Using self-efficacy based interventions to increase employee engagement scores

Transcription

1 Using self-efficacy based interventions to increase employee engagement scores Richard Carter 1, Paul Nesbit 1, Miriam Joy 2 1 Macquarie Graduate School of Management, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia 2 Be Learning, Sydney, Australia In the simplest terms, employee engagement (also known as job engagement) can be thought of as the amount of discretionary effort, defined as extra time, brainpower or energy, that employees exhibit at work (Towers-Perrin, 2003). This definition implies that the more engaged employees are, the better they will perform at work and vice versa. Indeed, organizational research confirms this proposition by showing that companies in the top quartile of the employee engagement index substantially outperformed those in the bottom quartile on a range of financial performance measures (Macey, Schneider, Barbera, & Young, 2009). Given these findings, increasing employee engagement scores is seen to be highly desirable to organizations endeavouring to obtain competitive advantage from their human capital or even just to compete effectively. The challenge for organizations is to find or create programs and interventions that create an environment where employees willingly expend extra time, brainpower and energy at work. Relationship with Self-Efficacy With its focus on discretionary effort, employee engagement is visibly associated with the work motivation field where constructs such as goal setting, feedback and coaching, and self-efficacy provide insight into factors that affect

2 individual behaviour and performance. The parallels between employee engagement and work motivation as constructs is clearly illustrated by comparing Macey and Schneider s (2008) definition of employee engagement as an individual s sense of purpose and focused energy, evident to others in the display of personal initiative, adaptability, effort, and persistence directed toward organizational goals with Kanfer s (1990) definition of work motivation as the psychological processes that determine (or energize) the direction, intensity, and persistence of action within the continuing steam of experiences that characterize the person in relation to his or her work. The core focus of these constructs on the direction, intensity/effort and persistence an individual displays at work suggests that the concept of self-efficacy provides particularly relevant insight as there is extensive support for self-efficacy s superior role in raising workrelated performance compared with other interventions such as goal setting and feedback and coaching (Stajkovic & Luthans, 1998). Self-efficacy is defined as an individual s beliefs about their ability to organize and execute the courses of action required to produce given attainments (Bandura, 1997). In addition, a recent metaanalysis found the mean corrected correlations for self-efficacy and the 3 engagement dimensions of vigor, dedication and absorption were in the range of.71 to.76 (Christian & Slaughter, 2007). These high corrected correlations plainly show that self-efficacy and employee engagement are closely related constructs and that interventions designed to improve employee self-efficacy are likely to increase employee engagement scores. Given that engagement follows where employees believe they have the capacity, reason or motivation, freedom and knowledge to engage (Macey, Schneider, Barbera, & Young, 2009), interventions designed to raise employee engagement scores must take into account these factors. By focusing on raising employee self-efficacy, three of these

3 factors are directly addressed. First, increasing self-efficacy helps employees develop a greater sense of confidence in their competence to undertake their work responsibilities, effectively raising their capacity to be engaged in their work. Second, consistent with goal setting theory (Locke, Frederick, Lee, & Bobko, 1984), self-efficacy s selfregulatory, goal setting processes continually provide employees with the reason or motivation to be engaged. Third, self-efficacy is built on the premise of personal agency and control so that an increase in self-efficacy leads to employees perceiving they have more freedom to engage. In summary, the combination of confidence in one s competence, motivation via goal-setting and sense of personal agency and control provide the platform for employees to become engaged. It is then the organization s responsibility to address the fourth factor (knowledge) by providing employees with the information they need so that they can clearly see how their work is aligned with organization s strategy. Job Burnout and Engagement Besides the demonstrable relationship between employee engagement and selfefficacy, job engagement has also been characterized as the positive antithesis of job burnout (Maslach, Schaufeli, & Leiter, 2001). Job burnout traditionally been conceptualized as a psychological syndrome in response to chronic interpersonal stressors on the job and is made up of three dimensions: overwhelming exhaustion (exhaustion); feelings of cynicism and detachment from the job (cynicism) and a sense of ineffectiveness and lack of accomplishment (inefficacy) (Maslach, Schaufeli, & Leiter, 2001). Moving the focal point of study from the negative (job burnout) to the positive (job engagement) mirrors the broader aim of positive psychology to change the

