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A CASE STUDY OF EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT INITIATIVE
The Role of Strategic HRD in Establishing Employee Engagement Initiatives: A Case Study from Higher Education
Submission from Brandon Sullivan, Kenneth Bartlett, and Sowath Rana
University of Minnesota
U.S.A
Stream 4: Employee Engagement
Submission Type: Full Paper
Submitted to the 16th International HRD Conference in Cork, Ireland
3rd – 5th June 2015
Brandon Sullivan, Ph.D.
Director of Leadership and Talent Development, Office of Human Resources
319 15th Avenue SE, Suite 100
University of Minnesota
Minneapolis, MN 55455
Kenneth R. Bartlett, Ph.D.
Professor of Human Resource Development
Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy, and Development
College of Education and Human Development
University of Minnesota
Minneapolis, MN 55455
Sowath Rana
Ph.D. Candidate
Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy, and Development
College of Education and Human Development
University of Minnesota
Minneapolis, MN 55455
Abstract
Purpose: The purpose of this paper was to examine the establishment of an organization-wide employee engagement initiative with a case study from higher education.
Design/methodology/approach: We employed the case study methodology to examine the first two years of a multi-year effort to establish a strategic program to measure and enhance employee engagement at one of the largest, most comprehensive research universities in the United States.
Findings: This study emphasized the important roles of the various key stakeholders within the institution: the university leadership, deans of the colleges, faculty, and staff. The findings suggested that designing and implementing such a large-scale initiative require support from all of these constituents. In addition, this paper explicated the process of designing a university-wide engagement survey, in which input from the various key stakeholders was taken seriously into consideration. Finally, the study elaborated on the significance of the survey results to all members of the institution and explored future actions to be taken based on these findings.
Originality/Value: This paper offers valuable insights to researchers and practitioners on the establishment of a long-term employee engagement strategic initiative at a large institution. In addition, it focuses on the notion of employee engagement within a context that has been rarely examined in the literature: higher education.
Keywords: Employee engagement, work engagement, higher education, organization development
The Role of Strategic HRD in Establishing Employee Engagement Initiatives: A Case Study from Higher Education
Employee engagement has emerged as an increasingly important construct for the field of human resource development (HRD), with individual and organizational outcomes, such as job performance, financial performance, customer satisfaction, and organizational citizenship behavior linked to engagement (Harter, Schmidt, and Hayes, 2002; Macey and Schneider, 2008; Rich, LePine, and Crawford, 2010; Saks, 2006; Shuck and Reio, 2011; Wollard and Shuck, 2011). In addition, research has uncovered many HRD-related antecedents, mediators, and outcomes related to engagement, encouraging many organizations to adopt strategic actions designed to enhance levels of employee engagement. For instance, Shuck, Twyford, Reio, and Shuck (2014) found that employee participation in HRD practices is positively associated with cognitive, emotional, and behavioral engagement, and that engagement is inversely related to employee turnover intention. Shuck and Rocco (2014) proposed various strategies for developing employee engagement through utilizing organization development, workplace learning, and career development initiatives. Rurkkhum and Bartlett (2012) found support for the positive relationship between engagement and organizational citizenship behavior. These findings provide evidence to support the idea that employee engagement is a valued strategic issue for HRD.
Problem Statement
Despite recognition of employee engagement as an important issue, there remains a paucity of research to examine the ways in which employee engagement initiatives can be better informed by HRD theory and practice. In a recent analysis of the science-practice gap in employee engagement, Meyer (2013) concluded that, although there are many areas of established research that support, guide, and inform engagement, there is a need to more directly connect academic findings and theories with organizations’ real-world engagement initiatives. This issue presents an opportunity for evidence-based HRD practice to bridge the gap between academic research and industry practice.
