19 Dec 2019

Employee engagement
and motivation
Understand the concept of employee engagement and learn how to build an engaged and
motivated workforce

Introduction
Employees who have good quality jobs and are managed well, will not only be happier,
healthier and more fulfilled, but are also more likely to drive productivity, better products
or services, and innovation. This mutual gains view of motivation and people
management lies at the heart of employee engagement, a concept that’s become
increasingly mainstream in management thinking over the last decade. As part of our
work in this area, we sponsor Engage for Success, the voluntary UK movement promoting
employee engagement.

This factsheet examines the nature of employee engagement, its relationship to

motivation, well-being and other aspects of working life, and how employers can increase
it. It advises on building a motivated, engaged workforce by understanding the principles
learnt from research, ways of measuring engagement, getting the support of senior
leaders and line managers, and making employee engagement efforts organisation-
specific.

What is employee engagement?

The idea of employee engagement focuses on mutual gains in employment relationships,
seeking the good of employees (well-being, job satisfaction and so on) and the good of the
organisation they work for (performance, commitment, and so on).

Employee engagement brings together and repackages older and more established
concepts, in particular work motivation and organisational commitment. Other relevant
concepts include job satisfaction, passion and enthusiasm, identifying with one’s work,
playing to one’s strengths, absorption and energy in doing work, citizenship behaviour,

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and shared purpose or alignment to strategy.

There’s no common understanding of employee engagement. For example, the 2009

MacLeod Review found over 50 definitions! One of the earliest is Kahn's which focuses on
how people ‘express themselves physically, cognitively, and emotionally’ as they interact
with their jobs. This describes an internal state of being but one which relates closely to
behaviour, such as discretionary effort or ‘going the extra mile’.

Other definitions are closer to job satisfaction. These relate to a number of aspects of
organisational life and are typically used by consultancies. For example, Gallup’s Q12
questionnaire covers job clarity, job resources, work that plays to one’s strengths,
recognition, social support and cohesion, personal development, employee voice,
meaningfulness of work, and colleagues’ motivation.

A narrower, more specific view is that of the Utrecht University group of occupational
psychologists which defines ‘work engagement’ as a state of mind in which, rather than
being burnt out, employees show:

vigour (energy, resilience and effort)

dedication (for example, enthusiasm, inspiration and pride)
absorption (concentration and being engrossed in one’s work).

Is employee engagement a useful concept?

A sustained focus on employee engagement over the last decade or so has been key in
getting progressive people management practices firmly onto employers’ agendas. It’s
become part of management practice to an extent that other concepts, such as high-
performance working, have not.

However, it’s also faced considerable criticism, not least because of the lack of agreement
on what it is. Some HR practitioners seem content with this situation. In being a ‘broad
church’, engagement is an umbrella term to describe a multifaceted focus of people
management. Employers can shape their view of engagement to suit their context or
strategy.

But the lack of consensus on what engagement is has led to many different ways to gauge
it and inconsistent advice on how to achieve it. Vague or overly broad definitions hamper
effective action, as it’s unclear what the problem or opportunity is, or what should be
done.

We recommend that employers take one of two approaches:

Focus on specific and well-established definitions, such as the Utrecht work on

engagement.

© Copyright Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development 2020, 151 The Broadway, London SW19 1JQ, UK
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 If using ‘engagement’ as a wider umbrella term, break it down into more specific
areas that can be understood and acted upon more clearly.

A broad employee engagement strategy might focus on:

Motivation: how workers guide their efforts to achieve goals, including intrinsic
motivation (enjoying work for its own sake) and extrinsic motivation (working to get
a reward).
Organisational citizenship behaviour: going the extra mile and helping colleagues
or the organisation beyond what the job requires.
Organisational commitment: feeling attached to the organisation and intending to
stay.
Job satisfaction: how content workers are with various aspects of their work,
employment and organisational life.

What are the benefits of employee

engagement?
Feeling engaged is evidently good for workers. Most definitions of engagement describe
employees who are healthier, happier, more fulfilled or more motivated. For
organisations, research has repeatedly shown that measures of engagement go hand in
hand with higher performance. More broadly, other research shows that positive
relationships between aspects of employee engagement and various other business
metrics, including customer satisfaction, productivity, innovation, staff retention,
efficiency and health and safety performance.

This research has its problems though. The great majority of studies show correlation but
not causation. That is to say, they may reflect that employee engagement contributes to
performance, but it could equally be the other way round – people feel more engaged if
they work in successful teams or organisations. However, there is some research that
shows causal relationships, for example between short-term happiness and performance.

How engaged are UK employees?

Our Good Work Index survey (previously UK Working Lives) measures various aspects of
employee engagement. It shows that about two-thirds of workers are satisfied with their
jobs overall. Our 2018 analysis showed that UK job satisfaction fluctuated over the
previous decade, dropping in particular in 2010 and 2011 to a low of just over half, but the
general picture is more positive than negative.

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Incorporated by Royal Charter, Registered Charity no. 1079797 123 Page 3 of 7
At the day-to-day level, just over half of UK workers usually feel enthusiastic about their
jobs, one in three feel ‘full of energy’, and over half are willing to work harder than they
have to. However, a fifth of workers feel they are ‘under excessive pressure’, a fifth feel
‘exhausted’, and a fifth say they are likely to quit their job in the next year. The Skills and
Employment Survey shows that work has continually become more intense, higher
pressure, over recent decades. This may be due to various factors including rising
customer demands, technological change and economic recession.

Our UK Working Lives survey data shows no difference in enthusiasm between men and
women, but we do see greater enthusiasm among senior managers and the highest paid,
workers with postgraduate levels of qualifications and voluntary sector workers.
Discretionary effort is greatest among managerial and professional employees, lower in
administrative roles and lowest in manual and casual work. It is also greater in the
voluntary sector than in the private and public sectors.

