Running head: WORK ENGAGEMENT 1

MSc. in Human Resource Management &

Organizational Psychology

Human resource managers’ development of understanding

on the concept of work engagement
Bigger companies within the tourism industry in Iceland

June 2017
Name of author: Telma Dís Ólafsdóttir
ID number: 310190-3579
Supervisor: Auður Arna Arnardóttir
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Declaration of Research Work Integrity

This work has not previously been accepted in substance for any degree and is not being
concurrently submitted in candidature of any degree. This thesis is the result of my own
investigations, except where otherwise stated. Other sources are acknowledged by
giving explicit references. A bibliography is appended.

By signing the present document I confirm and agree that I have read RU’s ethics code
of conduct and fully understand the consequences of violating these rules in regards of
my thesis.

..................................................................................................................................
Date and place ID number Signature

     
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Acknowledgement

This research is a 30 ECTS thesis for my MSc. degree in Human Resource Management
and Organization Psychology from Reykjavik University. I want to thank my
supervisor, dr. Auður Arna Arnardóttir for good guidance throughout the process. Then
I would like to thank all of the interviewees who agreed to participate in the study. I
would also like to thank my fellow students for their motivation and support. Finally I
would like to thank my family, who were very patient and for all the help during the
process.

     
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Abstract
The individual employee aims for an enjoyable workplace environment as on average
much of their lifetime is spent working. At the same time most organizations expect
their employees to work hard, deliver high quality performance, be energetic, and
dedicated towards their work. Many concepts have tried to focus on how employees’
health can affect their performance. One of those is a relatively new concept in the
literature, called work engagement (Macey & Schneider, 2008). In the past decade there
has been a rise in scientific studies on the concept. Work engagement however is a
concept that has usually been measured at the individual level (Harter, Schmidt &
Hayes, 2002). In this paper the concept will be looked at from the perspective of human
resource management, or unit level. Human resource managers within a company are in
the position to try to affect employees’ work engagement. Somewhat fewer researches
exist on the concept on the unit level and here in Iceland on the concept in general. The
objective of the research was to examine the position of the concept of work
engagement among human resource managers in companies that in one way or another
are related to the tourism industry in Iceland. That is, where in the development of
understanding the concept the human resource managers are positioned. First they need
to be aware of the concept existence and then have knowledge of what the concept
entails. Then they need to reflect on what practices they have or could have which can
result with them systematically applying the concept. The findings of the study reveal
that generally the concept of work engagement has received attention of quite a few
human resource managers within the tourism business in Iceland. Understanding on the
concept was in general good, although how far along in the application process varied.
However, difference between human resource managers how far along they are in their
development of understanding seems to be related to two awareness issues. On one
hand how they differentiate the concepts from other similar concepts and on the other
hand the relevance or importance they give it in their practices. Which can both affect
how they work with the concept.
Keywords: Work engagement, HR managers, unit-level, job demands-
resource model (JDR), social exchange theory (SET).

     
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Útdráttur
Að meðaltali verja einstaklingar meirihluta ævi sinnar í vinnu. Það er því mikilvægt
fyrir starfsmenn að upplifa starf sitt og starfsumhverfið sitt á þann hátt að þeim líði vel.
Á sama tíma ætlast fyrirtæki til þess að starfsmenn leggi hart að sér, skili góðri
frammistöðu, séu duglegir og hollir starfinu sínu. Mörg hugtök hafa lagt áherslu á það
hvernig heilsa og líðan starfsmanna geti haft áhrif á árangur þeirra í starfi. Eitt þeirra,
sem er tiltölulega nýtt í fræðunum, kallast á ensku „work engagement” (Macey &
Schneider, 2008). Síðastliðna áratugi hefur rannsóknum á hugtakinu fjölgað. Samt sem
áður er „work engagement” hugtak sem oftast hefur verið mælt og rannsakað á
einstaklingsstigi (Harter, Schmidt & Hayes, 2002). Í þessari rannsókn verður litið á
hugtakið frá öðru sjónarhorni, frá sjónarhorni mannauðsstjóra eða einingarstigi.
Mannauðsstjórar eru í því hlutverki innan fyrirtækja að geta haft áhrif á „work
engagement” starfsmanna. Nokkuð færri rannsóknir eru til um efnið á einingarstigi og
ennþá færri um efnið almennt hér á landi. Markmið þessarar rannsóknar er að skoða
stöðu hugtaksins „work engagement” á meðal mannauðsstjóra í fyrirtækjum sem á einn
eða annan hátt tengjast ferðamannaiðnaðinum á Íslandi. Það er hvar í þróuninni á því að
skilja og nota hugtakið mannauðsstjórarnir eru staðsettir. Til að byrja með þurfa þeir að
vera meðvitaðir um tilvist hugtaksins. Þeir þurfa að hafa þekkingu á því og merkingu
þess. Þá þurfa þeir að íhuga hvaða aðgerðir má hafa í huga og hvað er nú þegar verið að
gera sem gæti aukið „work engagement” starfsmanna. Að lokum að beita hugtakinu
kerfisbundið í störfum sínum og starfsemi fyrirtækisins. Niðurstöður rannsóknarinnar
voru þær að hugtakið hefur fengið þónokkra athygli meðal mannauðsstjóra innan
ferðaþjónustu á Íslandi. Skilningur á hugtakinu var almennt séð góður, þó svo að beiting
hugtaksins væru mismunandi langt komin. Einnig kom í ljós að munur var á þróun
skilnings á hugtakinu „work engagement” og var hann talinn tengjast vitund
mannauðsstjóranna. Annars vegar eftir því hvernig mannauðsstjórarnir aðgreina
hugtakið frá öðrum líkum hugtökum og hins vegar hversu mikilvægt eða skuldbundnir
þeir eru við það að beita hugtakinu í starfi sínu að svo stöddu. Sem bæði geta haft áhrif
á það hvernig þeir vinna með hugtakið.

     
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Table of contents

Declaration of Research Work Integrity  .......................................................................................  2  

Table of contents  ...................................................................................................................................  6  
List of tables  ...........................................................................................................................................  8  
List of figures  .........................................................................................................................................  9  
1. Introduction  .....................................................................................................................................  10  
2. Literature Review  .........................................................................................................................  12  
2.1 Defining work engagement  ................................................................................................  12  
2.2 Differentiation from related constructs  ..........................................................................  15  
2.3 Antecedents of work engagement  ....................................................................................  17  
2.3.1 JD-R model  .....................................................................................................................  17  
2.3.2 Social exchange theory  ...............................................................................................  19  
2.4 Work engagement outcomes  ..............................................................................................  21  
2.4.1 Individual performance  ...............................................................................................  22  
2.4.2 Organizational performance  ......................................................................................  23  
2.5 Human resource management  ...........................................................................................  24  
2.6 Work engagement interventions  .......................................................................................  27  
2.6.1 Organizational interventions  .....................................................................................  29  
2.6.2 Individual interventions  ..............................................................................................  30  
2.7 Measurement of work engagement  ..................................................................................  31  
2.7 Different occupations  ...........................................................................................................  34  
2.8 Work engagement in Iceland  .............................................................................................  34  
2.9 Tourism business in Iceland  ...............................................................................................  35  
2.10 Research Questions  ............................................................................................................  37  
3. Methodology  ...................................................................................................................................  39  
3.1 Qualitative research  ..............................................................................................................  39  
3.2 Participants  ..............................................................................................................................  39  
3.3 Data collection  ........................................................................................................................  41  
3.4 Data analysis  ...........................................................................................................................  42  
3.5 Ethical considerations  ..........................................................................................................  43  
4. Findings and Discussion  .............................................................................................................  45  
4.1 Understanding  .........................................................................................................................  46  

     
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4.1.1 Awareness  ........................................................................................................................  46  

4.1.2 Differentiation from other concepts  ........................................................................  48  
4.2 Practices  ....................................................................................................................................  51  
4.2.1 Reflection  .........................................................................................................................  51  
4.2.2 General HRM practices  ...............................................................................................  52  
4.2.3 Relevance  .........................................................................................................................  53  
4.2.4 Main challenges  .............................................................................................................  56  
4.3 Benefits  .....................................................................................................................................  58  
4.3.1 Behavior  ...........................................................................................................................  58  
4.3.2 Consequences  .................................................................................................................  59  
4.4 Final Conclusion  ....................................................................................................................  60  
5. Limitations and Future Research  .............................................................................................  63  
5.1 Limitations  ...............................................................................................................................  63  
5.2 Future research  .......................................................................................................................  63  
References  ............................................................................................................................................  65  
Appendix A  ..........................................................................................................................................  70  
Appendix B  ..........................................................................................................................................  74  
Appendix C  ..........................................................................................................................................  78  
Appendix D  ..........................................................................................................................................  79  

     
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List of tables

Table 1. Individual Performance.  .....................................................................................................  23  

Table 2. Organizational Performance.  ............................................................................................  24  
Table 3. UWES.  .....................................................................................................................................  32  
Table 4. Q12.  ...........................................................................................................................................  33  
Table 5. Demographic information of the participants and companies.  ..............................  40  

     
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List of figures

Figure 1. JD-R model of Work Engagement.  ...............................................................................  18  

Figure 2. Antecedent and consequences of engagement.  .........................................................  20  
Figure 3. HRM unit-level.  ...................................................................................................................  25  
Figure 4. Strategic engagement model.  ..........................................................................................  28  
Figure 5. Main themes.  ........................................................................................................................  45  
Figure 6. Development of understanding.  .....................................................................................  46  

     
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1. Introduction

Over the last twenty years significant number of research has shown that having Human
Resource Management (HRM) within companies is associated with employee
outcomes. Most of the research focuses on employee’s attitudes towards the work, and
forgets the employee’s health (Van De Voorde, Veld & Van Veldhoven, 2016). The
individual employee aims for an enjoyable workplace environment as on average much
of their lifetime is spent working. At the same time most organizations expect their
employees to work hard, deliver high quality performance, be energetic, and dedicated
towards their work. Employees’ well-being has been linked with better performance and
even positive business outcomes. Therefore employees’ contentment should also matter
to the organization (Harter, Schmidt & Keyes, 2003). Many concepts have tried to focus
on how employees’ health can affect their performance. One of those is a relatively new
concept in the literature, called work engagement (Macey & Schneider, 2008).
Work engagement and how it affects business outcomes has recently become
popular among business and HR consultants (Macey & Schneider, 2008). In the
beginning, most of the things that were written on engagement were done by
practitioners and consulting firms, and little was to be found in academic literature.
Practitioners and consulting firms claim that work engagement drives bottom line
results, such as increased profitability with higher productivity, sales, customer
satisfaction and employee retention; all of which are appealing to organizational
management. However these claims are often not supported with scientific evidence
(Macey & Schneider, 2008; Schaufeli & Bakker, 2010). With growing interests on the
concept, academic researchers have also become interested in exploring work
engagement. Researching not only the consequences of work engagement but also the
antecedents of how individuals become work engaged. For the past decade, research on
the concept has thus been increasing in the academic world (Saks, 2006; Bakker &
Leiter, 2010).
The concept of work engagement is relatively new and has not been fully
formed (Macey & Schneider, 2008). The fact that the meaning of the term engagement
is still unclear among both academic researchers and practitioners is not surprising
because as with many psychological constructs they often are, early on in their
development. This does not mean that the theory lacks conceptual or practical utility. In
an ever-changing world, of globalization and the aging of the workforce, having

     
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engaged personnel might be an organization’s key to having a competitive advantage on

the market. The challenge that still remains is how to establish the right conditions to
foster engagement. There seems to be no right answer as of now, but the company that
manages to do so will have created something that will be hard for competitors to
imitate (Macey & Schneider, 2008).
The rise in interest of exploring work engagement has been linked to the
increased attention on positive psychology (Schaufeli & Bakker, 2010). Almost all
research done on work engagement emerged after the turn of the century, although
compared to the total publications on the internet, there is still a lack of academic
research. Most of the research has been focused on defining, and bringing clarity to the
concept of work engagement as a unique construct (Schaufeli & Bakker, 2010). Like
elsewhere, not much research has been done on the concept of work engagement in
Iceland. The purpose of this study is to shed light on the understanding of human
resource managers on the concept of work engagement and its position in human
resource related practices. With the growing tourism industry and the challenges that
can follow, the focus of this research is on the human resource managers within
companies that in one way or another are related to the tourism industry here in Iceland.
The aim of the study is to see how far the human resource managers are in their
development of understanding the concept. From understanding what the concept of
work engagement entails, to actually making systematic actions in applying it, and if
they have begun to assess any benefits from those actions.

Understanding è Practices è Benefits

The research will be divided up into five parts, the first part being the
introduction. The second part will cover the literature review on the concept, starting
with the concept of work engagement, differentiation from related constructs,
antecedents, outcomes, interventions, measurement, work engagement in Iceland and
tourism industry in general in Iceland, leading into the research questions. In the third
part, the methodology of the research will be described as well as the reasons for
choosing a qualitative method and how participants were selected. In the fourth part, the
main findings and conclusion of the study will be presented. Ending with the fifth part
of the limitations of the study and future research.

