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Meaningful Work, Job Resources, and Employee Engagement

Author

Listed:
  • Simon L. Albrecht

    (School of Psychology, Deakin University, 3125 Melbourne, Australia)

  • Camille R. Green

    (Department of Education & Training, 3000 Melbourne, Australia)

  • Andrew Marty

    (SACS Consulting, 3000 Melbourne, Australia)

Abstract

Meaningful work and employee engagement have been the subject of increasing interest in organizational research and practice over recent years. Both constructs have been shown to influence important organizational outcomes, such as job satisfaction, wellbeing, and performance. Only a limited amount of empirical research has focused on understanding the relationship within existing theoretical frameworks. For this study, meaningful work is proposed as a critical psychological state within the job demands-resources (JD-R) model that can therefore, in part, explain the relationship between job resources and employee engagement. Survey data collected from 1415 employees working in a range of organizations, across a number of industries, were analyzed with confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and structural equation modelling (SEM). In support of expectations, job variety, development opportunities, and autonomy, each had a significant and positive direct association with meaningful work. These job resources also had a significant and positive indirect effect on employee engagement via meaningful work. Although job variety, development opportunities, autonomy, and feedback had significant positive direct associations with engagement, contrary to expectations, supervisor support had a negative association with engagement. The final model explained a sizable proportion of variance in both meaningful work (49%) and employee engagement (65%). Relative weights analyses showed that job variety was the strongest job resource predictor of meaningful work, and that meaningful work was more strongly associated with employee engagement than the job resources. Overall, the results show that meaningful work plays an important role in enhancing employee engagement and that providing employees with skill and task variety is important to achieving that goal. Practical implications, study limitations, and future research opportunities are discussed.

Suggested Citation

  • Simon L. Albrecht & Camille R. Green & Andrew Marty, 2021. "Meaningful Work, Job Resources, and Employee Engagement," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(7), pages 1-14, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:7:p:4045-:d:530606
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    4. Yujing Liu & Jing Du & Jin Nam Choi & Yuan Li, 2022. "Can I Get Back Later or Turn It Off? Day-Level Effect of Remote Communication Autonomy on Sustainable Proactivity," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(3), pages 1-14, February.
    5. Maja Rožman & Polona Tominc & Katja Crnogaj, 2022. "Healthy and Entrepreneurial Work Environment for Older Employees and Its Impact on Work Engagement during the COVID-19 Pandemic," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(8), pages 1-15, April.

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