Kahn's 'Psychological Conditions Of Personal Engagement And Disengagement At Work'

1090 Words3 Pages

KAHN 1990 – NEED-SATISFYING APPROACH
In his article, 'Psychological Conditions of Personal Engagement and Disengagement at Work ' (1990), Kahn was the first to apply the engagement theory in the workplace to explain the way an employee engages himself in the workplace depending on different variables, workplace environment, safety and the way he feels about his work amongst others. With his research, he attempted to analyse how the above-mentioned variables can affect the way an employee works and connects to others in the workplace. He conducted an interview with 32 people and results show that people can either engage themselves in their work- do their work as best as they can possibly do, or totally disengage themselves- not giving themselves completely to their tasks- depending on how much value they attribute to their job and how they are made to feel in the workplace. He states that the more valuable an employee feels in the workplace, the more he will engage himself both physically and emotionally in his tasks. The employee needs to feel that he is making a difference and that what he accomplishes is being appreciated. Safety is another important variable that Kahn defines as being a situation where the employee has no need to fear and feels that he has the support he needs to complete his tasks. Another variable that affects how the employee works is availability which is defined as the employee's own ability to involve himself both physically and emotionally in his work. Kahn's research acknowledges that this variable will depend on factors outside the workplace such as the employee's personal life. These three factors, meaningfulness, availability and safety contribute to the way an employee engages himself in h...

... middle of paper ...

...hancement. They found out that the more engaged employees an organisation has, the higher the productivity and the lower the staff turnover. This means that the Company will spend less money as it does not have to recruit staff continually and spend resources on training. Instead its employees stay as they receive support and derive job meaningfulness and satisfaction which make them more engaged in their work. Research also reveals that the higher the level of satisfaction an employee derives and the more engaged he is, the better the quality of his job and the better the outcomes for his Company. Employee engagement has been found to be directly related to customer satisfaction and profitability. This was proved by Harter et Al (2002) who showed that businesses who had a high score on employee engagement had a higher profitability and a lower staff turnover.

Open Document