     
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2. Literature Review

2.1 Defining work engagement

This section will present an overview of the different ways work engagement has been
conceptualized and how it has developed from the time it first appeared (Schaufeli &
Bakker, 2010; Saks, 2006). Engagement at work was first conceptualized almost 30
years ago by the researcher W. A. Kahn (1990). He defined personal engagement “as
the harnessing of organization members’ selves to their work roles; in engagement,
people employ and express themselves physically, cognitively and emotionally during
role performance. Personal disengagement is then when people withdraw and avoid
themselves during role performance physically, cognitively or emotionally” (Kahn,
1990, p. 694). In other words an engaged worker puts effort into his work. Later Khan
(1992) added to his definition as “being fully there” or the worker’s “psychological
presence” at work, there engagement was starting to be seen as a behavior as well.
Khan, then described how being psychologically present can produce positive outcomes
both on an individual level (development and personal growth) and on an organizational
level (quality of performance) (Khan, 1992; Schaufeli & Bakker, 2010).
Rothbard (2001) was inspired by Khan’s work (1990, 1992) when he took a
different approach, talking about engagement as a motivational construct that has two
critical components, attention and absorption, in addition to the psychological presence.
He described attention being the “cognitive ability and the amount of time one spends
thinking about his role” (Rothbard, 2001, p. 656), and, absorption being “engrossed in a
role and refers to the intensity of one’s focus on a role” (Rothbard, 220, p. 656). In other
words, how a person ignores other factors and does not get distracted from the work
itself (Rothbard, 2001).
A different approach emerged in the literature when work engagement was
considered being the opposite of the burnout concept (Maslach, Schaufeli & Leiter,
2001). Burnout is “a prolonged response to chronic emotional and interpersonal
stressors on the job, and is defined by the three dimensions of exhaustion, cynicism, and
inefficacy” (Maslach et al., 2001, p. 397). The three key factors that were considered to
characterize engagement, energy (exhaustion), involvement (cynicism) and efficacy
(inefficacy), were thought to be the exact opposites of the three characteristics of
burnout. Engaged employees would therefore feel full of energy, and connected to their

     
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jobs, while the ones that suffer from burnout find their work stressful and demanding
when the work got challenging. Maslach and Jackson also developed the Maslach
Burnout Inventory (MBI) to measure the levels of burnout and engagement amongst
employees. On the scale, burnout and engagement can be assessed as the scores appear
as opposite patterns on the three MBI dimensions (Maslach, Jackson & Leiter, 1997;
Maslach et al., 2001).
To Harter, Schmidt and Hayes (2002) engagement “refers to the individual’s
involvement and satisfaction with as well as enthusiasm for work (Harter et al., 2002, p.
269). They published the first study where they present that it is also important to talk
about engagement on the business unit level, not only the individual level. They were
one of the first to publish an article on the linkage between engagement, something that
happens on the inside of the individual, and the business unit outcomes, or profit (Harter
et al., 2002).
Saks (2006) tried to gather the different definitions and meanings of engagement
from the academic literature and defined it as “a distinct and unique construct that
consists of cognitive, emotional, and behavioral components that is associated with
individual role performance” (Saks, 2006, p. 602). Saks was also the first to test the
antecedents or the drivers of work engagement to the employee work engagement
consequences (Saks, 2006; Shuck & Wollard, 2010).
To Macey and Schneider (2008) engagement appears as some kind of energy,
involvement and in making a great effort towards achieving the goals of the
organization. They thought of employee work engagement as an umbrella term that
entails separate but related types of engagement: trait, state and behavioral engagement.
They were the first to conceptualize engagement this way (Shuck & Wollard, 2010).
Macey & Schneider (2008) define trait engagement as the “inclination or orientation to
experience the world from a particular vantage point, psychological state engagement as
a precursor to behavioral engagement, encompassing the constructs of satisfaction,
involvement, commitment, and empowerment, and lastly behavioral engagement in
terms of discretionary effort” (Macey & Schneider, 2008, p. 5-6). Different work and
organizational conditions (or work attributes; variety, challenge, autonomy, leadership)
might also facilitate work engagement in different ways. It is therefore not just about
the traits that the individual has, but also about the mindset and his behavior. The latter
two can be managed or affected by the right work or organizational attributes (Macey &
Schneider, 2008).

     
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To this date with different definitions of work engagement there can be found
areas of consistency and inconsistency. Most scholars do agree that work engaged
employees have high levels of energy towards their work and strongly identify with
their work (Bakker, Schaufeli, Leiter & Taris, 2008). However there is inconsistency
when it comes to, for example, where the decision of becoming engaged develops and
concerning the different types of engagement. What seems to be consistent is that
engagement seems to be manifested and measured behaviorally and the agreement that
engagement can lead to adaptive behaviors which can lead to organizational outcome
(Scuck & Wollard, 2010). There is also some inconsistency when it comes to the terms
“work engagement” and “employee engagements” as they are often used conversely
throughout the literature. Because the term “employee engagement” is not entirely clear,
the term work engagement will be used from now on in this paper, because it is more
specific. Work engagement refers to the relationship between the employee and the
work, whereas employee engagement may also include the relationship with the
organization (Bakker & Leiter, 2010).
In this paper Schaufeli, Salanova, Gozález-Romá and Bakker’s (2002) definition
and operationalization of work engagement will be used. They thought of work
engagement as an independent distinct concept in the way that it is negatively related to
the burnout concept. Their definition on work engagement is “a positive, fulfilling,
work-related state of mind that is characterized by vigor, dedication, and absorption“
(Schaufeli et al., 2002, p. 74). Vigor means having high levels of energy, mental
resilience and being willing to invest one’s self while working. Dedication refers to
being strongly involved and feeling a sense of importance, being enthusiastic, inspired,
pride and challenged while working. Absorption is best described as being fully
concentrated so that time seems to pass quickly where it is difficult to detach from the
work. Work engagement is therefore a work-related well-being of an employee, an
inner-state that is positive, fulfilling, affective and motivational (Bakker et al., 2008).
When researching the concept of work engagement what should also be taken
into account is how it is thought about, whether it is on the business unit-level or at the
employee individual-level (Harter et al., 2002). Employees’ attitudes like employee
engagement are more commonly researched on the individual employee level instead of
the business unit-level. A meta-analysis showed that there can be a lot of advantages of
studying the data retrieved from such attitude concepts at a business unit-level. In other
words, how the attitudes of the employees can affect the business outcomes (for

     
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example; competitive advantage, customer loyalty, profitability, productivity, turnover

and safety/accidents). Employee satisfaction and engagement were measured and both
showed generalizability across companies in their correlations with the business
outcomes. The findings suggest that the employees’ attitudes such as overall satisfaction
and engagement are related to meaningful business-unit outcomes (Harter et al., 2002).
In summary, work engagement is something that happens on the inside of the
individual that is between him and his work that has positive results on his performance.
With different definition going around Schaufeli’s et al., (2002) definition on work
engagement will be used in this paper. As the concept is being researched from the HR
manager perspective the findings will be on the unit-level. But with the different
definitions throughout the literature, one frequently asked question is; does work
engagement bring us something new from related constructs, or as some would say it is
“just old wine in a new bottle” (Macey & Schneider, 2008).

2.2 Differentiation from related constructs

With the different definitions and meaning of work engagement it can oftentimes seem
to overlap with other similar and related construct (Saks, 2006). The important question
is therefore whether the concept of work engagement can add value over related
concepts (Schaufeli & Bakker, 2010). To date a number of studies have empirically
distinguished work engagement from similar and related concepts. In this section a
distinction will be made on work engagement and nine other such concepts, those are;
extra-role behavior, organizational citizenships behavior, organizational commitment,
job involvement, job satisfaction, positive affectivity, flow, workaholism and
motivation (Bakker et al., 2008; Saks, 2006; Eldor, 2016).
Work engagement has been distinguished from concepts that refer to behaviors
such as, extra-role behavior also called organizational citizenship behavior and
personal initiative (Schaufeli & Bakker, 2010). Work engagement is often defined in
terms of employees “giving it their all” or “going the extra mile” in a way that is
discretionary, and voluntary effort towards the work on their behalf. Although it is
common to define engagement this way, engaged employees show more than this extra-
role behaviors by bringing something different: for example being creative in their jobs,
and doing something more, such as working longer hours. Personal initiative consists of
deciding to act in a certain way, taking charge, and having endurance while working. It
     
WORK ENGAGEMENT 16

can therefore be said to be related to the behavioral component vigor in work

engagement, but is not the same concept as engagement (Schaufeli & Bakker, 2010).
Engagement differs from being voluntary, extra-role and an informal behavior that can
help co-workers or the organization, which are involved in organizational citizenship
behavior. Engagement however is “one’s formal role performance” (Saks, 2006, p.
602).
Work engagement has also been distinguished from concepts that refer to beliefs
such as, organizational commitment and job involvement. Organizational commitment
is the relationship between the employee and the organization, or the employee’s
psychological attachment or identification with the organization (Schaufeli & Bakker,
2010). Engagement is not an attitude or an attachment towards an organization like
organizational commitment is, rather engagement is the “degree to which the individual
is attentive and absorbed in the performance of their roles” (Saks, 2006, page 602).
Engagement is also the involvement that the employee has towards the work role or the
work itself. Similar to commitment, job involvement is the psychological identification
of an employee with his work (Schaufeli & Bakker, 2010). Engagement is not the
ability of tying one’s self-image to a job like in job involvement, instead engagement
“has to do with how individuals employ themselves in the performance of their job”
(Saks, 2006, page 602). It has also been mentioned that engagement can be one of the
factors that precedes job involvement, that those who are highly engaged can come to
identify with their jobs (Saks, 2006).
Work engagement has also been distinguished from concepts that refer to an
affect, such as job satisfaction and positive affectivity (Schaufeli & Bakker, 2010). Job
satisfaction is “a pleasurable or positive emotional state resulting from the appraisal of
one’s job” (Locke, 1976, p. 1304). Job satisfaction is therefore the attitude the employee
has on one’s job or job situation. Engagement however is not concerned with the
employees attitude towards the work, it is rather concerned with his mood at work. An
employee can therefore have high job satisfaction that he has positive feelings towards
his job but that does not necessarily mean that he is engaged. Positive affectivity is a
certain trait of individuals regardless of the context. Engagement is more than that, but
some employees might be more prone to being engaged than others if they are more
positive in general (Schaufeli & Bakker, 2010).
Work engagement has also been distinguished from concepts that refer to more
complex psychological states, such as flow and/or workaholism. Flow is characterized

     
WORK ENGAGEMENT 17

by having focused attention, a clear mind, effortless concentration, being in complete

control, losing track of time, and enjoying it, which sounds a lot like absorption in work
engagement. This however is usually short-term whereas absorption is a state of mind
that is more pervasive and long-term. Different from workaholism, engagement is not
driven by compulsion, or an inner urge that the employee cannot resist. Engaged
employees consider their work challenging in a fun way and therefore work harder
(Schaufeli & Bakker, 2010).
The definition of the concept, work engagement, sounds a lot like motivation
and motivation plays its part in engagement. However, work engagement is different
from motivation, because it also refers to cognition (absorption) and affect (vigor)
additionally to motivation (dedication). Work engagement has therefore been said to be
a better predictor of job performance than many earlier constructs like job satisfaction,
commitment and motivation (Bakker, 2011).
In summary, when all of these different concepts above are considered, there is a
partial overlap observed between work engagement and those notions. However as
shown above work engagement is conceptually distinct from those views and can have
added value over those related and/or similar concepts (Schaufeli & Bakker, 2010). As
a distinct concept the following chapter will go over the factors that might explain how
employees become work engaged.

2.3 Antecedents of work engagement

Many have tried to explain how employees become engaged. In this research two
models will be covered that have often been used to explain the antecedents of work
engagement, meaning how employees become engaged. Those are the Job-Demands
Resource model (Demerouti, Bakker, Nachreiner & Schaufeli, 2001) and the Social
Exchange theory (Saks, 2006). Both of those frameworks and how they contribute to
work engagement will be presented below.

2.3.1 JD-R model

A frequently used theoretical framework that can provide important realistic guidance
for interventions on work engagement is the job demand-resource model (JD-R model)
see figure 1. The model, that was first introduced by Demerouti and colleagues in 2001,
     
WORK ENGAGEMENT 18

can be used for identifying the most important parts needed to affect work engagement,
and for pointing out the most effective processes to achieve it (Demerouti et al., 2001;
Leiter & Maslach, 2010; Hakanen & Roodt, 2010). The JD-R model origin can be
traced back to several models of job stress. The theory predicts that balance between job
demands and job resources should result in lower job stress. Studies have also shown
that engagement can be best predicted by job resources, personal resources and by
minimizing job demands (Bakker et al., 2008; Hakanen & Roodt, 2010). To understand
what work engagement interventions will be effective on improving performance, one
must first understand how individuals become engaged. The JD-R model has been used
to understand the experiences of the health and motivation of employees as well as their
consequences including the employee’s job performance (Demerouti et al., 2001)

Figure 1. JD-R model of Work Engagement.

In the model job demands refer to “those physical, social, or organizational

aspects of the job that require sustained physical and/or psychological costs”
(Demerouti et al., 2001, p.501). In other words the parts of the work that need effort
from the employee and therefore are related to psychophysiological costs, for example
exhaustion, which can lead to declining performance. Job resources in the model refer
to “those physical, psychological, social, or organizational aspects of the job that may a)

     
WORK ENGAGEMENT 19

reduce job demands and the associated physiological and psychological costs, b) are
functional in achieving work goals, and c) stimulate personal growth, learning and
development” (Demerouti et al., 2001, p. 501). Job resources are the beneficial parts
that should minimize the effects of the demands. Job resources can be presented in the
following areas: organization in the form of salaries, career opportunities, job security
etc.; interpersonal and social relation e.g. support from supervisors and co-workers;
organization of work in the form of role clarity and participating in decision making
etc.; and task e.g. getting performance feedback, skill variety and autonomy (Hakanen
& Roodt, 2010). Personal resources / psychological capital are another factor in the
model that can also play a part in predicting work engagement. Individuals that possess
a personality factor such as optimism, self-efficacy, and high self-esteem, can be more
prone to become work engaged than the ones that do possess those personality factors.
The model states that by combining these factors it can lead to higher levels of work
engagement, which then can also lead to improved performance (Demerouti &
Cropanzano, 2010; Bakker et al., 2008).

2.3.2 Social exchange theory

An important research was done to study the antecedents and consequences of

employee engagement (Saks, 2006). That is, to see if engagement is dependent on the
type of engagement involved; job engagement or organizational engagement. To study
the antecedents and consequences of job and/or organizational engagement a model was
constructed. The model (see figure 2) was based on existing literature from Kahn
(1990), the burnout literature (Maslach et al, 2001), and on the social exchange theory
(Saks, 2006). The two preceding theories, Kahn (1990) and Maslach (2001), have
already been described above. The two explain the psychological conditions and/or
antecedents that are necessary for engagement. Social Exchange Theory (SET) however
explains why individuals respond to these conditions with various levels of engagement,
which the other two are not able to do. A fundamental principle in SET, for a
relationship between employee and employer to evolve over time into a trusting, loyal,
and mutual commitment, is both parties abiding to certain rules of exchange. When an
action of one party is reciprocated with a response or action from the other. For
example, when employees receive some kind of resource benefit from their
organization, they find themselves bound to reciprocate in a mutual beneficial manner

     
WORK ENGAGEMENT 20

to the organization. One way for the employees to do so is through their level of
engagement. If this relationship does not exist, the opposite can also occur. SET can
therefore be used to explain why some employees show higher or lower levels of
engagement in their work (Saks, 2006).

