Who are the most engaged at work? A meta‐analysis of personality and employee engagement

• Author: Henry R. Young,Wei Wang,David R. Glerum,Dana L. Joseph
• Published date: 01 December 2018
• Date: 01 December 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/job.2303

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Who are the most engaged at work? A meta‐analysis of

personality and employee engagement

Henry R. Young

1

|David R. Glerum

2

|Wei Wang

3

|Dana L. Joseph

4

1

Department of Management, Michigan State

University, East Lansing, Michigan

2

Fisher Leadership Initiative, The Ohio State

University, Columbus, Ohio

3

Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois

4

Department of Management, University of

Central Florida, Orlando, Florida

Correspondence

Henry R. Young, Department of Management,

Michigan State University, 632 Bogue Street,

East Lansing, MI 48824.

Email: hryoung@msu.edu

Summary

In order to identify the employees who are most likely to be engaged in their work,

we conducted a meta‐analysis of 114 independent samples (N= 44,224) to provide

estimates of the relationship between eight personality traits and employee engage-

ment. Results indicated that these personality traits explained 48.10% of the variance

in engagement. Supporting energy management theories, relative weights analysis

revealed that positive affectivity was by far the strongest predictor of engagement

(31.10% of the explained variance; ρ= .62), followed by proactive personality

(19.60%; ρ= .49), conscientiousness (14.10%; ρ= .39), and extraversion (12.10%;

ρ= .40), whereas neuroticism, negative affectivity, agreeableness, and openness to

experience were the least important. We highlight the importance of positive affectiv-

ity for engagement and support personality‐based selection as a viable means for

organizations to build a highly engaged workforce. Implications for using personality

assessment to select engaged employees are discussed.

KEYWORDS

energy management, engagement, meta‐analysis, personality, personnel selection

1|INTRODUCTION

An engaged workforce is important for organizational effectiveness.

Employee engagement has been linked to increased productivity,

financial returns, and sales (Lin et al., 2016; Macey, Schneider,

Barbera, & Young, 2009; Schneider, Yost, Kropp, Kind, & Lam, 2017;

Xanthopoulou, Bakker, Demerouti, & Schaufeli, 2009). Indeed, one of

the most alarming consequences of low employee engagement is

financial loss: Disengaged employees can cost U.S. businesses up to

$550 billion annually in lost productivity (Ray et al., 2017). Further-

more, engaged employees perform better in their assigned tasks

(Macey & Schneider, 2008a), exhibit increased extra‐role behaviors,

and have reduced turnover intentions (Saks, 2006). Despite these

compelling outcomes of employee engagement, the Gallup Organiza-

tion reports that employee engagement levels within the U.S. work-

force have averaged less than 33% over the past 15 years (Adkins,

2016). Therefore, it is critical to determine how to maximize employee

engagement in the workplace in order to facilitate or improve organi-

zational effectiveness.

To address this challenge, researchers have investigated a num-

ber of means and interventions by which to improve engagement

such as leadership training (e.g., Biggs, Brough, & Barbour, 2014),

health promotion (e.g., Imamura et al., 2015), personal resource build-

ing (Ouweneel, Le Blanc, & Schaufeli, 2013), and job resource building

(e.g., improving social‐organizational aspects of the job to reduce job

demands; Naruse et al., 2015). However, a recent meta‐analysis by

Knight, Patterson, and Dawson (2017) demonstrated that the overall

influence of these intervention strategies on employee engagement

appears to be relatively small (Hedges g= .29). Although these results

are optimistic in showing that engagement may be improved through

interventions, only a few studies (Akhtar, Boustani, Tsivrikos, & Cha-

morro‐Premuzic, 2015; Macey & Schneider, 2008b; Vosburgh, 2008)

have suggested the potential of pre‐employment strategies for effec-

tively improving employee engagement, such as incorporating the

assessment of personality traits into selection systems (Rothstein &

Goffin, 2006).

Although personality assessments may be useful for identifying

candidates who are more likely to invest energy into their work role

Received: 20 August 2017 Revised: 24 May 2018 Accepted: 29 May 2018

DOI: 10.1002/job.2303

1330 © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J Organ Behav. 2018;39:1330–1346.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/job

(i.e., engaged employees), research must first identify which personal-

ity traits are the most strongly related to engagement. Indeed, Macey

and Schneider (2008b) note that this is a “significant opportunity”

and tells us “exactly what organizations need: people who are

predisposed to be engaged”(p. 81). Fortunately, research has begun

to examine the personality–engagement relationship. For example, in

their conceptual model of employee engagement, Christian, Garza,

and Slaughter (2011) proposed dispositional characteristics as one of

three antecedents of engagement (the other two were job characteris-

tics and leadership). Finding meta‐analytic support for their model,

Christian et al. (2011) showed that employee engagement was strongly

correlated with three dispositional traits: proactive personality (ρ= .44,

k= 6), positive affect (ρ= .43, k= 13), and conscientiousness (ρ= .42,

k= 15).