4 focus of psychology from preoccupation with repairing the worst things in life to building positive qualities (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000). Indeed, the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES) was specifically developed in this spirit by replacing job burnout s three dimensions with positive work engagement ones (Schaufeli, Salanova, Vicente, & Bakker, 2002). Under this reclassification approach, exhaustion became vigor, cynicism turned into dedication and inefficacy was changed to absorption. While the UWES instrument s first two dimensions (vigor and dedication) are closely related to the earlier definitions of employee engagement and work motivation with their focus on direction, intensity/effort and persistence, the third dimension (absorption) is closely related to self-efficacy with its focus on effectiveness and accomplishment. Therefore, interventions designed to lift self-efficacy are also likely to increase employee engagement scores, particularly the absorption dimension. Intervention Techniques Given self-efficacy s clear link with job engagement generally and absorption specifically, interventions should focus on increasing the four principal sources of selfefficacy information: enactive mastery experiences; vicarious experiences; verbal persuasion and allied types of social influences; and physiological and affective states (Bandura, 1997). Enactive mastery builds feelings of competency, or the level of confidence an individual has in their perceived skill to perform a required task or function (Bandura, 2002). Vicarious experience allows people to learn by watching role models and then modelling their own behaviour on successful performance while verbal persuasion uses a feedback and coaching process to address participant perceptions of how the social environment impacts their ability to achieve certain outcomes (Bandura,

5 1991). Finally, providing an environment where participant s physical and affective states are raised increases the likelihood self-efficacy information will be transferred. Although each of these four factors can independently assist in the process of increasing participant self-efficacy, the ideal intervention would incorporate all four factors in order to maximize participant s sense of their competence in their competence to perform a challenging task and produce given attainments. The ideal intervention would also enhance participant s sense of their personal agency and control their belief in their ability to be self-organizing, pro-active, self-regulating, and selfreflecting, and not simply an onlooker of their behaviour (Bandura, 2006). Overall, employees who feel confident, agentic and effective are more likely to be engaged. Given these requirements, three theatre based formats offer significant potential as interventions to raise participant self-efficacy, particularly when used in combination. Forum Theatre The first, Forum Theatre (Boal, 2000) is a form of simultaneous dramaturgy where participants (spect-actors) watch a scripted performance and then participate in analysing the performance and coaching the actors on different ways of constructing it. Originally called Theatre of the Oppressed, Forum Theatre acts as a catalyst to personal agency and control. Rehearse for Reality is a variation of role playing where participants enter a dyadic role play with a trained actor/coach while other participants watch and enhances self-efficacy through all four sources of self-efficacy information. Entertainment Education (Singhal, 2004) involves participants watching and/or listening to scripted soap opera style stories that act as a catalyst for behavioural change via enhanced self-efficacy through role modelling or as behavioural reinforcement.

6 How does Forum Theatre work to create personal agency and control? The theory of second order observation (Luhmann, 1998) provides insight into observation and reflective processes undertaken by organization theatre audiences (Schreyögg, 2001). Rather than watching the actors perform a play, the audience is actually observing the result of observations others (i.e. the actors/script writers) have made about their organization. This process confronts the audience as it is likely to markedly differ from their usual perception of their reality and as a result, brings about reality duplication (Luhmann, 1998) or a splitting experience (Schreyögg, 2001). In effect, the audience observes the familiar from an unfamiliar angle enabling them to view two different realities simultaneously and making the process reflexive (Schreyögg, 2001). Forum Theatre also incorporates all three ways in which organizational theatre can be used: a mirror that provides contrasting realities; a window that shows hidden/overlooked scenes or potential future ones; and a passage-like form where the audience has the opportunity to participate on stage and craft new possibilities in an emergent rather than scripted setting (Meisiek & Barry, 2007). In summary, Forum Theatre confronting audiences with a different perspective of their familiar problem construction that in turn initiates a close examination of habituated behavioural patterns and established perceptual constructions (Schreyögg & Hapfl, 2004). Forum Theatre incorporates two key elements: a staged dialectic and a related dialogue. The staged dialectic denotes conflict, contradiction, confrontation and defiance in order to create an engaging analogy while at the same time reflecting the lived experience of the audience in order to generate change-related dialogue (Boal, 2000). Following on from the staged dialectic, the related dialogue component of Forum Theatre provides the opportunity for participants to explore their situation as

