A few years ago, I wrote a post titled “Happy Employees are not Engaged Employees.” It remains a very popular post. I received a note about it the other day.
I would say employees with a sense of purpose are most productive. Is this the same as engagement (therefore the employee is motivated)?
It’s a great question that really made me think. So I wanted to see if I could logically work through this. We have a tendency to toss these words around interchangeably at times. My first step was to search for definitions. I found a really good post over at Pick the Brain on the difference between passion and purpose. Passion is what excites a person. Purpose is your reason for being. Our ultimate goal should be to live out our purpose while following our passion.
When it comes to what makes us our most productive, it seems to me that we need both passion and purpose. For example, I can have a strong purpose but I need passion to make it a reality. And I can have tremendous passion, but if I haven’t clearly defined my purpose, I could struggle. It seems logical that if you’re doing work that doesn’t align with your passion and purpose, you probably won’t be super productive at it.
However, I can also see how an employee could have passion and purpose but not be doing the work they want to do…and therefore, not be very productive. So in order to be productive, an employee needs passion and purpose. But having passion and purpose doesn’t automatically make someone productive.
Which leads to the second part of the question. If employees have passion and purpose, are they automatically engaged? Now before we get too far into the discussion, I must say that I believe employee motivation and employee engagement are different.
Employee motivation is defined as the level of energy, commitment, and creativity that a person brings to their job.
Employee engagement is the extent to which employees feel passionate about their jobs, committed to the organization, and put discretionary effort into their work.
I feel motivation is necessary for employees to be engaged. I can see how it takes passion and purpose to be motivated. And being motivated creates engagement. But I wonder if that middle step is necessary – meaning that motivation is passion and purpose applied to our jobs. How do we show others that we have passion and purpose? By being motivated, right?
I’m sure you can see that the challenge with this question is that these concepts are difficult to define. Even when we look up their definitions in the dictionary, it is a challenge to understand how all the parts fit together. And if we can’t create a universally recognized model, how can we expect organizations and managers to be able to hire employees who have a passion and purpose that align with the company’s?
Organizations should spend some dedicated time understanding what these terms mean to them. And how they work in their organizational culture. Make sure that everyone knows what they mean. Because at the point everyone can define them, then they can create strategies to address them.
Image taken by Sharlyn Lauby just off the Wynwood District in Miami, FL
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Carl Eacott says
Thought provoking post, thanks for sharing. Yet, the types of questions you pose (which are really valid) have been discussed in the scientific literature for years and years!
Engagement does fit in with other theories of motivation; as it is a motivational state (but typically seen as an outcome and stays here even though it shouldn’t, it should go as far as performance but rarely it does). You are right in highlighting the overlap amongst motivation and engagement.
The consensus (amongst the theoretical and empirical research) is that Engagement is a type of compound psychological construct. In that, it is made up of constituent constructs that have always been around – there’s this idea of construct mixology (combining old constructs into a new compound construct which intends to overcome any theoretical drawbacks and tends to explain/predict more variance of employee performance). Engagement is a mix of job satisfaction, organisational commitment, job involvement & affect.
It’s a motivational ‘concept’, but relates to the intensity and persistence with individuals pursue performance (Christian et al., 2011). So these ideas of investing energy in ones work role, peoples willingness to expand discretionary effort to help others in the organisation that perhaps isn’t required of their formal role.
Motivation, on the other hand, from a self-determination point of view (one of many motivational theories, but this one is most researched in HR & management settings) is understood on a continuum; being a-motivated (not motivated at all; big issues for organisation & other workers), extrinsically motivated (influenced by external rewards) and intrinsic motivation (influenced by internal aspects of the task).
The theory and empirical support tends to show that intrinsic motivation is present when we can satisfy or fulfil out three basic psychological needs; our need for relatedness, competence and autonomy.
Similar to your definition, ‘purpose’, like a call for greater meaning, can be understood within this, too. Our need to feel a sense of competence over something – perhaps towards our purpose?
One who is ‘motivated’ is likely to be engaged in their work, but isn’t it plausible also for those that become engaged in their work, become motivated? 😉
For instance, Engagement could explain why people stay motivated and commit to their goals, or alternatively, goal-setting (another prominent theory of explaining fundamental motivational behaviour) could lead to engagement.
From my background in Organisational Psychology, motivation tends to be seen as more of an antecedent, whereas engagement is seen as more of an outcome, or a desirable state for employees to be in (due to the amount of research and hype around the construct and its links with productivity – despite their being not much robust evidence to support ‘when you increase employee engagement, performance increases in turn (following say, an engagement strategy). Unfortunately there is still the gap to bridge between research and practice.
Behaviour is and never will be simple enough to understand – especially only relying on dictionary definitions! 🙂