Assessing and measuring employee

engagement
Gathering employees’ views

What drives, or hinders, commitment or motivation can be different in one organisation

from another. So it’s important that employers give employees effective channels for
voice and listen carefully to their concerns and aspirations.

Many medium-sized and large employers conduct regular employee attitude surveys,
often alongside qualitative methods such as focus groups. A mixed approach is best as
different methods have different strengths. Employee surveys give a representative view
of experiences across the organisation. On the other hand, qualitative methods provide a
richer understanding of employee experiences in their own words and can give deeper
insight into why people are happy or unhappy.

Measuring employee engagement

Once an organisation reaches a certain size, people analytics become an important way to
understand the strengths and weaknesses of an organisation. Measuring aspects of
employee engagement is an important part of this. The adage that ‘what gets measured
gets attention’ holds true, and measurement can identify how different parts of the
organisation compare, how motivation is changing over time and what the main factors
are that motivate or demotivate people.

However, the measures used can be problematic. Composite measures that draw

© Copyright Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development 2020, 151 The Broadway, London SW19 1JQ, UK
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together survey questions to give a broad overall engagement score can oversimplify
matters dramatically. The multi-faceted nature of employee engagement means that it’s
easy for measures to bundle together quite distinct factors and, as such, be very hard to
action.

Human capital metrics can be invaluable, but need to be reliable and give data that is
clear and specific enough to be actionable. It is advisable to use engagement metrics that
are well established and specific (for example the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale) or
draw on a range of relevant metrics (for example, motivation, commitment and so on).

How to build an engaged and motivated

workforce
Drivers of and barriers to employee engagement

Research suggests that various dimensions of working life lead to employee engagement,
including personality (for example, self-confidence and resilience), job design (for
example, job demands and resources), leadership and management, organisational
climate or culture (for example, psychological safety and the emphasis on service quality)
and management practices (from mindfulness interventions to training courses). One of
the most established influences on motivation is autonomy or self-determination – that is,
being empowered to shape one’s job makes it more meaningful and enjoyable.

Our UK Working Lives survey found that the quality of relationships and managerial
support is consistently related to various aspects of engagement, including job
satisfaction, enthusiasm, effort and intention to quit. However, different aspects of
engagement are most closely related to different factors of job quality. For example, job
complexity (how stimulating, interesting and novel one’s work is) is most closely related to
enthusiasm and effort. And terms of employment (for example, job security and
development opportunities) are most closely related to overall job satisfaction and
intention to quit.

The 2009 MacLeod Review summarised four key ‘enablers’ of employee engagement:

Leadership that gives a ‘strong strategic narrative about the organisation’.

Line managers who motivate, empower and support their employees.
Employee voice throughout the organisation, to involve employees in decision
making.
Organisational integrity that stated values are reflected in the actual
organisational culture; what we say is what we do.

It’s important to remember that people management and HR systems can get in the way

© Copyright Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development 2020, 151 The Broadway, London SW19 1JQ, UK
Incorporated by Royal Charter, Registered Charity no. 1079797 123 Page 5 of 7
of employee engagement as much as drive it. Employers should be careful not to assume
that workers are inherently demotivated and the solution is for management to lead and
direct them in an inspiring way. People are naturally motivated to do a good job and
become demotivated when they feel overworked, unsupported or frustrated.

Employee engagement strategies

Successful employee engagement strategies will make use of a range of good people
management and learning and development practices. They should be holistic, for
example by focusing on employee motivation and well-being, and helping employees
understand their contribution to the organisation’s purpose, objectives and culture.

Strategies should also be multi-pronged, aligning communications, HR policies and

systems, learning and development and cross-organisational events. As such, they
require the active buy-in and support of senior leaders and line managers throughout the
organisation

Our report Developing managers for engagement and well-being gives guidance on how
to develop managers who support employee engagement, health and well-being.

Some employees will naturally be more engaged than others and person-job fit will also
heavily influence engagement. This means that recruitment practices and performance
management are also important tools for building an engaged motivated workforce.

Further reading
Books and reports

BRIDGER, E. (2018) Employee engagement: a practical introduction. 2nd ed. HR

Fundamentals. London: CIPD and Kogan Page.

HOLBECHE, L. and MATTHEWS, G. (2012) Engaged: unleashing your organization's

potential through employee engagement. San Francisco, CA: Jossey Bass.

PASS, S. et al. (2018) 'All for one and one for all': Line manager’s might be the catalyst but
‘everyone’s responsible’ for employee engagement. CIPD Applied Research Conference
Paper. Reviewed in In a Nutshell, issue 88.

Visit the CIPD and Kogan Page Bookshop to see all our priced publications currently in
print.

Journal articles

© Copyright Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development 2020, 151 The Broadway, London SW19 1JQ, UK
Incorporated by Royal Charter, Registered Charity no. 1079797 123 Page 6 of 7
GYTON, G. (2017) How to move beyond the rhetoric on employee engagement. People
Management (online). 31 January.

MEYER, J.P. (2017) Has engagement had its day: what’s next and does it matter?
Organizational Dynamics. Vol 46, No 2, pp87-95.

SHARP, R. (2019) Is engagement fact or fiction?Human Resources (HR). June. pp20-25.

CIPD members can use our online journals to find articles from over 300 journal titles
relevant to HR.

Members and People Management subscribers can see articles on the People
Management website.

This factsheet was last updated by Jonny Gifford.

© Copyright Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development 2020, 151 The Broadway, London SW19 1JQ, UK
Incorporated by Royal Charter, Registered Charity no. 1079797 123 Page 7 of 7