7 equals as well as the possibilities associated with how things could be different. By mobilizing the audience s energy, Forum Theatre has a catalytic impact on personal agency that sets it apart as a theatrical technology. Rehearse for Reality In contrast to role-play simulations where learners take on the roles of specific characters in a contrived setting, Rehearse for Reality participants play themselves in an artificial conversational situation where their self-efficacy (their confidence in their competence to achieve successful outcomes) is enhanced. Although Rehearse for Reality and role-play are both simulations and are designed to build an individual s experience in a safe and supportive environment, Rehearse for Reality provides enactive mastery practice for participants whereas people often don t play themselves in roleplaying. In Rehearse for Reality, a professional actor/coach gets the participant to describe in some detail the background, the conversation s purpose and personal characteristics of the individual the actor will play in the simulated conversation. Given their training in and skills at adopting a wide range of characters for theatre, the actor/coach is able to accurately portray the conversational partner for the participant, making the conversation highly credible. As a result, participants typically experience a heightened physiological and affective state and engage in a highly realistic and genuine conversation where they directly gain enactive mastery practice. During the course of the conversation, the actor/coach will periodically call time out, give the participant the opportunity to reflect on their skill in the conversation, provide feedback on how their response as the other party in the conversation and make suggestions for improvement. In effect, the actor/coach helps the participant enhance

8 perceptions of their self-efficacy through a feedback and coaching process. Rehearse for Reality conversations are typically undertaken in small groups of 5-6 people where each person takes a turn at practicing similar types of conversations while the rest of the group watch and provide feedback and support as appropriate. Each participant not only enhances their own self-efficacy through enactive mastery practice, feedback and coaching and through being in a heightened physiological and affective state but also through vicarious (observational) learning of other participants. Therefore, Rehearse for Reality offers a rich technology for enhancing participant self-efficacy. Entertainment Education Defined as the intentional placement of educational content in entertainment messages (Singhal & Rogers, 2002), entertainment-education (E-E) has traditionally been used as a public health oriented vehicle for mass market education. E-E has its theoretical roots in social learning (now social cognitive) theory with its focus on seeking to influence audience behavioural change by showing rather than describing positive and negative role models to the target audience (Singhal, 2004). As a nonparticipatory process, E-E relies primarily on enhancing individual self-efficacy through vicarious learning rather than enactive mastery practice or feedback and coaching as occurs in Forum Theatre and Rehearse for Reality. Nevertheless the parallels between E-E and Forum Theatre have been recognized with the prediction that future E-E interventions are likely to see more integration with participatory communication approaches for democratizing organizations (Singhal & Rogers, 2002). Given the difficulties faced by participants seeking to adopt new behaviours on challenging tasks, A. Bandura (personal communication, August 2, 2007) has suggested that E-E can be used as a self-efficacy reinforcement mechanism for interventions such as Forum

9 Theatre until new behaviours become habitual. Therefore, E-E acts as both a primary and secondary behavioural change agent. Intervention Case Study Having firmly established the theoretical underpinnings linking employee engagement with self-efficacy and described interventions designed to increase participant self-efficacy, the following case study will show the influence these interventions have on employee engagement. Research Setting and Participants An independently branded retail business of an Australasian financial services organization had implemented a new customer relationship management (CRM) software program as part of a strategic push to deepen their relationship with customers as measured by the number of products per customer. In order to achieve this objective, customer facing employees were encouraged to use the software to identify eligible customers for a free financial health check. The primary aim was to establish a regular dialogue with customers so that when the customer s circumstances required a new product, the organization would be firmly in the customer s consideration set to assist. The employee s task was to proactively ask the customer to make the appointment during a regular over the counter (OTC) transaction. Although the organization was seeing a general positive trend in the number of appointments being made by employees, budgets were not being met and the organization believed that employee self-efficacy (or lack thereof) in approaching customers for an appointment, could be an underlying factor. In addition, this organization had embraced employee engagement as an important performance metric and was very interested in increasing