Figure 2. Antecedent and consequences of engagement.

Findings show that job and organizational engagement are related but different
concepts (Saks, 2006). This could be seen with the participants’ score of job
engagement being significantly higher than organizational engagement. In addition, the
results also suggest that there are different psychological conditions that can lead to job
engagement and organizational engagement, with antecedents and consequences being
different for the two concepts. Starting with the antecedents; perceived organizational
support predicted both job and organizational engagement. Job characteristics were
found to predict job engagement, and procedural justice was found to predict
organizational engagement. Significant effects of job engagement were positively
related to job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and organizational citizenship
behavior-organization (OCBO), and negatively related to intention to quit. For
organizational engagement it was the same although it also showed significant
relationship to organizational citizenship behavior-individual (OCBI). The mediating
effects were also explored, that is when job and organizational engagement were
controlled for, the results suggest that the relationship between the antecedents and the
consequences are mediated by employee engagement. Further findings were that the
SET can be useful to provide meaningful theoretical ground for studying and
understanding engagement. Employees who perceive higher organizational support are
more likely to reciprocate with higher levels of engagement in their work and to the
organization. When provided with job characteristics, such as variety, autonomy,
feedback, meaningful and challenging work, employees are more likely to reciprocate
with higher levels of job engagement. Employees who perceive higher procedural

     
WORK ENGAGEMENT 21

justice are therefore more likely to reciprocate with higher levels of organization
engagement. Furthermore, an engaged employee is more likely to have a better
relationship with his employer, which can lead to more positive attitudes, intentions,
and behaviors in general (Saks, 2006).

To summarize by understanding the JD-R model and SET of what and how
employees work engagement can be affected, it is now time to explore the benefits of
having engaged employees. That is, the effect work engagement can have on the
performance of both the individuals within the organization and the organization itself.

2.4 Work engagement outcomes

Empirical evidence indicates that work engagement can predict a company’s

performance. In this paper, performance will be considered as an outcome for the
company, rather than the process itself. High levels of work engagement would
therefore be an example of a positive performance outcome and job burnout be an
example of a negative outcome. The focus will also be on extra-role or contextual
performance instead of in-role performance. Extra-role better describes the whole range
of the employee’s performance at work. Another important distinction, like mentioned
above, that it matters if performance is being studied at the individual level (where the
manager rates each employee), or the unit level (where the data is collected on the
organization itself). In this paper, HRM practices will be researched, which is
considered on the unit-level, so this will be the focus, instead of on the individual-level
(Demerouti & Cropanzano, 2010).
Unit-level engagement explains performance as a result of the combined efforts
of many employees. Somewhat few researches are available on the unit-level
engagement. By looking at the literature on burnout to see what can be learned from
that, for example creating a desirable environment that promotes work engagement
instead of burnout (Leiter & Maslach, 2010). Positive psychology does that by focusing
on recognizing the positive aspects of work and creating encouraging work
environments, instead of only concentrating on the negative areas (Bakker et al., 2008).
Work engagement can therefore be viewed as an essential element in helping improve
employees’ performance and consequently also the company’s. Though there has been a
lack of empirical research in the literature showing objective outcome, the outcomes of

     
WORK ENGAGEMENT 22

work engagement have often been perceived rather than tested (Kim, Kolb & Kim,
2012). Few researches exist but have revealed that work engagement can have positive
outcomes for the well-being of the individual as well as the performance of
organizations (Wood, Kim & Khan, 2016) and they will be discussed in the following
chapters.

2.4.1 Individual performance

Work engagement is a concept that has the potential to improve individuals’ lives
within an organization (Shuck & Wollard, 2010). That is the exact assumption that the
JD-R model makes. The two sets of working conditions, job demands and resources,
can bring out two different but related psychological processes. 1) As a health
impairment process, where high job demands can make the employees exhausted,
mentally and physically, leading to negative outcomes, ill health and burnout. 2) As a
motivational process, where job resources, encourage positive outcomes, engagement
and organizational commitment. The main theme is the JD-R model is the link between
job resources and the employee’s well-being (Hakanen & Rodt, 2010). The JD-R model
has therefore been used to explain important outcomes for the individual well-being,
such as preventing burnout, supporting organizational commitment, work enjoyment,
connectedness, job satisfaction, and minimizing sickness absenteeism (Albrecth,
Bakker, Gruman, Macey & Saks, 2015).
A number of studies have shown how being an engaged employee can be
beneficial for the individual involved, see table 1 (Wood et al., 2016; Simpson, 2009).
Fully engaged workers have better work life experiences (control, reward, recognition
and value fit). They are psychologically and mentally healthier, more creative,
proactive, and display strong efficacy (the ability to produce a desired or intended
result). Engaged employees show lower levels of turnover intention, which means they
are not looking for another job. Engaged employees overall experience higher levels of
job satisfaction, and therefore perform better in their jobs (Wood et al., 2016; Simpson,
2009). Engaged employees can also have a so-called cross over or emotional contagion
effect on other employees. Research has shown that people who work together can
influence each other’s engagement, which can also affect the team’s performance.
Which moves us into the effects of work engagement on the organization (Demerouti &
Cropanzano, 2010).

     
WORK ENGAGEMENT 23

Table 1. Individual Performance.

Positive work-life experience (Maslach & Leiter, 1997; Koyuncu,

Burke & Fiksenbaun, 2006)
Psychologically and mentally healthier (Koyuncu et al., 2006; Laschinger &
Finegan, 2005)
More creative and proactive (Salanova & Schaufeli, 2008; Zhang &
Bartol 2010)
Stronger efficacy (Richardsen, Burke & Martinussen, 2006)
Lower levels of turnover intention and (Schaufeli, Bakker & Van Rhenen, 2009;
absenteeism Wefald, Reichard & Serrano, 2011)
Higher job satisfaction (Hakanen, Bakker & Schaufeli, 2006;
Rich, Lepine & Crawford 2010)
Emotional contagion (Demerouti & Cropanzano, 2010)

The focus in researching work engagement has been on the individuals involved.
The models have tried to explain how and why employees become engaged and what
affect that has on their performance. Recently the attention has shifted to exploring the
concept of work engagement on a higher level in terms how work engagement can
affect organizational performance, or on the so called the unit-level. Research in this
area is not as far along in the process, but in the following chapter what is already
known will be reviewed.

2.4.2 Organizational performance

Since engagement can play a part in employee performance it also has the potential to
be an important organizational management tool to increase the organizations
performance, see table 2 (Simpson, 2009). Research has shown that organizations with
a highly engaged workforce have higher organizational commitment, organizational
citizenship behavior and job satisfaction among their employees. Organizations with
highly engaged workers have lower levels of turnover and absenteeism. Organizations
were employees’ are engaged have improved service climate and customer loyalty
levels. Engaged employees have also been shown to generate higher levels of
performance, which goes hand in hand with increased financial performance of an

     
WORK ENGAGEMENT 24

organization (Wood et al., 2016; Simpson, 2009). Organizations that show on average
higher levels of engagement are substantially different, from the ones that score lower
in engagement, in terms of return on assets, profitability and market value. Which
means having an engaged workforce can be a huge competitive advantage for a
company (Macey and Schneider, 2008).

Table 2. Organizational Performance.

More job satisfaction, organizational (Hakanen et al., 2006; Rich et al., 2010)
commitment, organizational citizenship
behavior and job satisfaction
Lower turnover intention (Schaufeli & Bakker, 2004)
Lower levels of absenteeism (Schaufeli et al., 2009; Wefald et al.,
2011)
Improved service climate and customer (Salanova, Agut & Peiro, 2005)
loyalty
Increased financial performance (Bakker & Bal, 2010; Bakker &
Demerouti, 2009; Xanthopoulou, Bakker,
Demerouti & Schaufeli, 2009)
Competitive advantage (Macey & Schneider, 2008)

In summary, work engagement is a concept that can have positive affect on both
individual performance and organizational performance. Work engagement might
therefore be a concept that human resource managers are interested in.

2.5 Human resource management

Work engagement is related to any kind of challenging work and how the employee is
able to bring his full performance towards solving the problems. Management can make
a difference there as well (Leiter & Bakker, 2010). An organization possesses different
resources and capabilities to develop, produce and deliver products or service to
customers. One of those opportunities is human resources, which includes all the
qualities of the individuals, such as their combined experience, knowledge, judgment,
risk taking, and wisdom within the organization. Human resource is often considered to

     
WORK ENGAGEMENT 25

be one of the most important assets a company can have (Barney & Wirght, 1998), as
well as being a key factor in creating a competitive advantage (Barney, 1995).
Human Resource Management (HRM) has the role within organizations to push
policies, practices and systems in relation to the organization’s strategic objectives that
influence the employee’s behavior, attitudes and performance. Human resource
management is about achieving the best performance from the employees and results
for the organization. The role of the human resources management is to create an
environment that encourages, and motivates employees to make an effort in a way that
benefits the organization (Ulrich & Brockbank, 2005).
How the employees respond to the systems such as policies, practices and
structure can also affect the possibility of them becoming engaged (Leiter & Bakker,
2010). Human resource managers can therefore be in the position to try to affect the
work engagement of the company’s employees by affecting these systems (see figure
3). Studying the concept of work engagement from the human resource manager
perspective is considered being on the unit-level, which is different from most of the
previous research on work engagement that is on the individual level. As mentioned
above research has shown that employees attitudes; like overall satisfaction and
engagement, are related to business outcomes (Harter et al., 2002).

Figure 3. HRM unit-level.

In Human Resource Management (HRM) there are five main domains, which
are; staffing and selection, training and development, evaluation and feedback, rewards
and compensation, and communication and information. Strategic HRM is when the
business strategy focuses on the alignment between the strategy of an organization and
the HR strategy of the organization (Boselie, 2014). The main domains should be
aligned with the strategic focus of the organization. These main domains are also core

     
WORK ENGAGEMENT 26

HRM practices that can be important for promoting work engagement among
employees (Albrecht et al., 2015).
Staffing and selection, when it comes to having a strategic focus on engagement;
selection of employees cannot be neglected. If a company wants to have employees that
are energetic, dedicated and focused on reaching the organizational goals (Macey &
Schneider, 2008), HR should help with selecting the employees that have the potential
to become engaged on the job. Selecting the right people in the right jobs is the first key
step in making employees engaged (Albrecht et al., 2015).
Communication and information, using HRM policies, practices and procedures
to communicate the expectations of the organization to the employees about their skills,
knowledge, motivation, attitudes, norms, values, and behaviors is also important to
influence the organizational work engagement climate. Communication and providing
the right sources of information to the employees and especially new employees can be
key in fostering engagement (Albrecht et al., 2015).
Performance management processes (Evaluation and feedback & Rewards and
compensation), can include for example; setting goals, providing ongoing feedback,
recognition, conducting appraisals and rewarding behavior. If correctly managed by HR
and other managers within the organization, these processes can have positive and
direct influence on engagement and lead to attitudinal, behavioral, and organizational
outcomes (Albrecht et al., 2015).
Training and development, identifying and providing the right training and
developmental needs is a process that can be managed by an HR professional within a
company. By minimizing demands and providing the necessary resources and tools the
optimal work environment can be created for the employees to be able to better
understand their jobs and perform better. Figuring out where training is needed or
development can happen, and making interventions according to that, can help to
promote engagement among employees (Albrecht et al., 2015).
When it comes to work engagement and human resource management what is
missing from the current literature is more focus on interventions, that is systematic
studies that evaluate the impact of those procedures on work engagement (Bakker et al.,
2008). If work engagement has positive results both on the individuals and the
company, management should try to make an effort to increase its workforce work
engagement. “Interventions” towards work engagement can occur both on an individual
level and on the organizational level. In the past the focus has mainly been on individual

     
WORK ENGAGEMENT 27

strategies although the social or organizational ones have been shown to play a bigger
role. Here in this paper the focus will therefore only be on the management intervention,
that is HR related practices towards work engagement. Up until recently little research
has been on designing, implementing or evaluating work engagement actions, but the
question on which interventions are effective for building work engagement still
remains (Leiter & Maslach, 2010).
To summarize, human resource managers are in the position to affect work
engagement among employees with their day-to-day actions if they chose to focus on
and integrate an HR engagement strategy. In the next chapter interventions that have
been linked to increasing work engagement will be reviewed.

2.6 Work engagement interventions

Even though work engagement is a personal experience of an employee it does

not happen in isolation. Things like sources, experiences, consequences, social
dynamics and institutional dynamics all play their parts, in creating the organizational
culture. In this paper where work engagement is being examined through the eyes and
practices of HR managers it is important to keep this in mind. That is, what kind of
environment fosters work engagement (Leiter & Bakker, 2010)? Human resource
managers must find a way to motivate their employee to get engaged by providing them
with the right resources and minimizing the demands in order for improved
organizational performance. Not much research exists on the influence of contextual-
level variables such as HRM processes or systems on work engagement (Albrecht et al.,
2015). Up until recently there was no model available for the human resource practice
to understand how the development of engagement could be influenced (Shuck &
Wollard, 2010). In 2015, Albrecht and colleagues proposed an extensive strategic
engagement model (see figure 4) that shows the main HRM practices that need to be
strategically focused on in HR practices. The model focuses on engagement influenced
by organizational climate, building upon the job demands and job resources model. The
model further takes into account the psychological experience of safety, meaningfulness
and availability at work. This all can lead to the employees being engaged at work. The
performance or outcome of the individual, group and organizational level can therefore
lead to the organization's competitive advantage (Albrecht et al., 2015).