In addition, existing research on engagement tends to focus on business organizations, whereas engagement in higher education settings has received far less attention from researchers and practitioners (Rothmann and Jordaan, 2006). This apparent lack of interest is puzzling, given that higher education institutions also face the forces of globalization and change that greatly influence many other business organizations. Higher education institutions are situated in a national political, regulative, and governance system, which significantly shapes their structural and organizational characteristics (Vaira, 2004). These institutions, therefore, are directly influenced by the forces of globalization and technology, and must transform their role, relationships, policies, priorities, and structures in order to adapt to these changes. Research from across the social sciences shows that the ability of an organization to solve difficult social, political, and economic problems and to successfully address challenges depends upon individual participation, motivation, and investment in working together toward common goals (Sullivan, Snyder, and Sullivan, 2007). Moreover, the development of human resources in higher educational institutions remain of utmost importance because of the need to maintain qualified teaching and non-teaching staff in order to provide quality education (Deligero and Laguador, 2014).
Purpose and Significance of the Study
Framed in theory and research from organization development (OD), this paper examines the establishment of an organization-wide employee engagement initiative with a case study from higher education. The overarching research questions for this study are:
1. What evidence is there to suggest the suitable application of an employee engagement strategy to the context of higher education?
2. How does OD theory and research inform the development and implementation of an employee engagement strategy in the context of higher education?
Our paper employed the case study methodology (Yin, 2014) to examine the first two years of a multi-year effort to establish a strategic program to measure and enhance employee engagement at one of the largest, most comprehensive research universities in the United States. The case study was selected as the most appropriate research approach to examine “how” a phenomenon occurs and focus on a real-life context (Yin, 2014). In addition, we relied on multiple sources of evidence (surveys, interviews, and reports) to support our findings.
The significance of the study is two-fold. First, it offers valuable insights to researchers and practitioners on the establishment of a long-term employee engagement strategic initiative at a large institution. Second, it focuses on the notion of employee engagement within a context that has been rarely examined in the literature: higher education. In this paper, we begin by reviewing the theoretical and empirical connections between HRD and employee engagement. Next, we discuss evidence that common engagement practices are not yielding strong results and evaluate gaps in research on effective engagement practices. We propose that additional linkages between HRD and engagement can address these gaps and inform a more scientifically robust and practical approach to enhancing engagement in real-world organizations. We then present a case study from one of the largest research universities in the United States to illustrate and test these ideas.
Theoretical Background
The concept of employee engagement began to appear in the organizational and business literature around two decades ago and started to gain prominence in HRD research within the last decade (Shuck and Rocco, 2014). Two theoretical frameworks serve as important conceptual foundations that undergird much of the existing research on engagement: Kahn’s (1990, 1992) theory of the psychological conditions of engagement and the Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) model. First, Kahn (1990) defined engagement as the “harnessing of organization members’ selves to their work roles” (p.694). When engaged, employees “employ and express themselves physically, cognitively, and emotionally during role performance” (Kahn, 1990, p.694). Kahn’s (1990) framework emphasizes the interplay between a person’s individual, group, and organizational contexts, and postulates that one’s psychological experience strongly influences their attitudes and behaviors. In essence, Kahn (1990) identified three main psychological conditions – meaningfulness, safety, and availability – as essential to driving a person’s engagement level.
The second approach, the JD-R model, postulates that job burnout and engagement are influenced by two specific sets of work conditions: job demands and job resources (Schaufeli, Bakker, and van Rhenen, 2009). Job demands are the “things that have to be done” and refer to the aspects of job that require “sustained physical and/or psychological effort” by the employees and therefore may lead to certain “physiological and/or psychological costs” (Schaufeli and Bakker, 2004, p.296). Job resources, on the other hand, refer to all aspects of the job that reduce job demands and their associated costs, that are essential toward achieving work-related goals, and that can enhance an individual’s growth, learning, and development (Schaufeli and Bakker, 2004). Job resources may include things such as physical resources, performance feedback, supervisor and co-worker support, and supervisory coaching.
Existing research has shown that engagement significantly predicts various important outcomes such as organizational citizenship behavior, discretionary effort, commitment, performance, and retention (Macey and Schneider, 2008; Saks, 2006; Rurkkhum and Bartlett, 2012; Wollard and Shuck, 2011). Given these documented benefits, the growth in the number and expenditure of employee engagement initiatives is noted as a key organizational trend (Alfes and Leloglu, 2014; Macey and Schneider, 2008; Shuck, Rocco, and Albornoz, 2011).
