it 'having the company at heart'.
What is the downside of involvement?
Does your organisation also measure involvement? Why, actually, and what does it deliver? Is it celebrated when the score goes up? Look again at the care professional above. The downside of being too involved, and feeling too responsible, is that you cross your own limits for too long. If you stretch an elastic band for too long, it loses its stretch. I call that wear and tear. You give away a little piece of yourself every day, and if that goes on too long, health problems arise. In healthcare I often see that people don't call in sick easily because of their strong involvement, but that the absence lasts a long time when they do drop out. Then something is really wrong.
Work is work, home is home
I myself work according to what I call the 'Swedish model'. When I am working, I am (engaged) at work. When I am at home, I am at home, with more time for my wife and the two daughters I love. So no more email in the evening. Obvious, right? Yet for me it was quite a change. I have my office at home, and because I have great work, the step to the laptop is very small. Over the years, that had crept into my system.
Did it make me intensely happy? Professionally it gave me a lot of satisfaction. But I am happier when we make beautiful memories together. So I went to Budapest for five days with my youngest daughter. Quality time, just because we can.
Do I manage that new rhythm every day? No, but that's fine. The 80/20 rule applies here too. As long as the balance is moving in the right direction. It is increasingly part of my system. So I take better care of myself.
When are you truly engaged?
I wish everyone work engagement. You feel great, you are in a flow and it gives you energy. But how do you catch that 'engagement bug'? For me, involvement and 'having the company at heart' are not enough. It wouldn't work for me if I only thought it was great that my employer was doing well. Above all, I want to feel 'heart for my profession'. Then I am truly engaged.
My work gives me energy. Why? Because I take up themes that matter (meaning), such as cancer in the workplace, employees' financial worries, the menopause and informal care. Because I am allowed to have my own opinion (autonomy), work with nice colleagues and clients (relatedness) and can use my talents (competence). According to self-determination theory, autonomy, competence and relatedness are the three basic psychological needs of every human being. Self-Determination Theory
There is a clear link between involvement and engagement, though: dedication. Wilmar Schaufeli and Arnold Bakker describe work engagement by three characteristics. With dedication, you experience your work as useful and meaningful, and you feel inspired and proud. Add absorption (being happily engrossed in your work) and vigor (bursting with energy and mental resilience), and you are engaged. UBES manual
Try a one-minute experiment
You can measure work engagement. But do it with a validated questionnaire that properly captures all three characteristics, otherwise you are not measuring the right thing. For now, though, let's not measure. Filling in endless questionnaires is not exactly on employees' list of energy sources.
Look away from this article and observe the people around you. I bet that within a minute you can divide everyone into two groups: engaged and not engaged. You can pick out engaged people straight away. It is in the way they talk to you, listen to you and deal with you. It is wonderful to be in contact with them, and it is contagious, within teams too. Take a good look around and ask how it works for them.
For the organisation, it is a blessing. Engaged people perform better and feel healthier. UBES manual My new daily schedule is an example of that too: I take better care of myself, resulting in a better balance between work and private life. In the end, that is good for my employer too.
And what about happiness at work?
Happiness at work is an emerging field, just like positive psychology and positive health. Still, I find it a tricky term. Is there such a thing as private happiness, then? There is no separation between body and mind either, is there? I prefer to talk about happiness in general, about the person as a whole. When I do talk about happiness at WORK, I deliberately write that word in capitals. Because you have to work at it.
You often hear that happiness is 50% determined by your genes, 10% by your circumstances and 40% by your own behaviour. That split comes from the work of Sonja Lyubomirsky and colleagues, but was later criticised, by Brown and Rohrer among others. In 2019, Lyubomirsky and Sheldon acknowledged that the exact percentages are not correct, but they stick to the core: what you do yourself really does make a difference. Sheldon & Lyubomirsky So happiness at work is an active term. You have to work at it.
Do you have a good job?
People sometimes ask me whether I have a good job. I always answer that I have wonderful work, and I mean it. But what actually is a good job? In its report Het betere werk (Better work), the Netherlands Scientific Council for Government Policy (WRR) names three conditions for good work: WRR
- Control over money: a fair wage with security.
- Control over the work: autonomy, use of your abilities and good social relationships.
- Control over life: work that you can combine well with caring responsibilities and your private life.
Those are fine elements, and they fit nicely with the basic needs of autonomy, competence and relatedness. For me, the most important sign is whether my heart beats faster and my eyes light up when I talk about my work. Others see it in me, and I feel it myself too. Then I am engaged.
Is everything always great, then? No, of course not. It is about balance. Energy drains are simply a fact of life, and that is not a problem as long as you balance them with enough energy sources. You usually have more influence over those energy sources. Which brings us back to your own behaviour and your mindset. How well do you take care of yourself?
Also read: the difference between satisfied and engaged employees and help, I'm too engaged.
About this article: written by Frank Brinkmans and updated by the editors of Alles over bevlogenheid.