     
WORK ENGAGEMENT 28

Figure 4. Strategic engagement model.

The general main HRM practices, like mentioned in the HRM chapter above,
can be good predictors of employee work engagement. As organizations increasingly
become more interested in ways to develop engagement, several work engagement
practices or interventions have emerged (Bakker, Oerlemans & Ten Brummelhuis,
2013; Attridge, 2009). Organizations should focus on including these practices or
interventions, if they want to encourage engagement. It can be in the form of better job
design, providing resource support, improving working conditions, creating an
engagement fostering corporate culture, and use an effective leadership style (Attridge,
2009). Bakker and colleagues (2013) talked about seven work engagement interventions
in their book. Three of them are on the organizational level; JD-R intervention, new
ways of working and inclusive work-life support. The other four are on the individual
level; job crafting intervention, psychological capital intervention, happiness
intervention and strength-based intervention (Bakker et al., 2013; Attrigde, 2009).
Research was also done on the impact of empowerment-focused HRM practices on
work engagement (Van De Voorde et al., 2016). Each of these interventions will be
discussed in detail below.

     
WORK ENGAGEMENT 29

2.6.1 Organizational interventions

The JD-R intervention is probably the most used intervention, and is based on
the JD-R model. There, human resource managers can use the model as a tool to
recognize potential job demands or job resources and their consequences by
interviewing or laying out a questionnaire for all employees, departments and/or job
positions. The analysis can provide clear indications about where to start a work
engagement intervention. Tailor-made interventions can therefore be focused on the
most important resources and/or reducing the identified demands, in order to improve
working conditions, which leads to increased work engagement and improved
performance (Bakker et al., 2013). Increased job strains like the model states, have been
found to lower the levels of work engagement. In some jobs where job demands are
naturally high and working conditions may be the most favorable, research has shown
that providing employees with higher levels of support and resources from supervisors
can still increase work engagement (Attridge, 2009).
New ways of working (NWW) is also a way that organizations have started using,
where they redesign their approach of work, in a more flexible kind of way. The
employee gets to decide when he works (flexible schedule), where he works (at home,
at work), and how he chooses to communicate (smartphone, e-mail). NWW is expected
to increase employee work engagement by giving the employees more control over their
work processes. With this increased autonomy, enhanced engagement is likely to occur
(Bakker et al., 2013).
Similar to NWW is inclusive work-life support. With inclusive work-life support
employees are also given flexibility to assist them with their family duties. A good
combination of family and work roles can be beneficial for employees and
organizations. Research has shown that the employee’s family life affects his work.
Positive moods from one domain can spill over to the other, and vice versa, where
feelings of conflict and stress can spill over as well. Work-life interventions are most
likely to foster work engagement if they become a part of the organizational culture
(Bakker et al., 2013).
The culture of an organization can be influenced in a way that is more likely to
foster engagement. As “winners of the Healthy Workplace Awards from the American
Psychological Association are based on the following five factors that contribute to a
healthy workplace culture: supporting work-life balance, fostering employee growth

     
WORK ENGAGEMENT 30

and development, encouraging health and safety on the job, praise and recognition and
employee involvement/engagement” (Attridge, 2009, page 393).
Leadership style is important for promoting engagement. Transformational
leadership style has been found to be the most effective one. A transformational leader
has a clear vision and is able to share that with others, he is inspiring and motivating for
others to follow his lead, he offers intellectual challenges and really shows interest in
the needs of what his followers need to get to their goals. A transformational leader
raises his workers to a higher level, through his ability to be humble, and have genuine
concern for others. As a result, employees experience greater trust in management and
improved self-efficacy, which is strongly related to the employee’s well-being and his
productivity (Attridge, 2009).
Empowerment focused HRM is defined as the employee’s opportunities for
development, participation within the workplace, enriched job design, sharing of
information and opportunities to control their work-time. The idea is that
empowerment-focused HRM can act as a source of resources to employees when doing
their jobs and thus affect the levels of engagement (Van De Voorde et al., 2016).

2.6.2 Individual interventions

Job crafting intervention is about employees changing their jobs in order to

experience enhanced meaning. This can be in form of choosing their tasks, negotiations
of different job contents and assigning meaning to the tasks or jobs. The idea is that the
result of this is the employee being more likely to increase his person-job fit and
therefore increasing his level of work engagement. Research has shown that employees
that get the opportunity to change aspects of their jobs, for example by deciding they
need to get feedback more often, more coaching and simplify their work, or deciding
that they are looking for more challenges, and want to take on additional tasks, were
found to be more engaged (Bakker et al., 2013).
Psychological capital (PsyCap) is the positive psychological state of an
individual. Employees with high PsyCap is characterized by having the confidence to
take on challenging tasks and are driven by the belief of future success. The
characteristics of PsyCap are therefore related to work engagement. A PsyCap
intervention aims to increase employees’ psychological capital by impacting their
overall levels of efficacy, hope, optimism, and resilience (Bakker et al., 2013).

     
WORK ENGAGEMENT 31

Positive psychology states that happiness is positively related to work

engagement. Happiness interventions therefore focus on increasing happiness in work.
This includes activities like having employees expressing gratitude, performing acts of
kindness, making a habit of optimistic thinking, exercise yoga or mindfulness.
Effectiveness of those happiness interventions will likely depend on the interests of the
individual’s values and personalities (Bakker et al., 2013).
Identifying the individual strengths and working with those strengths to increase
work engagement is called a strength-based intervention. The idea is when an employee
is working with one’s strengths, he experiences feelings of authenticity and being true
to himself which can be both fulfilling and engaging. Further, based on the employee’s
strengths, redesigning specific elements or tasks of the work with improved job design
will result in a better person-job match. Matching the employee’s strengths to particular
jobs will result in a better match between the job and the employee, which should also
lead to higher levels of productivity and work engagement (Bakker et al., 2013;
Attridge, 2009).

In summary, this chapter’s focus was on possible interventions HRM can apply
in order to develop, embed, and sustain work engagement within an organization.
Although there is a need to further research each of these interventions, they do provide
some guidance in ways to foster work engagement among employees in the workplace.
Using the HRM domains and focusing the strategy on engagement suggests that HR
professionals can have an effect on work engagement, by helping to create and sustain
work engagement in the organizational context they work in. Both top-down (for
example; the main HR domains) and bottom-up (for example; the initiatives from the
employee’s) approaches can be used to develop work engagement (Albrecht et al.,
2015). Those who intend to start working on work engagement practices, would
probably also like to know what is working and what’s not, moving us into the next
chapter which describes two ways to measure employees’ work engagement.

2.7 Measurement of work engagement

Often there is a gap between the academic approach and the practitioners approach
when it comes to work engagement. The practitioners are more concerned with the
usability and the business outcomes of engagement, whereas the academics are more

     
WORK ENGAGEMENT 32

concerned with defining and validating the concept itself to better understand the
antecedents that influence engagement. This disconnection of the practical applications
and utility of the research has also led to two different ways of measuring work
engagement (Shuck, 2011). One scale is called The Gallup Workplace Audit or (Q12)
and the other one is called The Utrecht work engagement scale (UWES). With different
conceptualization of the concept more ways have been used to measure work
engagement, for example the Maslach Burnout Inventory mentioned above, but these
are the two that will be focused on in this paper (Schaufeli & Bakker, 2010).
The Utrecht work engagement scale (UWES) questionnaire is most often used
by academics to measure engagement, see table 3 (Attridge, 2009). The scale has been
validated in many countries around the world (Bakker et al., 2008). The UWES was
developed based on their work engagement definition. The questionnaire was based on
the three dimensions including the factors vigor, dedication and absorption (Schaufeli &
Bakker, 2010).

Table 3. UWES.

The Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES)

1. At my work, I feel that I am bursting with energy (Vi)

2. I find the work that I do full of meaning and purpose (De)
3. Time flies when I'm working (Ab)
4. At my job, I feel strong and vigorous (Vi)
5. I am enthusiastic about my job (De)
6. When I am working, I forget everything else around me (Ab)
7. My job inspires me (De)
8. When I get up in the morning, I feel like going to work (Vi)
9. I feel happy when I am working intensely (Ab)
10. I am proud on the work that I do (De)
11. I am immersed in my work (Ab)
12. I can continue working for very long periods at a time (Vi)
13. To me, my job is challenging (De)
14. I get carried away when I'm working (Ab)
15. At my job, I am very resilient, mentally (Vi)
16. It is difficult to detach myself from my job (Ab)
17. At my work I always persevere, even when things do not go well (Vi)
*Vi= vigor; De= Dedication; Ab= Absorption.

Copyright 2003 Schaufeli & Bakker. All rights reserved.

     
WORK ENGAGEMENT 33

Gallup Workplace Audit or The Gallup Q12 (GWA or Q12) is the questionnaire
that is most often used by practitioners to measure engagement, see table 4 (Attridge,
2009). Gallup uses this definition: “The term employee engagement refers to an
individual’s involvement and satisfaction as well as enthusiasm for work” (Harter et al.,
2002, p. 269). This definition like many other definitions in the business and/or among
consultants engagement seems to be overlapping with other constructs such as job
satisfaction, job involvement or job commitment (Harter et al., 2002; Schaufeli &
Bakker, 2010). The development of the instrument has more of a practical consideration
and was designed as management tool. The scale therefore focuses more on the
employees’ perceived levels of resources he or she has to do the job, instead of
measuring engagement. It has also been argued that the engagement concept in the Q12
is too similar to job satisfaction and is really just measuring the antecedents of job
satisfaction (Schaufeli & Bakker, 2010).

Table 4. Q12.

Gallup's Q12

1. Do you know what is expected of you at work? (role clarity)

2. Do you have the material and equipment you need to do your work right? (material
resources)
3. At work, do you have the opportunity to do what you do best every day?
(opportunity for skill development)
4. In the last seven days, have you received recognition or praise for doing good work?
(social support, positive feedback)
5. Does your supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about you as a person?
(supervisor support)
6. Is there someone at work who encourages your development? (coaching)
7. At work, do you opinions seem to count? (voice)
8. Does the mission/purpose of your company make you feel your job is important?
(meaningfulness)
9. Are you associates (fellow employees) committed to doing quality work? (quality
culture)
10. Do you have a best friend at work? (social support)
11. In the last six months, has someone at work talked to you about your progress?
(feedback)
12. In the last year, have you had opportunities at work to learn and grow? (learning
opportunities)

Copyright 1993-1998 Gallup Inc., Washington DC. All rights reserved.

In 2009 not a lot of companies were measuring work engagement. However, the
desire and pressure to do so seems to be increasing (Attridge, 2009). Those measuring
     
WORK ENGAGEMENT 34

work engagement or who want to start, should have in mind that engagement may vary
depending on the different jobs within the company. Further details on that will be
discussed in the next section.

2.7 Different occupations

In general not a lot of research has been done on the experience of work
engagement between different occupations (Innstrand, 2016). That is whether levels of
work engagement vary between occupations. A longitudinal study was done among
eight occupations in Norway to try to further expand the knowledge on work
engagement in general. The occupations researched were lawyers, physicians, nurses,
teachers, church ministers, bus drivers, and people working in advertising and
information technology. The results indicated a significant occupational difference
when it comes to work engagement. Lawyers had the most vigor and church ministers
had the most dedication. Teachers were shown to have the least vigor and people
working in advertising and information technology the least dedication. The results also
suggest that there might be different developmental processes behind engagement in
different occupations (Innstrand, 2016). Although engagement levels can vary
depending on different occupations, other factors like position within the company can
also have an effect. Furthermore, managers and executives have greater tendency to
have higher engagement levels. More educated employees and higher skilled employees
tend to have higher levels of engagement (Attridge, 2009).
In summary it can depend on the jobs involved how engaged the employees
become or how engagement can be increased. In the tourism industry, the jobs are quite
diverse, so the same might not apply to all of them. Also, not much is known about if
and how companies in the tourism industry in Iceland are measuring work engagement.
To date no numbers exist in Iceland about the number of companies that are focusing on
or measuring and monitoring their employees’ levels of work engagement

2.8 Work engagement in Iceland

“Iceland at work” was a survey done by Dale Carnegie and MMR (market and media
research company in Iceland) based on answers from around 4000 employees within
different occupations in Icelandic labor market. The results from a survey done in 2013

     
WORK ENGAGEMENT 35

showed that up to 25% of employees in Icelandic companies are not engaged. The
survey states that unengaged employees are unhappy employees, they do not see the
company they are working for as a future workplace for them, they create controversy
and are not finding themselves in their jobs (Vísir, 2013).
The “Iceland at work” survey showed that employees in the media industry are
the unhappiest and most likely to say they want to change jobs, with around 30% of
them being unengaged. The most engaged employees are within the financial sector
were seven out of ten employees carry much trust to their next top manager. The factors
that seem to matter the most when it comes to having higher engagement are
relationship between the employee and his immediate superior, confidence in the top
management and if the employee is proud to work for the company. In line with
previous research, they also talk about how having unengaged employees can directly
be observed in the profitability of companies and can cost them large sums annually. As
well as that companies with highly engaged workforce show on average higher profits
and higher employee retention (Vísir, 2013; MMR n.d.; Dale Carnegie, n.d.).
To summarize, although these jobs are not exactly the jobs involved in this
research, it is important to have in mind, that there can be occupational differences
when it comes to employees being engaged. In this research the focus will be on the
many diverse jobs that can be found in the tourism industry in Iceland. Like previously
mentioned, interest on researching the concept of work engagement has been increasing,
but less exists on the concept in Iceland. Due to the lack of research on the concept in
Iceland the aim of the present study is to respond to the scarcity in the engagement
research. By exploring how human resource managers in the tourism industry within the
bigger companies in Iceland understand the concept of work engagement and work with
it in their practices. Also, little is known in general about the benefits of human resource
management practices when it comes to applying the concept, which will also add to the
unit-level literature.

