COMP NEWS – Is a satisfied employee an engaged employee? Many companies seeking to hire the best talent equate satisfaction with retention, but in fact, satisfaction is not linked to performance – but engagement is.
Employee engagement should be a mutually beneficial exchange between the employee and the employer. Employee satisfaction, on the other hand, measures what employers should do for their employees without any expectations in return.
While both constructs are related, only employee engagement has been linked as a predictor of performance. As Lisa H. Nishii, an expert in organizational psychology at Cornell University, explains in her Diversity and Inclusion course: “You don’t want a satisfaction ring from your partner, you want an engagement ring.” The same is true for the employer-employee relationship.
Psychologist William Kahn suggests three key elements that drive employee engagement:
Next time your company decides to run an annual engagement survey, measure more than just employee satisfaction. Psychologist William Kahn’s theory of engagement establishes three dimensions that drive employee engagement:
1.Psychological meaningfulness. This dimension involves making sure jobs are structured so that they are challenging, meaningful, and provide motivating opportunities to reach potential. Dr. Nishii adds that this reinforces people’s natural tendency to respond in kind: “If you give people challenging and meaningful work and set them up for success, they will reciprocate.”
2.Psychological safety. This dimension focuses on how safe an individual feels to engage at work. Employees look for signs of whether it is safer for them to be quiet or whether they can really share their thoughts. The frequency and quality of feedback that managers seek and act upon, the transparency an individual experiences, and managers’ willingness to own up to and learn from their mistakes all play a significant role in building trust and creating psychological safety.
3.Psychological availability. This dimension centers around the bandwidth an individual has to be engaged. The Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology highlights that engagement from the previous day carries into the next and is also influenced by one’s personal life. Psychological availability centers around allowing employees to renew their energy through work-life balance. In her teachings, Dr. Nishii adds that psychological availability is about providing learning opportunities that promote confidence and a desire to improve.
To read more about employee engagement surveys, click here.
For more Comp News, see our recent posts.
Comp News is brought to you by CompXL, the flexible compensation software provider that enables mid- to large-size organizations to implement competitive pay structures such as vested stock options and variable incentive pay.