Employee engagement surveys have become a common practice in the business world, with an array of validated, well-established instruments and measurement approaches. At the same time, however, there is skepticism evident among practitioners and business leaders in the effectiveness of current engagement practices. Examples of this skepticism can be seen in popular business publications such as Forbes (Bersin, 2014), Fast Company (Crowly, 2013), and Business Week (Ryan, 2012) as well as in recent HRD research (Sambrook, Jones, and Doloriert, 2014). Furthermore, despite a growing emphasis on engagement in many U.S. organizations, data show that the engagement levels have remained largely static over the past decade (Gallup, 2013). Data from Europe has suggested that levels of engagement increased only slightly between 2009 and 2013, after dropping in 2010 and 2011 (Aon Hewitt, 2014).
Framed in OD theory and research, this paper aims to provide an in-depth investigation of an organization-wide employee engagement intervention within a large research university. An OD intervention refers to a series of activities, actions, and events aimed at improving organizational performance and effectiveness (Cummings and Worley, 2009). McLean (2006) contended that an organization-wide survey is in itself a vital OD intervention. Furthermore, incorporating aspects of core OD values and philosophy requires the incorporation of employee input and participation in survey design as well as in analyzing the data and providing feedback (McLean, 2006). If the organization fails to utilize the information it has obtained from the survey or fails to meet the expectations of the employees, employee morale is likely to decrease (McLean, 2006). Thus, this whole “survey-feedback-planning-implementation process” is a very important intervention for OD professionals (McLean, 2006, p.255). However, there are few studies that track the development and implementation process of employment engagement surveys in organizations
Methodology
The case study has been a common research method in many social science disciplines, including psychology, sociology, political science, education, and HRD (Yin, 2014). The case study is particularly effective for research that aims at understanding complex phenomena and generating new or novel ideas on topics or contexts that are relatively underexplored (Clarke, 2006; Yin, 2014). The case study methodology enables the researchers to focus on a “case” and obtain a “holistic and real-world perspective” (Yin, 2014, p.4). This approach, therefore, is considered to be very useful and appropriate in this instance, as the aim of this research is to enhance our understanding of an employee engagement initiative at a large research university.
One of the major strengths of case study data collection is the opportunity to utilize different sources of evidence (Yin, 2014). Moreover, case studies using multiple sources of evidence tend to be rated more favorably in terms of overall quality and rigor than those that use single sources of evidence (Yin, 2014). Data collection for this study was undertaken through a triangulation of multiple sources of evidence (Yin, 2014), specifically a university-wide engagement survey, interviews and conversations with academic leaders, staff, and faculty, as well as reports at the departmental and university levels.
Structured interviews were conducted with a variety of key stakeholders, including several senior academic and administrative leaders. These interviews focused on understanding how faculty and staff experience engagement, identifying factors that enhance engagement, and describing common barriers or obstacles to engagement. Based on these interviews as well as a review of the scientific research on engagement and organizational effectiveness, a 33-item engagement survey was developed. The survey, which included faculty and staff versions, consisted of 33 items and two open-ended questions measuring employee engagement and a number of factors shown to influence engagement (e.g., respect, recognition, open communication, perceptions of leadership). Finally, reports were created and shared with departments and units that had at least 10 faculty or staff responses. These reports included unit-specific results along with benchmarks comparing responses to each item with the broader unit (e.g., a department’s report would include the college-level benchmark) as well the campus and total university.
Context of Organization Development Initiative
The context of this engagement initiative is a comprehensive research university, which employs more than 25,000 people across five system-campuses. One of the campuses is one of the largest and most comprehensive research universities in the United States and includes 18 colleges and professional schools. Nearly 4,000 faculty and 19,000 staff work at this campus, which has more than 30,000 undergraduates and nearly 17,000 graduate and professional students.. The employee engagement initiative was developed and implemented for faculty and staff across all five system-campuses.
Discussion
Our discussion is divided into four sections: (a) the organizational context for the engagement initiative, (b) the process of designing an engagement survey for higher education, (c) the survey reports, and (d) the next steps and action plans based on the results of the initiative.