2.9 Tourism business in Iceland

Over the last years, the amount of tourists visiting Iceland has increased enormously.
Since the upturn in tourism in Iceland in 2010 when the amount of tourists who visited
the country were within 500 thousand, the amount has multiplied where now it is
estimated that tourists this year, 2017, will be over 2 million. With growing numbers of

     
WORK ENGAGEMENT 36

people visiting the country the tourism industry in Iceland has become a booming
business with over 2650 diverse companies operating around the country. Of those 2650
companies 47% of those are in the Reykjavik area, around 56% of the companies had
operated for fewer than 10 years, 60% of the companies have fewer than 10 employees
and only 14% have more than 30 employees working for them (Íslandsbanki, 2017;
Atvinnuvegaráðuneytið, 2016).
According to Statistics Iceland (Hagstofa Íslands) the number of employees
working in the tourism industry were a total of 19.300 in 2015. Late last year, October
2016, around 24 thousand employees were on payroll in the industry and it is estimated
that they will be more than 25 thousand this year, 2017. Like elsewhere in the world a
lot of the employees working in the tourism industry in Iceland, are young people.
Compared to other countries, it can be assumed that young workers, people under 25
years old, are up to 30% of the employees of the tourism industry in Iceland. Around
22% of the employees in the tourism industry in 2015 were foreign (Hagstofa, 2017;
Atvinnuvegaráðuneytið, 2016). Not much is known about the turnover rates in the
tourism industry per se in Iceland, but according to World Tourism Organization
(Alþjóðaferðamálastofnun), turnover rates, in the 46 countries their research reached,
was on average 18%. In Iceland where unemployment is low these days, 20% of
companies report that it is difficult to hire people in their free positions and the main
reasons for that were related to the competition between other companies for staff and
lack of staff (Atvinnuvegaráðuneytið, 2016).
With the growing tourism industry and new challenging tasks may follow that
the human resource managers. Work engagement might be a concept that deserves
attention because it can lead to more productivity, happier employees, lower turnover,
and become a company’s biggest competitive advantage.

     
WORK ENGAGEMENT 37

2.10 Research Questions

Not much content exists on the concept of work engagement in Iceland. Therefore, the
objective of this research is to examine the position of the concept of work engagement
among human resource managers in bigger companies that in one way or another are
related to the tourism industry in Iceland. How far are they in their development of
understanding the concept, that is, from having the knowledge of what it is, to actually
making systematic actions in applying it? Also, to get their take on the human resource
managers perceived benefits, if there are any, of work engagement. Therefore, the
research questions are the following:

R1. What is the position of the understanding on the concept of work engagement
among human resource managers within the bigger companies that operate in the
tourism industry in Iceland?

In order to answer the main research question, the researcher decided to split the
question into three separate questions:

R1a. What is the understanding of the work engagement concept among human
resource managers within bigger companies that operate in the tourism industry
in Iceland?
R1b. What HRM practices have human resource managers, within bigger
companies operating in the tourism industry in Iceland, systematically applied in
order to increase work engagement among employees?
R1c. What have human resource managers, within the bigger companies within
the tourism industry in Iceland, started to acknowledge as being beneficial from
those HRM work engagement actions?

Depending on different understanding of the human resource managers, the researcher

is also interested in seeing if there is any possibility of comparison between those that
appear to have good understanding on the concept and the ones that appear to have less
understanding on the concept. To see if with greater understanding of the concepts leads
to different behaviors from those with less understanding of the concepts. The
researcher therefore also set out two separate questions concerning that:

     
WORK ENGAGEMENT 38

R2a. Are the human resource managers, within bigger companies working in the
tourism industry in Iceland, who have more understanding of the concept more
likely to have applied HRM work engagement actions, than those with less
understanding of the concept?
R2b. Are the human resource managers, within bigger companies working in
the tourism industry in Iceland, who have more understanding on the concept
more likely to see the benefits of work engagement, than those with less
understanding of the concept?

     
WORK ENGAGEMENT 39

3. Methodology

In this chapter the methodology for conducting this research will be explained. Starting
with explaining why a qualitative research was chosen and thought to be an applicable
research method for this research. Next, the information for how and why the
participants were chosen will be explained. Moving into the information on data
collection and finishing with information of how the data was analyzed. In the end of
this chapter some ethical considerations will also be discussed

3.1 Qualitative research

To seek answers to the research questions a qualitative research method was chosen,
namely phenomenological in the form of semi-structured interviews. In
phenomenological studies a common meaning of several individuals everyday lives of a
concept or a phenomenon is described (Creswell, 2013). When using qualitative
research the researcher tries to reduce individual experiences of a concept into a general
description of it. Qualitative research offers insight into people's behaviors and are often
used to try to understand how organizations function. With qualitative research, the
researcher looks to interpret people’s behaviors, opinions and experience in their normal
context. Qualitative methods are useful when studying a topic that has not been studied
much before. Qualitative methods can be used to explore the views of a person towards
something or a concept in this case. For that matter a qualitative method fits well for
this research, because not much research exists on the topic of the knowledge and usage
of the theory of work engagement among human resource managers in the tourism
industry in Iceland (Creswell, 2013; Kvale, 1996).

3.2 Participants

A total number of 15 human resource managers from 15 different companies in the

Reykjavik area were contacted by e-mail and asked to participate in the study. The
sampling procedure for choosing eligible participants for the study was done by using
purposeful sampling, that is, selecting information-rich participants regarding the
purpose of the study to gain better results. The participants had to be currently working

     
WORK ENGAGEMENT 40

as HR managers within a company in the tourism industry. The human resource

managers were also chosen from organizations of similar characteristics, similar size or
within similar occupation to try to increase the generalizability of the study. Eligible
participants were human resource managers working within the bigger companies (250+
employees) in the Reykjavik area in Iceland. All the companies were in one way or
another connected to the tourism industry in Iceland. Ten human resource managers
working in the tourism industry in Iceland agreed to participate in the study, a response
rate of 67%. The companies all share a similar mix of employees, diverse occupations,
as well as a lot of frontline staff and younger people, and in most cases the number of
employees’ increases during the summertime. One interview will be left out*, as it did
not meet the selection criteria of number of employees. Demographic information on
the nine human resource managers and the companies, that the results will be based on,
can be seen below in table number 5. Three of the companies were related to the
aviation industry. Two of them operate in the hotel industry. Two of the companies
operate in the transportation industry, and two operate in the service industry.

Table 5. Demographic information of the participants and companies.

HRM education or HR related education 5 out of 9 HR managers

Age range 38 to 51 years old
Gender 5 women and 4 men
The HR managers has a seat on the executive board 8 out of 9 HR managers
Number of employees in the companies 250 - 2000
Number of employees during the summertime 300 - 2400
Total employees in the HR department 1-15
Companies in the aviation industry 3
Companies in the hotel industry 2
Companies in the transportation industry 2
Companies in the service industry 2

(*Interview 4 was left out)

     
WORK ENGAGEMENT 41

3.3 Data collection

The research design was a qualitative research method in the form of semi-structured
interviews. Before the interviews, the author created an interview frame based on the
literature on work engagement (see appendix A for the Icelandic version, appendix B
for the English version). The questionnaire contained the same 15 questions for all the
participants, in order to get a more comparable analysis. With the interviews, the
researcher sought out to find the answer to where the position of the human resource
manager was on the concept of work engagement. General open-ended questions were
asked to allow the participants to voice their knowledge and understanding on the
concept. The researcher was also ready with a number of questions depending on the
participant’s answers if he needed to change the direction to get useful answers for the
research. This was dependent on how far the human resource managers where in they’re
understanding and application on the concept. In some cases the researcher worded the
questions differently or asked other questions that were more relevant. These questions
can also be seen in Appendix B. The researcher used probing questions and asked for an
example from the participants relating some of the questions to get more information.
The meetings for the interviews were made in consultations to the human resource
managers and were conducted at their offices. The interviews were conducted in
Icelandic; except for the word “work engagement” was still used in English in order for
it to be more likely to have the same meaning for all participants. The interviews started
with a few background questions about the human resource managers and their
companies. In continuation asked the questions on the core of the research.
Background questions (A-B). In the interviews, the human resource managers
were asked to answer questions about the company they are working for, the operation
of the company, the number of employees, the age of the company, the role of HRM,
and how many employees work in the HR department. The human resource managers
were also asked to answer questions about themselves, age, education, experience, and
period of employment with the company.
Understanding (C1-4). In order to measure the position of the human resource
manager’s understanding of the concept, work engagement, the researcher created four
questions for the semi-structured interview to try to assess where the human resource
managers understanding of the concept was positioned.

     
WORK ENGAGEMENT 42

Practices (D5-8). In order to find out which systematic actions or practices

towards work engagement the human resource manager are using and why, the
researcher created questions for the semi-structured interview.
Benefits (E9-11). In order to measure the perception of the human resource
managers of the benefits of applying work engagement actions, the researcher created
three questions for the semi-structured interview to try to assess if the human resource
managers see work engagement as being beneficial for their practice.
Other (F12-15). Based on the literature, questions were asked about the
strategy, culture and leadership styles the human resource manager felt support the idea
of increased work engagement.
The information was recorded on an IPhone 6 using the app Voice Memos, and
then transcribed for analysis. The interviews took place at the offices of the human
resource managers during the period of 27th February until 31st March. Each interview
was approximately 20-40 minutes long. After the completion of the interviews the
processing and the analysis of the data began.

3.4 Data analysis

In qualitative research methods the data is descriptive. The main focus was therefore on
keeping the meaning and knowledge of the participants as true as possible with
transcribing word by word. To analyze the data in this research the researcher chose to
use the methods based on a grounded theory as a guide. A grounded theory is a suitable
way of designing a study when a theory to explain or understand a process is
unavailable (Creswell, 2013). Using a grounded theory the researcher asks the
participants questions to try to figure out the understanding of how the individuals
experience a process. The method is well suited to gain information from the data. The
researcher reads the data over and over again looking for evidence that attracts his
attention or interest. The process of finding key words, or important and repeated issues
from the answers of the participants is called coding, which later on are used as themes
in the presentations of the findings (Creswell, 2013).
In this research data was, as mentioned above, gathered using semi-structured
interviews. A total of ten interviews were conducted. After the interviews had been
conducted and recorded the interviews were transcribed, word-by-word, by the
researcher. *During the data analysis interview, number four was considered to be an

     
WORK ENGAGEMENT 43

outlier in terms of number of employees. As the researcher sought out to interview

human resource managers in the bigger tourism companies in Iceland that particular
company did not meet the criteria. After the transcription, the researcher started by
reading the nine interviews again, and again, coding them and then analyzing them into
themes. The researcher decided it was appropriate to use the pre made interview
framework in preparation to find themes in the data. The interview framework was a
semi-structured interview, based on the literature, where the researcher tried to compare
the literature to the practice. The data was examined with the three main themes from
the interview frame in mind, which were: understanding, practices and benefits. In
addition to other emerging themes that the researcher felt was appropriate for the
findings. After the completion of the data analyses, the three main themes emerged:

• Understanding
• Practices
• Benefits

Detailed discussion of these three themes can be found in the findings section
below, where the main themes are also further divided into sub-themes that also
emerged in order to answer the research questions. In the following findings and
discussion chapters, using the three main themes where an attempt will be made in
positioning the human resource managers’ understanding when it comes to the concept
of work engagement. The data will also be examined in that way to see if there is
difference between how far understanding has come along, in terms of if they have
started reflecting on the relevance of the concept and started making some work
engagement related practices.
Since the interviews were conducted and recorded in Icelandic, the researcher
had to translate the participant’s answers into English. When doing so, the grammar will
be corrected and all filling words will be left out or marked with dots, of course making
sure that all relevant information will keep its meaning.

3.5 Ethical considerations

In a research like this, ethical considerations are very important. In order to protect them
the content and purpose of the study was explained to every participant before he was

     
WORK ENGAGEMENT 44

interviewed to prevent any doubts or concerns they might have during the interview.
Knowing this, each and every participant voluntarily chose to participate in the study.
Before the interviews started the participants were asked to sign a consent form were it
was stated that they approved their participation and the recording of the interviews.
The researcher also signed the consent form were he confirmed that the data would be
erased at the completion of the study and that anonymity, of the persons and the
companies, would be protected and would not appear anywhere in the study. The study
was not obliged to report to the Icelandic Data Protection Authority.

     
WORK ENGAGEMENT 45

4. Findings and Discussion

In this chapter, a detailed analysis will be made of the findings in an effort to answer the
research questions. The findings are based on the data collected from the nine
interviews. The data analysis presented in this findings chapter will be, as previously
mentioned, based on the three main themes which were: Understanding, Practices and
Benefits. Under these main themes eight subthemes emerged, see in figure 5. In the
following chapters below each theme and the subthemes will be analyzed. Whilst
presenting the findings, the researchers will conclude with a discussion on each topic.
Ending with a chapter on the main findings in a conclusion chapter.

Understanding Practices Benefits

•  Awareness •  Reflection •  Behavior

•  Differentiation •  General HRM •  Possible benefits
practices
•  Relevance
•  Main challenges

Figure 5. Main themes.

The aim of the study was to position human resource managers in larger
companies in the tourism industry, in terms of their understanding and application of the
concept of work engagement. Based on the Patterson-Conner (1982) change
commitment curve, a development of understanding was set up as a continuous process
(see figure 6) to analyze the participants’ answers. At one point the human resource
manager might be unaware of the concept of work engagement even existing. The next
step would then be when the human resource manager recognizes and becomes aware of
the concept. After the human resource manager becomes aware of the concept and gains
knowledge on it he moves into understanding what the concept of work engagement
entails. This means understanding what work engagement represents and being able to
distinguish work engagement from other similar or related concepts. The next step after
gaining understanding would then be reached when the human resource manager starts
     
WORK ENGAGEMENT 46

reflecting on the usage of the concept; i.e. what affects employees work engagement,
what can be done and what maybe is being done already. The last step would then be
committing to the concept by behaving in such ways that they are using the concept and
applying systematic actions in trying to increase work engagement among employees
and measuring the progress of that work (Conner & Patterson, 1982).

Figure 6. Development of understanding.

4.1 Understanding

In this chapter, the analysis of understanding of the human resource managers will be
discussed. That is, where the human resource managers are in the process of the
development of understanding, regarding their awareness and differentiation of the
work engagement concept from other concepts.