Despite this pioneering work, a more comprehensive meta‐

analytic treatment of the personality–engagement relationship is still

missing in the literature. A host of questions have been left unan-

swered concerning (a) the predictive validity of other personality traits

for employee engagement, (b) their relative importance in predicting

employee engagement along with which personality trait explains

the most variance in engagement, and (c) whether the relationships

between personality and engagement are similar across facets of

engagement (this is important to determine the value of each engage-

ment facet in selection, given that research has disagreed as to which

engagement facets matter most; see Saks & Gruman, 2014).

Conceptually, we also suggest that it is important to examine how

personality traits manifest cognitive, affective, and behavioral tenden-

cies that influence the management of energy (Schippers & Hogenes,

2011), given that employee engagement is the end‐state of employing

and driving personal energy into the work role (Kahn, 1990; Rich,

LePine, & Crawford, 2010). Specifically, we suggest that certain per-

sonality traits are more important in predicting employee engagement

because of their function in maintaining energy, thus, contributing to

our understanding of why certain personality traits are stronger pre-

dictors of engagement. Therefore, the overall purpose of this study

is to comprehensively and meta‐analytically examine the relationship

between personality traits and employee engagement, using energy

management theory as a theoretical framework (Schippers & Hogenes,

2011). In doing so, we hope to provide resolution to the unanswered

question: What personality traits are most likely to predispose employees

to engage at work?

As such, we seek to make three contributions to the employee

engagement literature in this study. First, using a database of 114

independent samples (N= 44,224), we conduct a comprehensive

meta‐analytic test of personality traits as predictors of employee

engagement in order to guide future research and practice. Second,

our study uses relative importance analyses to determine the relative

importance of each personality trait in predicting engagement. Practi-

cally speaking, personality traits tend to exhibit positive manifold

(Musek, 2007), necessitating a relative weights analysis (RWA; John-

son, 2000), a technique that circumvents multicollinearity to effec-

tively determine which personality traits would be the most

comparatively sound predictors of employee engagement. Third, given

that engagement is a multifaceted construct, we seek to determine

whether or not there are facet‐specific differences in personality–

engagement validities under the framework of the most popular and

frequently used measure of employee engagement, the Utrecht Work

Engagement Scale (UWES; Schaufeli, Salanova, González‐Romá, &

Bakker, 2002; Schaufeli, Bakker, & Salanova, 2006). Namely, we exam-

ine whether or not personality traits are more strongly related to vigor,

as opposed to dedication and absorption. Through these contributions

to the employee engagement literature, we hope to provide practical

guidelines for identifying and selecting employees who are the most

likely to become engaged at work.

2|ENERGY AS THE CURRENCY OF

EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT

Energy has been described as “a type of positive affective arousal”

(Quinn & Dutton, 2005, p. 36) that encompasses other similar terms

and descriptions, including vitality (Ryan & Frederick, 1997), energetic

arousal (Thayer, 1989), and zest (Peterson, Park, Hall, & Seligman,

2009). Kahn (1990), in his seminal work, introduced the construct of

employee engagement as the investment of energy into the work role

(see also Rich et al., 2010). Over the years since the publication of Kahn

(1990), the construct of employee engagement has taken various forms,

all highlighting the role of energy while precisely characterizing the

mental state of energy investment. For example, Macey and Schneider

(2008a) reviewed a collection of the engagement literature and

observed that engagement is commonly defined by “passion, enthusi-

asm, focused effort, and energy”(p. 4). Notably, the common thread

underlying engagement conceptualizations was a positive, “energic”

component, regardless of the trait, state, or behavioral labels applied

to the constructs (Macey & Schneider, 2008a, pp. 12, 14, 21). Thus,

we conceptualize energy as the currency of employee engagement.

Indeed, this prominent role of energy investment is captured by

the most popular conceptualization of engagement as a “positive, ful-

filling work‐related state of mind that is characterized by vigor, dedica-

tion, and absorption”(Schaufeli et al., 2002, p. 74).

1

In their

framework, vigor is characterized by a willingness to put forth effort;

dedication refers to a strong involvement in work; and absorption

involves a state of mind accompanied by engrossed concentration

and difficulty detaching from work (Bakker & Demerouti, 2008;

Bakker, Demerouti, & Sanz‐Vergel, 2014). From this perspective, indi-

viduals appear willing to invest energy in the form of vigor and sustain

that investment of energy by becoming dedicated to and absorbed in

their work.

Overall, although there are many theoretical conceptualizations

and definitions of engagement (e.g., May, Gilson, & Harter, 2004; Rich

et al., 2010; Shirom, 2003), we adopt the perspective of Christian et al.

1

In another stream of research, Maslach and Leiter (1997) refer to engagement

as the antithesis of burnout: An energetic state characterized by involvement

and efficacy. Researchers have debated the extent to which engagement and

burnout are differing constructs (Cole, Walter, Bedeian, & O'Boyle, 2012),

although empirical research has since accumulated to suggest burnout and

engagement have distinct nomological networks (Byrne, Peters, & Weston,

2016; Goering, Shimazu, Zhou, Wada, & Sakai, 2017). Despite their differences,

it is apparent that the two constructs are conceptually intertwined: Research

has suggested prolonged energy investment via engagement can deplete energy

resources, resulting in burnout (Halbesleben, Harvey, & Bolino, 2009).

YOUNG ET AL.1331