10 its employee engagement scores. Twenty branches from a large city in Eastern Australia were selected to participate in the study. These mid-sized branches were classified as second tier within the organization and typically had 6 employees: Manager (1); Supervisor (1); and Frontline (4). The total elapsed time from the Time 1 survey (N=104) to the Time 2 survey (N = 53) was 8 months. Intervention The intervention was designed to increase participant task-specific self-efficacy (being proactive in customer conversations). Employees from the pilot group attended two half day workshops (four weeks apart) that used Forum Theatre, visualization and personal action planning in the first workshop and Forum Theatre and Rehearse for Reality in the second. Three to four months after the second workshop, a version of E-E in the form of three short (six minute) DVD s featuring characters created for the workshops were shown and discussed over a three week period in a regularly scheduled weekly team meeting. In the intervention, Forum Theatre demonstrated proactive customer conversation issues, Rehearse for Reality gave participants practice at these conversations and E-E served to reinforce participant behavioural change. Measures The 9-item Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (Schaufeli, Bakker, & Salanova, 2006) incorporating a slightly modified 7-point scale (0=never to 6=every day) was used to measure participant vigour, dedication and absorption and overall engagement. All scales and sub-scales showed Cronbach s alpha ranging from.70 to.83 for the Pre- Intervention Survey and.85 to.87 for the Post-Intervent.ion Survey and are virtually identical to those reported in the literature (Schaufeli, Bakker, & Salanova, 2006).

11 Results Figure 1 shows that employee engagement scores for both the pilot and control groups decreased sharply between the pre and post intervention surveys with a significant main effect (p=.000). This steep decline was directly attributable to the announcement of a proposed corporate merger one week before the post-intervention survey was posted online. There was also a significant interaction effect (p=.048) as the decrease for the pilot group was noticeably less, suggesting the pilot group s engagement was buffered to some extent by the intervention. Figure 2 shows that this buffering effect was solely caused by a negligible decrease in absorption, where the interaction effect was strong (p=.010) whereas there was no interaction effect for either vigour or dedication. Although the merger announcement clearly had a profound influence on employee attitudes, the intervention mitigated the extent to which employee absorption was adversely impacted. In effect, participants did not feel less efficacious in terms of their ability to achieve attainable outcomes. With respect to changes in performance as a result of the intervention, the number of appointments made by the pilot group increased sharply compared to the control group while the number of products sold also increased (See Table 1). In fact, when performance at Time 1 (pre-intervention) was held constant, engagement was a significant predictor of the number of appointments made (p=0.10) and a very significant indicator of the number of products sold (p=0.01). Task specific selfefficacy was also a significant and independent factor in predicting performance (p=0.05) for both the number of products sold and appointments made. In total, employee engagement and self-efficacy explained well over 50% of the variance in performance when past performance was held constant.

12 Conclusion This chapter has shown the clear theoretical and practical connection between employee engagement and self-efficacy. This link provides an accessible way to think about ways in which employee engagement can be increased through self-efficacy based interventions. The use of theatre technologies that act as catalysts to employee perceptions of their personal agency and control, provide comprehensive means to increase self-efficacy and build resilience to behavioural change have been shown. Overall, a focus on lifting employee self-efficacy increases both work-related performance and engagement.

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14 Figure 1. Employee Engagement. Figure 2. Absorption

15 TABLE 1 Hierarchical Regression Analysis of Employee Engagement Predicting Post Intervention Performance with Pre Intervention Performance Constant Step Variable β Step 1 Sig β Step 2 Sig β Step 3 Sig Adjusted R Square Sig. F Change R 2 APPOINTMENTS MADE 1 Appointments Made.655** ** Appointments Made.593** * Employee Engagement.299* Appointments Made.575** * Employee Engagement.215*.081 Making Appointments Hard.272*.027 PRODUCTS SOLD 1 Products Sold.464** ** Products Sold.463** ** Employee Engagement.521** Products Sold.434** * Employee Engagement.434**.001 Ask for Business Hard.302*.015 ** Sig. at 0.01 level (2-tailed). * Sig. at 0.05 level (2-tailed). X Sig. at 0.10 level (2-tailed).