4.1.1 Awareness

Since the objective of the study was explained in the e-mails sent to the human resource
managers requesting their participation, it is not surprising that none of the human
resource managers was unaware of the existence of the work engagement concept.
Although the awareness might differ, the researcher spotted two awareness issues when
it comes to their understanding of work engagement. One was related to the human
resource managers’ ability to differentiate work engagement from other concepts. The
other was related to how important or relevant the human resource managers consider
work engagement to be for their practices. However most of the human resource
managers are aware that the work engagement concept is a concept that is related to the
individual’s well-being as well as the organization. The human resource managers all
mentioned that in work engagement the focus is on the relationship between the
employee and his work rather than his relationship with the organization.

     
WORK ENGAGEMENT 47

“…Work engagement is, this is a combination of several factors, this is how

engaged you are towards the work, not towards the company, rather the
work itself, it does not necessarily need to be connected to the company, but
rather how engaged you are in your own work”
(Interview 2, Aviation sector)

”I define it (work engagement) as how hard the employee is willing to work,

…his enthusiasm, …energy, …sacrifices, …that relates to the job.
(Interview 5, Service sector)

Since in this study Schaufeli’s et al., (2002) definition of work engagement

as being, “a positive, fulfilling, work-related state of mind that is characterized by
vigor, dedication, and absorption” (p. 74), which describes what happens on the
inside of the individuals. However, in this research, the understanding of the
human resource managers are being studied, the only thing they have to evaluate
their employees work engagement is through what can be seen, that is the
behaviors of the employees. In order to gain better knowledge about the
understanding they were asked about the factors that they thought best described a
work engaged employee. A work engaged employee was one described as the
airport service officer who was doing everything in his power to help a passenger
get to his gate in time (Bakker 2011). The human resource managers seemed to
have the understanding of the concept that engagement is related to the
individual’s contentment and most of were described as happier employees that
are more likely to put in extra work or being “all-in”, which should lead to
improved performance of the organizations.

Engaged employees are:

“’All in,’ you know, …you are both happy but also ready to contribute more
if you’re engaged in the workplace”
(Interview 6, Aviation sector)

     
WORK ENGAGEMENT 48

“They strive to go like the extra mile. Both the employees and managers
realize that the interests of the company and the employees go together”
(Interview 8, Tourism sector)

Even though work engagement is not the relationship between the employee and
the company most of the human resource managers talked about the trust that needs to
be present and maintained between the organization and the employee. For both parties,
when it comes to doing well they both expect to get something in return. This is in line
with how the social exchange theory (SET) explains the process of work engagement.
SET claims mutual trust to be a fundamental principle for a relationship to evolve over
time into a trusting, loyal, and mutual commitment, of both parties. That is, when the
action of one party is reciprocated with a response or action from the other. Employees
that experience this trust and support from the organizations and their managers are
therefore more likely to have higher levels of engagement in their jobs (Saks, 2006).

“How I understand it (work engagement) is that it is...I'm ready to do this

and then I will get this in return. That is this faith, and trust, and being
reliable to your employee”
(Interview 5, Tourism sector)

4.1.2 Differentiation from other concepts

Although the human resource managers are aware of the existence of the concept, an
awareness issue was raised in relation to their understanding of work engagement and
their ability to differentiate work engagement from other concepts. Even in the literature
the differentiation between similar or related concepts is still quite unclear. When the
human resource managers were asked about other concepts that they felt the work
engagement concept is similar to or relates to, some of them did not think of any. Yet
others mentioned the following terms: job satisfaction, commitment, empowerment,
responsibility, conscientiousness, positivity, happiness, interest, motivation, ambition,
trust and confidential agreement. The question was raised in order to get the human
resource managers’ perspective, that if they think that the term work engagement
possesses any contribution that the other concepts mentioned might not cover. The term

     
WORK ENGAGEMENT 49

that came up the most often was job satisfaction. Interestingly for the human resource
managers, or in this case practitioners who also work in applying and using these
concepts, it can be seen that their understanding of the overlapping of the concepts, goes
all the way from being just a common denominator for the same thing into them starting
to see the two as being separate but related concepts.

Some of the human resource managers considered work engagement as being

broader, as in that it covers more areas, than job satisfaction. Factors like job
satisfaction among others are still a part of work engagement and affect it.

“…I don’t know if this concept is better or worse than something else, but it
is perhaps broader. …Not just a simple concepts of; Do I feel good or bad”
(Interview 1, Aviation sector)

“…Employees job satisfaction, could be argued for as being a part of work

engagement”
(Interview 3, Hotel industry)

Yet, others would say that the two concepts are connected with one another.
Those human resource managers mentioned that the concepts are dependent on each
other and you can’t really have one without the other.

     
WORK ENGAGEMENT 50

“If you high levels of job satisfaction I think that the job satisfaction is due
to high levels of work engagement, as well as the opposite”
(Interview 9, Transportation sector)

But although job satisfaction may be connected to or a part of engagement, others

still saw it as more of a distinct concept. Those human resource managers mentioned
that even though job satisfaction levels are high it does not have anything to do with
how engaged an employee might be.

“…Job satisfaction is just one part of being engaged, it is kind of a premise

of becoming engaged, …Even though you measure job satisfaction it does
not mean that it has anything to with engagement. You can be happy and
fairly satisfied in your job but you are not necessarily an engaged
employee”
(Interview 8, Service sector)

This confusion is not surprising since still in literature no agreement exists on the
true meaning, many definitions are still going around on the concept of work
engagement. Like mentioned in the literature review, work engagement has been
distinguished from overlapping concepts, like job satisfaction. The two are conceptually
distinct, where engagement being more concerned with the employee’s mood, and job
satisfaction with the employee’s affect about or towards the work. To date the
discriminant validity of the overlapping concepts still remains indistinct (Schaufeli &
Bakker, 2010). In the next section of the findings chapter the different understanding of
the human resource managers will be discussed further. It will be examined if the

     
WORK ENGAGEMENT 51

differentiation of work engagement from job satisfaction and how it affects the way the
human resource managers work with or apply the concepts in their practices.

4.2 Practices

In this chapter work engagement practices will be discussed. Regarding the

development of understanding the analysis will be based on if the human resource
managers have started reflecting on the concept as well as if they have actually begun
applying it. In the beginning, general human resource management practices that the
human resource managers think can increase work engagement will be mentioned. This
chapter will also consider if the human resource managers are carrying out
measurements of the concepts. Finally, the main challenges with increasing work
engagement that the human resource managers are facing in the tourism industry in
general will be discussed.

4.2.1 Reflection

Looking back at the figure of where in their development of understanding the human
resource managers are in relation to the concept of work engagement. The next step
after gaining understanding would then be reflecting on the usage of the concept. That’s
when the human resource managers start reflecting on questions like, what can be done,
what is already being done, etc. The human resource managers were asked if they had
currently begun systematically applying, or started working on any specific practices to
increase employee work engagement. All the human resource managers agreed that
everything they do can relate to that, in one way or another. Even though it was maybe
not done systematically for the sole purpose of increasing work engagement. As for the
awareness issues, the first one was related to the human resource managers’ ability to
differentiate work engagement from other concepts, which has already been covered.
The second awareness issue was related to how important or relevant the human
resource managers consider work engagement to be for their practices. For some of the
human resource managers the researcher sometimes got the feeling like the concept
might not have as much relevance for all the human resource managers, and which will
be further discussed in later chapters in the findings section. That is, after reflecting on

     
WORK ENGAGEMENT 52

the concept, how committed are the human resource managers towards incorporating
the concept of work engagement into their practices, at least at this point in time.

4.2.2 General HRM practices

The main aspect of human resource management is to get the best out of every
employee and exploit the human resource in the best way possible. According to the
literature, general HRM practices can have an effect on employees work engagement
(Albrecht et al., 2015). Although not all the human resource managers had started
focusing systematically on practices in order to increase work engagement, the human
resource managers all agreed that general day-to-day practices could be used to try to
increase work engagement. They also talked about how it is not just a single operation
but rather an ongoing task, something that they constantly have to be thinking about.
The human resource managers were asked what kind of practices they believe to be
important when focusing on trying to increase work engagement. The main findings
will now be reported, starting with the most frequently mentioned factors.
All nine human resource managers mentioned the importance of training. The
employees need to have the right tools, and knowledge to be able to perform in their
jobs and become work engaged. Also, making sure that the employees have a clear job
description, and know what is expected of them. Three of them especially mentioned
the importance of training the managers in the factors related to work engagement.
Information flow and involving the employees was another thing that all nine human
resource managers mentioned. When people are informed of what is going on within the
company, they are more likely to put in more effort. All nine believed giving feedback
like conducting performance appraisals to be important for work engagement in order to
let the employees know where they stand, if they need to improve or informing them
that their good work gets noticed. In relation to that, providing opportunities of career
development within the company. All nine also talked about how the workplace
environment is designed to help people thrive and increase work engagement. Focusing
on designing the jobs better, having interesting projects, and making improvements on
the employees working conditions. Four mentioned the importance of selecting the right
individuals into the jobs so they have a better chance of becoming engaged. Two of
them mentioned trying to figure out ways to increase flexibility in terms of working
hours to maintain a better work-life balance. Finally, five out of nine mentioned the

     
WORK ENGAGEMENT 53

wages, and that being able to pay competitive wages to the employees can also have an
effect on employees work engagement.

“I think everything that we do, revolves around that (increasing work

engagement), directly or indirectly.”
(Interview 9, Transportation industry)

“Engagement is not a phenomenon that thrives in a vacuum, engagement is

something that is based on the environment that is created. …and if
managers nurture it and how the managers nurture it”
(Interview 8, Service industry)

When compared to the literature on the job-demands and resource models about
the antecedents of work engagement, a lot of what the human resource managers
mentioned has been linked to increase work engagement. By decreasing the demands on
the jobs where possible, and providing the employees with more resources, it is more
likely that the employees work engagement levels will become higher (Bakker et al.,
2008; Hakanen & Roodt, 2010). When it comes to interventions, none of the human
resource managers said that they have focused specially on one intervention only to
increase work engagement. But when looking at their answers a lot of the factors that
were mentioned, have been associated with the so-called work engagement
interventions. These include: improved work-life conditions, new ways of working in
the form of flexibility and work-life support, job crafting and strength based
interventions, including the JD-R model, which has already been mentioned (Bakker et
al., 2013; Attridge, 2009). It is important to remember that more research is needed on
these practices or intervention when it comes to their effect on employees work
engagement.

4.2.3 Relevance

Apart from the human resource managers’ differentiation of work engagement from
other overlapping constructs, another awareness issue the researcher noticed was in
relation to the relevance of the concept. For the human resource managers working with
a concept like work engagement, they also need to reflect on the potential of work

     
WORK ENGAGEMENT 54

engagement as in being something important for them to use in their practice. When
asked whether a systematic evaluation of work engagement took place, the human
resource managers’ answers varied. A total of four out of the nine human resource
managers within different industries (Aviation, Hotel and Service sector), may be more
committed toward applying the concept as they have already begun a proxy
measurement in trying to track the levels of work engagement among their employees.
This could be an indicator of how far along they are with their understanding on the
concept. In accordance to the literature, of the four practitioners who are measuring
work engagement all are using Gallup Q12, which like previously mentioned is more
commonly used by the practitioners (Attridge, 2009).

Related to the participant differentiation of the concepts, a clear distinction is on

what way they think work engagement can be affected. In those cases, their main focus
was much more on increasing job satisfaction, thinking that the two are connected, so
work engagement may also be affected.

Not measuring:

“…We have never sat down and said well; now we are going to start
working on this work engagement, I don’t even think that we ask this
question in the workplace analysis”
(Interview 2, Aviation sector)

“…We are working on increasing employees job satisfaction, which you

could perhaps say, is a part of work engagement”
(Interview 3, Hotel industry)

Measuring:

“I assume that the people that work here are similar to the people
elsewhere, so if a research elsewhere has shown that engagement is a
phenomenon that affects the performance of a company, contribution
margin, not directly but a in a very complex way, …that it would also
happen here”

     
WORK ENGAGEMENT 55

“…my role has therefore been to promote the message about the
importance of this phenomenon”
(Both quotes, Interview 1, Aviation sector)

“Engagement is especially important in an era where there is a high

demand for labor, ..and to keep turnover down. We are not only competing
for employees as well as customers today, and it just makes a huge
difference and that is why, of course, we are investing in this field”
(Interview 8, Service sector)

For those that see that there is overlap of the concepts, but don’t know what to do,
the awareness is there, but their application of the concept has not been fully matured.
For those that think that work engagement and job satisfaction are connected were in
some cases focusing their actions more towards job satisfaction and trying to affect
work engagement that way, because work engagement can be difficult to work with, or
they have yet to find a way to do so.

“(Engagement) is really important to us, ..it is a factor that we measure and

monitor in each department, ..but it is still something that is difficult to work
with”

“Well I think there is a really close relationship between job satisfaction

and work engagement. But we are trying by ..you know.. by doing a lot of
things to increase the job satisfaction”
(Both quotes, Interview 6, Aviation industry)

The human resource managers that were not measuring work engagement, were
not aware that this could be measured although all of them showed interest in starting to
do so one day. When those human resource managers were asked what concepts they
were focusing on and measuring, these were the most common responses that they are
doing workplace analysis where factors like job satisfaction and more are being
measured.

     
WORK ENGAGEMENT 56

“We are working on increasing the job satisfaction of employees, which one
could argue is a part of engagement, so we measure job satisfaction”
(Interview 3, Hotel industry)

“I think job satisfaction, is of course considered a part of it, but it is not

everything, ..but how would one measure it (work engagement)?”
(Interview 5, Service industry)

Although the human resource managers see the potential in the concept of work
engagement in how it can improve their operations, at the same time some believe that
other factors might be more important to the employees, when it comes to retaining
employees, for example; wages, seeking further education and/or do not see it as a
future workplace.

