Engagement model, levels, and distribution

The reasons that employees become engaged can be described by the model of engagement by Fleck and Inceoglu (2010), figure 2.3. The employees, starting to work at organization with individual differences, are influenced by engagement drivers.

They, then, put their great effort and advocacy to work over expectation.

The meaningful outcome will meet the organization’s and employees’ goals. Thus, Working engaged improvement and culture creation in an organization should be based on individual, job, and organizational factors.

Figure 2.2 Engagement Model Sorce: Fleck, S. and Inceoglu, I, 2010

Drivers of

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According to an engagement model (figure 2.1), besides personal factor, job and organization are other factors that can drive employees become engaged.

Therefore, this study expands the engagement model by focusing on organizational factor and examining culture’s model by Hofstede (1991, 1997) as the drivers of engagement.

The engagement levels (organization, employee, team, work, job and task) can be varied by levels of management and what they are engaged with (figure 2.2). Hence, it should be clear that which engagement is focused.

In this study, engagement depends on what the employees engage. The employee engagement refers to overall of engagement in organizations. Organizational engagement refers to engagement within organization. Team engagement refers to engage within team. Work engagement refers to engage with work. Task engagement refers to engage with task.

Figure 2.3 Engagement level of organization

However, all of levels of engagements: organizational, team, work, and task, are important in organizational development. This study focuses on work level because it is the first relationship between organization and employees. The organization can

Organizational engagement

team engagement

work / job engagement

Task engagement

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gain benefit from employees through their working. If they are highly engaged in work, it is inevitable that there will be high productivity to the organization.

Therefore, this study focuses on engagement at working level including cultural factors and the relationship between work engagement and workaholism.

Several researchers have categorized levels of employee engagement as followed. Gallop (1993) differentiated employees into three groups: engaged, non-engaged and actively disnon-engaged. Federman (2009) presented typical of employee engagement in five levels, highly disengaged, learning toward disengaged, skeptic, learning toward engaged and highly engaged. Tower Watson(2012) displayed four segments of sustainable engagement; highly engaged, unsupported, detached, and disengaged. Dale Carnegie Training (2012) promoted employees to a higher level of engagement. Figure 2.4 is presented as four types of engagement distribution.

It could be concluded that engagement distributions are generally presented in four types defining according to levels of engagement and kind of behavioral engagements.

Non-engaged Actively Disengaged Engaged

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Figure 2.4 Engagement distributions.

The engagement distribution by Aon Hewitt (2012) reported that engagement in Latin America is higher than North America, Asia, and Europe respectively. In Asia, the report showed that fifty-five percent of participants distributed engagement; twenty-five percent of them distributed near-engagement; fourteen percent of them did not show engagement; and three percent of them showed disengagement

Highly

Disengaged Unsupported Detached Highly Engaged

Disengagement

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Shimazu and colleagues (2004) report that French work engagement is higher than in Finland, South Africa, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Australia, Czech republic, Norway, Sweden, Netherlands, Canada, China, Greece, Spain, and Japan respectively.

Furthermore, Taipale and colleges (2010) studied work engagement in eight European countries. They found that work engagement in the United Kingdom and Germany were ranked as the lowest while work engagement in the Netherlands and Portugal were the highest. Work engagement was placed on different levels in retail, hospital, telecom, and banking sectors.

In retail companies, work engagement in Portugal, the Netherlands, and Hungary scored higher than in Sweden, Germany, Finland, Bulgaria, and the United Kingdom. In telecom companies, work engagement level in Portugal was higher than in Sweden, the Netherland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Germany, Finland, and The Unites Kingdom. In hospital companies, work engagement level inthe Netherland was higher than in Bulgaria, Sweden, Finland, Hungary, The Unites Kingdom, and Germany. In banking companies, work engagement level in the Netherland was higher than Finland, Germany, Sweden, Portugal,Bulgaria, Hungary, and The Unites Kingdom.

The differences of engagement levels across industries were also presented in the study of Towers Perrin’s (2003). The engagement of employees of non-profit organizations was higher than engagement in the sectors of insurance, financial and banking, pharmaceutical, high-tech, hospital and heavy manufacturing, but such engagement was lower than others’ moderate engagement. In contrast, disengagement level of employees from the heavy manufacturing sector was higher than the employees in insurance, financial and banking, hospital, high-tech, pharmaceutical, and nonprofit organizations.

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To summarize, the levels of engagement are varied in the business sectors.

Meanwhile, the levels of engagement in the same business were different among countries. Hence, factors, that gave impact to engagement, may depend on countries and businesses according to different environments: social, economic, and technology.

This study focuses on three business units in Thailand: electric and electronic, automobile, and hotel, compare work engagement in three sectors among countries. As well as this, this study will include the reasons of different work engagement in business units and countries. It is believed that the finding will be beneficial to working engaged development in the organization and to better understand work engagement differences among countries.

Moreover, this study continues work engagement study by studying work engaged types among employees so as to group employees in and develop work engagement with the right strategies. Since this study has related Schaufeli and colleagues’ work engagement’s concept (2002), engagement distributions will be presented according to types of work engagement which is the combination of three components: vigor, dedication, and absorption. Hard working engaged individuals (vigor) were involved (dedicated) and felt happily engrossed (absorbed) in their work (Bakker, Schaufeli, Leiter, and Taris, 2008).

Through three work engagement characters (vigor, dedication, and absorption), this present study classified employees in eight different combinations of three components of work engagement as can be seen in table 2.2,

47 Level of Work engagement

Types of work engagement

VI DE AB

High High High Engaged worker

High High Low Non-absorption worker

High Low High Non-dedication worker

High Low Low Energy worker

Low High High Non-vigor worker

Low High Low Enthusiasm worker

Low Low High Enjoyment worker

Low Low Low Disengaged worker

Table 2.2 Work Engagement Types

Similarly, the distribution of engagement and work engaged types are focused as one out of the fifth of the objectives of this study in order to understand an organizational situation, kinds of employees and types of engagement.

The advantages of this table show not only levels of engagement, but also employees’ behavior because the distribution combines both quantitative and quality information. Consequently, this will help organizations better understand and analyze their employees whom will be enhanced by working engaged program to meet the organizations’ requirement.

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