Workplace engagement and motivation

Work engagement is an affective/energetic/motivational concept that emerged in the late 1990s. According to the dominant conceptualization of this concept, engaged workers display high levels of energy and dedication, are absorbed in their work, and work harder and perform better than others. In this article I first discuss the origins of the engagement concept as the conceptual antipode of burnout. I then show that work engagement can be distinguished well from related concepts like Vallerand et al.’s (2003) work passion and Spence and Robbins's (1992) “classic” workaholic. However, the overlap between work engagement and Spence and Robbins's “enthusiastic” workaholic and especially burnout is considerably larger. In terms of their motivational regulation, engaged workers report relatively high levels of autonomous/intrinsic regulation and relatively low levels of non-autonomous/extrinsic regulation, experience high levels of authenticity at work, and report high levels of satisfaction of their needs for affiliation, autonomy and competence. Further, engagement is related to personality (especially conscientiousness, extraversion and positive affect), the presence of good opportunities to recover from effort, the presence of job resources, and the absence of (excessively high) job demands. I then show that work engagement is associated with good performance. I conclude with three venues for future research: individual differences in the appraisal of the work-related antecedents of engagement, the possible negative side effects of being over-engaged, and the need for more well-designed work engagement interventions.