“…I think to a certain extent it (work engagement) can change some things,
..but still I think that are others factors that might weigh more (when it
comes to turnover, like wages)”
(Interview 9, transportation)

4.2.4 Main challenges

When asked about the main challenges that might hinder the human resource managers
in increasing work engagement these were the main concerns that were mentioned,
most of them were related to the tourism industry in general. Throughout the interviews
the human resource managers all brought up some of the challenges they are facing
working in the tourism industry. The tourism industry has been growing rapidly for the
past few years, and the human resource managers all agreed that there are certain
growth pains that can follow. All the organizations have been growing for the last few
years, and the human resource managers talked about how important it is to make sure
that they are on their toes to keep up with the expansion. As diverse as the tourism
industry is, the diversity of the jobs are no exception. In the tourism industry in general
the turnover rate is high, although it also depends on the industry. For example, the
aviation industry seems to have less trouble with that, compared to the hotel industry. It

     
WORK ENGAGEMENT 57

also varies between the jobs within the different sectors, as the nature of certain jobs
might be more challenging in general when it comes to employee retention. At the
moment, when the unemployment rate is low, and it is quite easy to get a job,
companies are increasingly competing to gather employees. What also characterizes the
business is how there is a limited connection with the employees, both the work
facilities and the work units tend to be spread, as people might not be working in, or
need to show up, at the office. All this can affect the levels of work engagement and
affect the ways that the work increases work engagement.

“…in the tourism industry, the companies are on a broad range, the
airlines are known for paying well, but many other companies are paying
rather poorly, they often have a hard time hiring, for example for cleaning
at the hotels.., so there is, like I said a broad range there between the
sectors.”
(Interview 6, Aviation industry)

As stated earlier, the experience of work engagement can vary depending on

different occupations (Innstrand, 2016). For example in the tourism industry in Iceland,
employees in the flight industry seem to show higher levels of engagement, compared
to other service or restaurant employees. Research also suggests that there might be
different developmental processes behind engagement between different occupations
(Innstrand, 2016). With different occupations within all the companies that the human
resource managers work in, the practices done to increase work engagement can also
vary between different types of jobs and groups within the organizations. How they deal
with main challenges depends largely on the group in each situation. The human
resource managers all agreed that increasing work engagement is important for every
employee. However, what works for increasing work engagement among one group,
might not necessarily work on another. Like mentioned above the nature of some jobs
within the tourism industry is in general more challenging. What maybe characterizes
these jobs is lower wages, unskilled jobs, usually held by younger employees, where the
turnover rates are higher and harder to retain employees. The human resource managers
agreed that in those cases it seems to be harder to increase work engagement, but you
just have to approach it differently.

     
WORK ENGAGEMENT 58

“It (work engagement) is being focused on everywhere, but there are

different actions you make. For example, where seniority is high we are
focusing more on career development, information flow and other things
that matter. But with others, were turnover is higher, then we focus on
different things..”
(Interview 1, Aviation industry)

“When I first started, I was always fighting with this (high turnover and
employee retention in certain jobs)… but now I am in the place where I am
starting to accept it, and expect it.. and look at it this way; just treat those
that are here well, while they are here”
(Interview 7, Transportation industry)

4.3 Benefits

In this chapter the analysis of benefits of work engagement according to the human
resource managers will be discussed. On the one hand for those that have entered the
behavior stage in their development of understanding, and on the other hand the human
resource managers perceived benefits from work engagement in general.

4.3.1 Behavior

Empirical evidence indicates that work engagement can predict organizational

performance, as well as having the potential to improve individuals’ lives within an
organization (Shuck & Wollard, 2010). Since the aim of this study is an attempt to
position the human resource managers’ development understanding of work
engagement, the ones that have already begun measuring are thought to be further along
in the process. When asked about the benefits of work engagement practices, the
difference between those that are measuring and the ones that are not, will now be
covered. The ones that are already measuring, despite the fact that they are maybe not
that far along with their application, were asked if they have already seen any sign of it
being beneficial for their operations. One of the human resource managers talked about
this: after enabling managers and training them so that they were more and more to be
responsible for how their employees feel, there was a rise in the levels of work
     
WORK ENGAGEMENT 59

engagement within the employees involved. The opposite has also happened, when the
manager is not as good, the levels of work engagement go down for the employees
involved. By involving the managers, making them see the urgency of the concept and
what work engagement has to do with the bottom line, and the company’s performance
(Interview 1). In another interview the human resource manager talked about assessing
the benefits from work engagement practices in the form of getting better results from
their workplace analysis such as the Gallup Q12 (Interview 10). The third human
resource manager talked about their assessment that they had not yet seen any
significant difference between measures. However he also mentioned how you can do a
lot of things in terms of increasing engagement but then as things happen, outside or
inside the organization that can effect the levels of engagement. For example, they
could see when engagement levels dropped when stress and employee shortages were
among one group (Interview 6). In the fourth interview, the human resource manager
had not been measuring long enough, but talked about a gut feeling of improvements,
both in terms of feedback for employees and number of applicants per vacant job had
increased (Interview 8).

4.3.2 Consequences

The human resource managers, both who had already begun applying the
concept and the ones that had not begun, were asked what kind of benefits they think
work engagement practices could have on their operations. All nine of them believed
that working systematically on trying to increase work engagement would benefit their
operations. Here are the possible benefits that the human resource managers believe
high levels of work engagement can deliver. All the human resource managers
mentioned that higher levels of work engagement would influence turnover rates. When
employees are engaged, they are happier, not looking for another job, more productive
and provide better service. With lower turnover rates, there is less time and money spent
on hiring and training new people, which saves costs. At times like these, were the
unemployment rate is low, the competition for employees increases. Engaged
employees can also make the workplace more attractive, and rumors of high turnover
rates or treating employees unfairly, spread quickly in a small place like Iceland. All the
human resource managers agreed that having an engaged workforce could be one of

     
WORK ENGAGEMENT 60

many factors that can increase the company’s performance and be a source of
competitive advantage.

“If we assume that.., with higher levels of engagement people are both
happier and stay for longer.. Then I think it can absolutely increase our
competitive position… by providing better service”
(Interview 10, Hotel industry)

4.4 Final Conclusion

Since not much research exists on the concept of work engagement here in Iceland the
objective of the research was to examine the position of the concept of work
engagement among human resource managers in companies that one way or another are
related to the tourism industry in Iceland. That is, how far are they in their development
of understanding the concept and applying the concept? In this chapter the main
findings of the study will be summarized.

Understanding: Starting with the understanding of the work engagement

concept. The understanding on the concept among human resource managers within
bigger companies that operate in the tourism industry in Iceland varied but was in
general quite good. It was actually what surprised the researcher the most, how well the
human resource managers understood concept. Regarding the process of their
development of understanding, the researcher would evaluate all the human resource
managers as having entered the understanding phase. However like mentioned earlier in
the findings, two awareness issues were raised during the data analysis. The first one
was related to the ability to differentiate work engagement from other related concepts,
especially job satisfaction. Which comes as no surprise as in the literature, the overlap
of the two concepts is still unclear. The second one was related to the relevance the
human resource managers give the concept of work engagement. But both of those can
impact how the human resource managers will go about applying the concept.

Practices: When it comes to the human resource practices, the human resource
managers within bigger companies operating in the tourism industry in Iceland had
systematically applied to increase work engagement among employees, their answers
also varied. The human resource managers had started to reflect on what practices they

     
WORK ENGAGEMENT 61

were possibly already doing that could lead to increased work engagement, although
they were maybe not set out initially. Most of those were general human resource
practices that focus getting the best performance out of each and every employee all
year round. Some had already started systematically measuring work engagement,
which means that they are trying to put a finger on what they are doing and how it
affects the employees’ levels of work engagement. Depending on the differentiation
between work engagement and job satisfaction the practices varied to some degree.
Some think that the two are related, focusing more on practices that increase job
satisfaction. While others who perceive the two as being two separate constructs, might
say that increasing job satisfaction does not necessarily have anything to do with how
the employee engagement levels are.

Benefits: Lastly when it comes to the benefits of the work engagement practices
that the human resource managers within the bigger companies within the tourism
industry in Iceland have started to acknowledge, the findings were divided into two
groups. The last step in the development of understanding was behavior. The researcher
felt like the ones that had the understanding, had reflected on the concept, saw the
urgency and started acting on it, such as by measuring and had entered that stage. Even
though this might be sort of proxy measurement that they use to track it, but still or not
quite sure yet how they can best affect it. In general all the human resource managers
believed that having engaged employees would of course be beneficial in the short run,
by having happier employees, and in the long run, such as decreased turnover and
possible financial performance of the company.

The work engagement concept is clearly something that has attracted the
attention of quite a few human resource managers within the tourism industry in
Iceland. As discussed in the findings chapter within all the companies something is
being done that could increase work engagement, even if they are not being done solely
for that one purpose. The focus of their practices seems to still be more on job
satisfaction than work engagement. That is perhaps due to the fact that they have more
tools there, but when it comes to work engagement they maybe don’t quite know how to
proceed. The literature has yet to determine whether a real difference has been made
and also how best to apply them both. The researcher was surprised by how much
understanding and interest the human resource managers had on the concept. With

     
WORK ENGAGEMENT 62

several human resource managers that had already begun measuring and the rest of
them were showing interest in starting to do so. It shows that the human resource
managers see potential in the concept of work engagement for their practices. With the
challenges already mentioned related to the tourism industry in general, work
engagement might one of many factors worth looking into when it comes to dealing
with these challenges.

     
WORK ENGAGEMENT 63

5. Limitations and Future Research

This chapter includes the main limitation of the study that the researcher noticed that
might have affected the results. Followed by interesting next steps in future research on
the subject.

5.1 Limitations

In this research, there were some limitations. What is important to consider when
reading this paper is that it is based on a qualitative methodology. Only ten human
resource managers were interviewed within the bigger companies in the tourism
industry in Iceland. The results will only account for the information retrieved from
those nine interviews that were gathered and analyzed in this research. The results will
therefore be limited to those participants within those companies that the researcher
interviewed, and not transferable to other human resource managers or other companies.
The fact that the word “work engagement” has been defined in different ways may have
an effect on the perception of the human resource managers understanding. Another
possible limitation is the fact that the perfect Icelandic word has not been found for
work engagement yet. There were also limitations related to the questionnaire that was
prepared by the researcher. In terms of the wording of the questions, in what order they
were asked, or in the way the participants understood the questions, could have all
affected the results of the study. The researchers lack of experience in conducting
qualitative research will also somewhat limit the study. The data was only analyzed and
interpreted by the researcher and no one else, which could affect the reliability of the
study. Finally, the researcher finds the subject interesting but tried to make sure not to
influence the study with his view on the subject and to be as objective as he could.

5.2 Future research

Like mentioned above there is lack of research on the concept within the Icelandic labor
market. The contribution of this research will be in providing insight into how things
are being done among human resource managers in the tourism industry in Iceland. As
the understanding of the concept increases, what is missing from the literature are

     
WORK ENGAGEMENT 64

studies on how to actually apply work engagement practices and more research of what
effects it can have. There is great need for future research to focus more on the work
engagement interventions. It would be interesting to see and to do a systematic research
evaluating the impact of management practices on work engagement that is how it
affects the individuals and the organizations. More research is also needed on the
different occupations and the processes that can affect work engagement differently.
The greatest contribution would be in providing the managers with tools that they can
use to apply in their operation to try to affect their employees work engagement.

     
WORK ENGAGEMENT 65

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personality. Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies, 18(4), 1–16.
Wood, J., Kim, W., & Khan, G. F. (2016). Work engagement in organizations: a social
network analysis of the domain. Scientometrics, 109(1), 317-336.
Xanthopoulou, D., Bakker, A. B., Demerouti, E., & Schaufeli, W. B. (2009). Work
engagement and financial returns: A diary study on the role of job and personal
resources. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 82(1), 183–
200.
Zhang, X., & Bartol, K. M. (2010). Linking empowering leadership and employee
creativity: The influence of psychological empowerment, intrinsic motivation,
and creative process engagement. The Academy of Management Journal, 53(1),
107–128.

     
WORK ENGAGEMENT 70

Appendix A
Semi-structured interview framework – Icelandic.

Ég heiti Telma og er nemandi í mannauðsstjórnun og vinnusálfræði við háskólann í

Reykjavík. Þetta viðtal er partur af lokaverkefni mínu. Þar sem ég leitast við að
kortleggja skilning mannauðsstjóra hjá stærri fyrirtækjum í ferðmanna iðnaðinum á
enska hugtakinu „work engagement“. Mig langar að byrja á því að þakka þér fyrir að
taka þátt og biðja þig um að undirrita fyrir mig blað þar sem þú gefur upplýst samþykki
fyrir þátttöku þinni, og leyfi fyrir því að ég geti tekið viðtalið upp. Viðtalið byrjar á
nokkrum bakgrunnsspurningum og svo mun ég fara í þær spurningar er varða kjarna
rannsóknar. Þér er velkomið að spyrja mig að loknu viðtali ef þig langar að vita meira
um verkefnið.

A. Gætir þú byrjað á því að segja mér aðeins frá sjálfum/sjálfri þér,

• Aldur
• Kyn
• Menntun
• Reynsla
• Starfsaldur þinn hjá fyrirtækinu
B. Gætir þú sagt mér aðeins frá fyrirtækinu,
• Hversu margir starfsmenn vinna hjá fyrirtækinu?
• Hversu margir starfsmenn vinna hjá fyrirtækinu yfir sumartímann?
• Hversu gamalt er fyrirtækið?
• Hvert er hlutverk mannauðsstjórnunar innan fyrirtækisins?
• Ráðgjafi fyrir aðra stjórnendur, eða í beinu sambandi við alla
starfsmenn?
• Hvað varðar stefnu og markmið?
• Hversu margir vinna á mannauðssviði?
• Situr þú, sem mannauðsstjóri fyrirtækisins, í framkvæmdarstjórn
fyrirtækisins?

Eins og fram hefur komið hefur mikið verið rætt um eitt ákveðið hugtak í erlendum
fræðum, það hugtak er á ensku kallað „work engagement“. Ekki hefur enn tekist að
finna hina fullkomnu íslensku þýðingu á orðinu. Til þess að forðast mismunandi

     
WORK ENGAGEMENT 71

skilning þá ákvað rannsakandi að leyfa sér að sletta með orðinu “work engagement” í
viðtölunum til þess að líklegra sé að það hafi sömu þýðingu fyrir alla þátttakendur.

