Engagement level and individual condition

Not only are work engagement levels different among countries and business units, but also among the levels of individuals, personal demographics and working characteristics. Engagement levels can vary according to different biographical and personality. Robertson-Smith and Markwick (2009) suggest that engagement levels can vary according to different biographical, personality, seniority, occupation and length of servicein an organization, but not by sector

Aon Hewitt (2011) presented the global different engagement levels among generations, job level, job functions, and genders in Asia, Europe, Latin America, and North America. For examples, executive manager distributed higher engagement than middle manager, front line manager, and professional manager.

Engagement levels can be arranged by job functions. HR department distributed higher engagement than customer service, RandD, marketing, production, IT, operation, and administration (Aon Hewitt, 2011). In contrast, support function and IT in Asia presented lower engagement than the others.

In terms of position or level in organizations, job position demonstrated significant association with work engagement. Kim et al. (2009) established a project survey in Subway stores in the Northwestern United. It was found that there was a high level engagement in the organization. Managers, manager assistants, and supervisors displayed significant higher rate of vigor, dedication, and absorption than non-supervisor. As well as this, Burke and Koyuncu et al (2009) asserted that hotel managers indicated higher levels of vigor, dedication and absorption than the others.

49

As far as engagement by gender was concerned, it was found that male’s engagement level was lower than female’s in Latin America and North America, but ,in Asia, male’s engagement level was higher than female’s(Aon Hewitt, 2011).

There was no difference between male and female engagement levels in Europe.

Blessing White (2011) reported that gender differentiation took place in some regions.

For instances, in India and China, man’s engagement level was substantially higher than woman’s. However, there was no difference in gender engagemen in North America and Europe.

Gender differences on engagement were also found in two studies: Firsy, Johnson (2004) and Taipale et al (2010). Firsy, Johnson (2004) found that women tended to feel more job fulfillment and more engaged than men did, but there was no substantially difference of engagement levels between Thai men and women.

Taipale et al (2010) studied work engagement in eight European countries:

Bulgaria, Finland, Germany, Hungary, The Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden and The United Kingdom. They found that women seemed to be more engaged than men did.

On the contrary, Bakker and Xanthopoulou (2009), studied in the Netherlands, did not find any relationship between gender and work. They also applied UWES-9 to a cross-national study (n = 14,521): Australia, Belgium, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, South Africa, and Spain and found that there was indifferent in the relationship between work engagement and gender (Schaufeli, Bakker and Salanova 2006).

50

In terms of generation, baby boomed generations occupied higher engagement than generation-X and Millennial in Asia, Europe, Latin America, and North America (Aon Hewitt, 2011).

Comparably, aged employees are more engaged than younger colleagues in Finland, Hungary and the UK (Taipale et al , 2010). Bakker and Xanthopoulou (2009) also supported this claim by studying 80 employees in different organizations in the Netherlands and found that participant’s’ age are positively related to their work engagement.

Park and Gursoy (2012) found that levels of work engagement in American hotel employees are varied based on the generation membership of employees and asserted that older employees tend to be more engaged, or dedicated to, engrossed in, and even vigorous at work than employees of younger generations particularly Millennial or Gen-Y employees. This was also supported by BlessingWhite (2011) that the elders were more engaged and employee engagement distributions display differently among generations cohorts. In a study of the relationship between age of female academics and level of work engagement by Bezuidenhout and Cilliers(2011), it was found that the older female academics maintained higher scores on vigor and absorption than the others.

However, a cross-national study by Schaufeli, Bakker and Salanova (2006) found that engagement was insignificantly related with age. A study in China by Pitt-Catsouphes et al. (2011) found that work engagement in China was not affected by age.

This is supported by the study of work engagement among hotel managers in China (Burke and Koyuncu et al., 2009) indicated that demographics, age, marital status,

51

number of children, and education level did not have any impacts on level of work engagement.

As far as marital status is concerned, Gallop found that married employees tended to have a higher level of engagement than those who were single whereas the Taipale et al (2010) showed that marital status did not have any effect on work engagement.

Nevertheless, Bakker and Shimazu et al. (2011) surveyed 462 Japanese couples working in different occupational sectors and found that engagement crossover was strongest when both men and women were high in perspective taking*.

In terms of organizational tenure, employees with longer tenure had lower feeling of vigor in the workplace as presented in a study of hotel employees’ work engagement in Abuja, Nigeria by Karatepe and Olugbade (2009), and in China (Burke and Koyuncu et al., 2009). Those results showed that hotel managers,who had longer hotel tenure, were indicated as lower work engagement of all.

To conclude, there are no clear cut to assume that which factors: personal demographic and work situation experience, has the most impact in work engagement.

Therefore, there will be room for this study to find out engagement levels that are affected by personal demographic, gender, generations, educational levels, marital status and work situation characteristics (position, division, organization tenure, and tenure). These results will be beneficial to better understand the differences of demographics and the influence of work situation of work engagement.

52