Do You Have Work Engagement Fatigue?
I got tired of seeing work engagement articles. I thought I “got it”. But now I realize that there’s more to understand. So I’m very engaged in Work Engagement articles now! Here’s my aha:
Nurse engagement leads to authenticity and deep caring connections.
In writing my book, I ran across an explanation of Work Engagement in a critical care research article that referenced the AACN’s The 4A’s to Rise Above Moral Distress, a meta-analysis of > 90 engagement research studies, and the UWES Work Engagement Scale.
Since then — after conferences, more articles and listening to other nurse leaders — I’ve been in a deep dive into nurses’ work engagement.
Connections between nurses’ work engagement and authentic caring :
- Stress undermines nurses’ access to their authenticity and deep caring connections
- Work engagement is the path to authenticity and activation of authentic caring connections
- Nurse work engagement activation requires 2 sources:
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- job resources that mitigate job stress: reduce work barriers and promote professional growth — support, autonomy, mastery
- growth of nurses’ inner resources to navigate personal stressors: self-care and wellness resources
More from UWES Work Engagement resources:
- Engagement is a higher-order construct
- Engagement involves high levels of personal investment in the work tasks performed on a job
- There’s a – psychological connection with the performance of work
- self-investment of personal resources – physical, emotional, cognitive
- involves – emotions toward the work; sense of self; self-expression; psychological presence; moments of all consuming
- holistic investment; experience is simultaneous and holistic; an experience of the work
- it’s an activation; not an attitude towards features of the job or organization mission
- it’s > job satisfaction (not a judgment)
- it’s not about the organization; it’s about the experience of the work
- it’s a holistic investment in the work, an ‘activation’
- Engagement is a positive fulfilling work-related state of mind that is characterized by vigor, dedication and absorption.
- affective cognitive state that is focused on the work
- vigor- high levels of energy and mental resilience; willingness to invest effort in one’s work
- dedication – strongly involved in one’s work and experiencing a sense of significance, etc
- absorption – fully concentrated and engrossed in one’s work ….
Other Work Engagement sources do not describe work engagement as a ‘higher-order construct” – Beware
- Gallup focuses on work conditions & organization mission , not the psychological ‘attachment’ to the work
- The Advisory Board Company developed their own Nurse Engagement Survey?
- Not sure about Press-Ganey. Christina Dempsey (Press-Ganey CNO) presented last week at the AONE conference and talked about engagement activation. Is their work engagement source based on UWES Work Engagement? (Confirmation on source to come).
Surprised?
I suppose that nurses’ work engagement being the path to authenticity is no surprise. But I am intrigued just the same.
Much more to come on Nurses Work Engagement….
ps. Yoga was great.