C. Skilningur á hugtakinu spurningar,

1) Hver er skilningur þinn á hugtakinu work engagement?
1. Hvað felst í hugtakinu work engagement í þínum huga?
2. Hvernig finnst þér “work engagement” lýsa sér hjá starfsmanni.
3. Geturðu gefið mér dæmi.
Aðgreining frá öðrum hugtökum
2) Ef þú hugsar um önnur hugtök, hvaða hugtökum finnst þér hugtakið work
engagement líkjast?
3) Hvernig finnst þér hugtakið work engagement frábrugðið öðrum þeim hugtökum?
(Ef þau hafa ekki skilning á hugtakinu, hvað er verið að leggja áherslu á, hvaða
önnur hugtök, svo sem starfsánægju?)
4) Telur þú að hugtakið work engagement búi yfir einhverju ákveðnu framlagi sem
önnur hugtök ná ekki yfir? Hvernig þá?
D. HRM work engagement aðgerðir spurningar,
5) Ert þú/þið á mannauðssviðinu nú þegar að vinna ákveðna vinnu innan fyrirtækisins
sem gæti aukið work engagement starfsmanna?
(Ef enginn skilningur, getur þú sagt mér frá starfseminni hjá ykkur almennt, hvað er
verið að fókusa á?)
1. Í hverju felst sú vinna?
2. Hvað telur þú mikilvægt að líta til ef að auka á work engagement starfsmanna
innan fyrirtækisins? Og af hverju?
3. Hvernig hefur þessi vinna reynst ykkur?
4. Ef nei: Er það eitthvað sem þið hafið áhuga á að gera? Og þá hvers vegna?
6) Fer fram kerfisbundið mat á work engagement starfsmanna? Hvernig er það gert?
1. Veistu hvert hlutfall engaged starfsmanna er innan fyrirtækisins?
2. Hvernig mælið þið það? Hvaða mælitæki er notast við?
3. Eru þið farin að draga einhverjar ályktanir af work engagement aðgerðum, það
er hverju þær eru skila?
4. Ef nei: væri það eitthvað sem ykkur langar að byrja að mæla eða fylgjast með?
Eru þið að mæla eða fylgjast með öðrum hugtökum? Hvaða hugtök eru það? Og
hvernig fer það fram?

     
WORK ENGAGEMENT 72

7) Eru einhverjir ákveðnir hópar innan þíns fyrirtækis sem þú myndir telja að þurfi
meiri athygli þegar kemur að work enagagement?
1. Hvernig metið þið það?
(stjórnendur, sérfræðingar, framlínu starfsmenn, ungir, nýir, allir starfsmenn)
8) Innan fyrirtækisins, hvað er það sem að gæti hindrað ykkur í að auka work
engagement
1. Til dæmis, önnur mikilvægari verkefni, fjárhagsáætlun yfirmenn,
starfsmennirnir sjálfir, leiðtogar, störfin sjálf?
E. Ávinningur af HRM work engagement aðgerðum spurningar,
9) Telur þú að einhver ávinningur hafi hlotist (gæti hlotist) af því að innleiða work
engagement aðgerðir inn í þína starfsemi?
1. Já: hvaða eða hvernig þá?
2. Nei: Af hverju ekki?
10) Telur þú að work engagement starfsmanna hafi (geti haft) áhrif á uppsagnartíðni
innan fyrirtækisins? Af hverju?
1. Ertu með núverandi tölur yfir uppsagnar tíðni fyrirtækisins?
2. Hefur hún aukist eða minnkað eftir work engagement aðgerðir?
3. Ef nei: telur þú að uppsagnartíðni myndi hækka eða lækka eftir work
engagement aðgerðir?
4. Eru framkvæmd útgangs-viðtöl þegar starfsmenn hætta
5. Hafa þessi viðtöl orðið til þess að þið hafið breytt verklagi innan fyrirtækisins
eða fundið nýjar leiðir til þess að auka work engagement starfsfólks?
11) Telur þú að hátt work engagement innan fyrirtækis geti gert fyrirtækið
samkeppnishæfara?
1. Að hvaða leyti?
F. Other,
12) Er eitthvað við stefnumótun innan þíns fyrirtækisins sem þér finnst styðja við það að
auka work engagement starfsmanna?
1. Ef já? Hvað þá?
2. Ef nei? Myndi það breyta einhverju ef svo væri?
3. Hvernig myndir þú vilja breyta því þ.a. stefnan styddi betur við work
engagement?
13) Er eitthvað við fyrirtækjamenningu innan þíns fyrirtækis sem þér finnst styðja við
aukið work engagement?

     
WORK ENGAGEMENT 73

1. Ef já: hvað þá?

2. Ef nei: myndi það breyta einhverju ef svo væri?
14) Er eitthvað við stjórnunarstíl innan fyrirtækisins sem þér finnst styðja við aukið
work engagement?
1. Ef já: hvað þá?
2. Ef nei: hvernig væri hægt að breyta því þannig að svo væri?
15) Er eitthvað sem þú vilt segja að lokum sem þú vilt að komi fram?

Hér með lýkur viðtalinu. Ég vil þakka þér aftur kærlega fyrir að hafa gefið þér tíma til
að taka þátt í þessari rannsókn. Ef það eru einhverjar spurningar sem vakna eða annað
sem þú vilt koma á framfæri í tengslum við verkefni, þá endilega hafðu samband.
Einnig væri gott að vita hvort það væri í lagi að ég hefði samband á meðan vinnslu
verkefnsins stendur, ef einhverjar spurningar vakna á mínum enda?

     
WORK ENGAGEMENT 74

Appendix B
Semi-structured interview framework – Rough translation into English.

My name is Telma and I am a student in Reykjavik University studying human resource

management and organizational psychology. This interview is a part of my masters
thesis. In my masters thesis I seek to map the understanding of human resource
managers in the larger companies in the tourism industry in Iceland on a concept called
work engagement. I want to begin by thanking you for accepting to participate, and to
ask you sign a form, where you provide an informed consent for your participation, and
a leave for me to record the interview. The interview stars with some background
questions, and then I will go into the question relating to the core of the research. Feel
free at the end of the interview to ask me some questions if you want to know more
about the project.

1. Could you start by telling me about yourself?

• Age
• Gender
• Education
• Experience
• Years of working for the company
1. Could you tell me a little bit about the company?
• How many employees work for the company?
• Is the number of employees the same for the whole year, for example;
depending on the season, or during the summertime?
• How old is the company?
• What is the role of HR within the company?
• Consultant for other managers, or in direct contact with all employees?
• In terms of strategy and objectives?
• How many employees work in the HR department?
• As an HR manager are you a member on the executive board?

As we have seen, a certain concept called work engagement has increasingly been
receiving attention in the literature. As the term has not been fully translated into
Icelandic, the researcher allowed himself to use the term in English instead, in order to

     
WORK ENGAGEMENT 75

avoid different understanding of the word and so it was likelier to have the same
meaning for all participants.

2. Questions concerning the understanding on the concept,

1) What is your understanding of the concept, work engagement?
a) What does the concept work engagement mean in your mind?
b) How would you describe a work-engaged employee?
c) Can you give me an example?
Differentiation from other concepts,
2) How do you think the concept work engagement, differs from those other terms?
(If they do not understand the concept, what other concepts have they been focusing on,
such as job satisfaction or something else?)
3) Do you think the concept work engagement posses any specific contributions that
the other concepts do not cover? And how?
3. Questions on the HRM work engagement practices,
4) Have you in the HR department already started working on ways within the
company that could increase the work engagement among the employees?
(If they don’t understand the concept, can you tell me about the operations of the HR
department in general, what are you focusing on the most?)
a) What involved in that work?
b) What aspects do you think are important to consider in order to increase
work engagement among employees within the company? And why?
c) How has this work proved to work for you?
d) If no: Is that something you would like to do? And then, why?
5) Do you perform a systematic evaluation of the levels of work engagement of the
employees? How do you do it?
a) Do you know the percentage of engaged employees within the company?
b) How do you measure? What scale is being used?
c) Have you started to draw any conclusions from the work engagement
actions, as to how they have proved to work for you?
d) If no: is it something you would like to start measuring or monitoring? Are
you measuring or monitoring other concepts? What concepts? And how does
that take place?

     
WORK ENGAGEMENT 76

6) Are there any specific groups within your company that you would think need more
attention when it comes to work engagement?
a) How do you assess that? (Managers, professionals, front-line workers,
younger, newcomers, all staff members?)
7) Within the company, what would be the things that could prevent you from
increasing work engagement among employees?
a) For example, other important tasks, budget, the employees themselves,
leaders, the nature of the jobs, etc.?
4. Questions on the benefits from HRM work engagement practices,
8) Do you think any benefits have resulted (could result) after work engagement
practices into your work?
a) Yes: what or how?
b) No: why not?
9) Do you think that work engagement has affected (can affect) the level of turnovers
within the company? And why?
a) Do you have the current number of turnover rates in the company?
b) Do you know if it has increased or decreased after incorporating work
engagement practices?
c) If no: do you think turnover would increase or decrease after incorporating
work engagement practices?
d) Are exit-interviews executed when employees quit?
e) Have these (or do you think these) interviews can help you in changing the
procedures within the company, to find new ways to increase work
engagement among employees?
10) Do you think high levels of work engagement within the company can make more
completive?
a) In what way?
11) Do you believe that there is something about the strategy within your company that
supports the idea of increasing work engagement among the employees?
a) If yes: What then?
b) If no: Would it change something if it did?
c) How would you change it, so that it did and why?
12) Do you believe that there is something about the culture within your company that
supports increasing work engagement?

     
WORK ENGAGEMENT 77

a) If yes: then what?

b) If no: would it change something if it did?
13) Do you believe that there is something about the leadership style within the
company that supports increasing work engagement?
a) If yes: then what?
b) If no: how would you want to change is so that it did?
14) Is there anything else you would like to say?

This completes the interview. I want to use the moment and thank you again for taking
the time to participate in this study. If there are any questions that arise, or anything you
want to add in relation to the project, then please just contact me. It would also be nice
to know if it is all right for me to contact you during the construction of the project if
any questions arise on my part?

     
WORK ENGAGEMENT 78

Appendix C
E-mail sent to the human resource managers requesting their participation in Icelandic.

Kæri viðtakandi,
Ég heiti Telma Dís Ólafsdóttir og er meistaranemi í mannauðsstjórnun og vinnusálfræði
við Háskólann í Reykjavík. Ég stefni að því að útskrifast núna í vor, 2017, og vinn að
því að klára lokaverkefnið mitt þessa önnina. Leiðbeindandi er dr. Auður Arna
Arnardóttir, lektor við viðskiptadeild Háskólans í Reykjavík. Verkefnið felst í því að
skoða stöðu enska hugtaksins “work engagement” á meðal mannauðsstjóra hjá
íslenskum fyrirtækjum sem á einn eða annan hátt tengjast ferðamannaiðnaðinum.
Undanfarið hefur mikið verið rætt og skrifað um hugtakið í erlendum fræðum, en minna
er til um efnið hér á landi. Lítið er einnig vitað um þann ávinning af aðgerðum
mannauðssviða þegar kemur að því að vinna með hugtakið. Markmið verkefnisins er
því að reyna að kortleggja þann skilning og þá vinnu sem unnin er hér á landi í
tengslum við hugtakið “work engagement”.

Að því gefnu óska ég eftir þátttöku þinni í verkefninu því ég tel að starfsemi
fyrirtækisins sé mjög áhugaverð í þessu samhengi.

Rannsóknin fer þannig fram að haft verður samband við mannauðsstjóra hjá
mismunandi fyrirtækjum. Ég mun mæta til þeirra sem samþykja þátttöku eftir að við
höfum sammælst um tímasetningu viðtals. Áætlað er að viðtalið muni taka um 30
mínútur. Ekki verður um beinan samanburð á fyrirtækjum að ræða og að sjálfsögðu
verður verklagsreglum um nafnleynd fylgt. Þátttakendur sem og fyrirtæki verða hvergi
nafngreind í rannsókninni og ekki verða gefnar upp upplýsingar sem rekja megi svör
beint til einstakra þátttakenda eða tiltekinna fyrirtækja.

Spurning mín er hvort að þú hafir áhuga á að hitta mig og taka þátt í rannsókn minni?

Með kærri kveðju og von um jákvæð viðbrögð,

Telma Dís Ólafsdóttir

     
WORK ENGAGEMENT 79

Appendix D
Rough translation of the e-mail sent to the human resource managers requesting their
participation

Dear recipient,
My name is Telma Dís Ólafsdóttir and I am a master stundent in human resource
management and organizational psychology at Reykjavik University. I aim to graduate
this spring, 2017, and am therefore currently working on my final project. My
supervisor is dr. Auður Arna Arnardóttir, assisstant professor at the faculty of Business
Administration at Reykjavik University. The project involves emaining the position of
the term work engagement among human resource managers in Icelandic companies
that in one way or another related to the tourism industry. Recently, interest on
researching the concept has been increasing, but less exists on the concept here in
Iceland. Also, little is known in general about the benefits of human resource
management practices when it comes to applying the concept. The aim of the project is
to try to map the understanding and the work done in relation to the term work
engagement.

Therefore, I would want to request your participation in the project, because I think the
company’s operations are well suited and intersting in this context.

The study will be performed in that way, that human resource managers within different
companys will be reached out to and asked for their participation. After agreeing to
participate, they will be contacted to schedule a meeting for an interview to take place.
It is estimated that the interview will take around 30 minutes. There will be no direct
comparision between the companies, and of course, anonymitiy procedures will be
followed. The participants nor the companies will nowhere be named in the study, and
no information will be proveded that can lead directly to individual participants or
specific companies.

My question is where you are intersted in meeting me and participating in my study?

With kind regards, and the hope for positive feedback,

Telma Dís Ólafsdóttir