Training perceptions, engagement and performance:comparing work engagement and personal role engagement

The purpose of this study was to compare two engagement constructs (work engagement and personal role engagement) with regards to their relationship with training perceptions and work role performance behaviours. It was hypothesised that personal role engagement would show incremental validity above that of work engagement at predicting work role performance behaviours and be a stronger mediator of the relationships between training perceptions and such behaviours. Questionnaire data was gathered from 304 full-time working adults in the UK. As predicted, personal role engagement was found to explain additional variance above that of work engagement for task proficiency, task adaptability, and task proactivity behaviours. Moreover, personal role engagement was a stronger mediator of the relationship between training perceptions and task proficiency as well as between training perceptions and task adaptability. Both work engagement and personal role engagement mediated the relationship between training perceptions and task proactivity to a similar degree. The findings suggest that personal role engagement has better practical utility to the HRD domain than work engagement, and indicates that future research may benefit from adopting the personal role engagement construct

Measuring and understanding employee engagement

Employee engagement has generated interest in many stakeholder groups ranging from academics (e.g. Kahn, 1990; May et al., 2004; Schaufeli et al., 2002), HR practitioners and consultancies (e.g. Harter et al., 2002; Masson et al., 2008), to government policy-makers (e.g. MacLeod, Clarke 2009). As this interest in employee engagement has rapidly increased over the last decade (as highlighted by Wilmar Schaufeli in Chapter 1 of this volume), so has the desire to measure, evaluate, and benchmark levels of engagement within and between organizations. Measurement is powerful, because ‘what gets measured gets attention’ (Eccles, 1991: 131). Performance dashboards, of which the ‘balanced scorecard’ (Kaplan, Norton,1992) is a well-known example, attempt to ensure that all the major factors contributing to an organization’s success are being measured – related to operations, customers, finance and employees. A performance indicator that represents the extent to which employees are engaged can constitute a useful headline measure for the ‘employee’ section of the dashboard or scorecard. However, there has been a lack of a unifying definition or framework (MacLeod, Clarke, 2009; Truss, Mankin and Kelliher, 2012) and so there exists a wide range of ‘employee engagement’ indicators. Therefore, this chapter aims (a) to provide a review of the main ways in which employee engagement has been measured; (b) to give insight into issues that may occur when designing and implementing such measures; and (c) to consider implications in regards to presenting and interpreting engagement scores. Whilst covering academic material, this chapter is designed with the practitioner in mind. Two short case studies illustrating how employee engagement can be measured and evaluated in practice are discussed at the end of this chapter

“Our curriculum needs to be relevant to all young people” : Learning from LGBT+ staff across the education sector

© 2019 National Education Union.This report details findings from a survey conducted by the National Education Union (NEU) of their LGBT+2 members. Dr Joseph Hall, University of Hertfordshire, created the survey and provided preliminary analysis of findings. This informed the development of this report commissioned by the National Education Union (NEU) in June 2022 and produced by Dr Luke Fletcher, Associate Professor at the University of Bath School of Management. Dr Fletcher analysed the data and produced the report in June/July 2022

A model study of enhanced oil recovery by flooding with aqueous surfactant solution and comparison with theory

With the aim of elucidating the details of enhanced oil recovery by surfactant solution flooding, we have determined the detailed behavior of model systems consisting of a packed column of calcium carbonate particles as the porous rock, n-decane as the trapped oil, and aqueous solutions of the anionic surfactant sodium bis(2-ethylhexyl) sulfosuccinate (AOT). The AOT concentration was varied from zero to above the critical aggregation concentration (cac). The salt content of the aqueous solutions was varied to give systems of widely different, post-cac oil–water interfacial tensions. The systems were characterized in detail by measuring the permeability behavior of the packed columns, the adsorption isotherms of AOT from the water to the oil–water interface and to the water–calcium carbonate interface, and oil–water–calcium carbonate contact angles. Measurements of the percent oil recovery by pumping surfactant solutions into calcium carbonate-packed columns initially filled with oil were analyzed in terms of the characterization results. We show that the measured contact angles as a function of AOT concentration are in reasonable agreement with those calculated from values of the surface energy of the calcium carbonate–air surface plus the measured adsorption isotherms. Surfactant adsorption onto the calcium carbonate–water interface causes depletion of its aqueous-phase concentration, and we derive equations which enable the concentration of nonadsorbed surfactant within the packed column to be estimated from measured parameters. The percent oil recovery as a function of the surfactant concentration is determined solely by the oil–water–calcium carbonate contact angle for nonadsorbed surfactant concentrations less than the cac. For surfactant concentrations greater than the cac, additional oil removal occurs by a combination of solubilization and emulsification plus oil mobilization due to the low oil–water interfacial tension and a pumping pressure increase

Songs of the Self:The Importance of Authentic Leadership and Core Self Evaluations for LGBT Managers

Based on authentic leadership (AL) theory and research on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) workplace experiences, we propose that AL explains variance beyond transformational leadership (TL) in attitudinal outcomes for LGBT managers compared to non-LGBT managers. We further predict that core self-evaluations (CSEs) bound relationships between AL, LGBT status, and outcomes.We conducted a time-lagged survey of 193 LGBT and 218 non-LGBT (i.e., heterosexual, cisgender) managers. The first survey assessed respondents’ evaluations of their leadership behavior and CSEs whereas the second survey, conducted one month later, assessed role engagement and career satisfaction.Regression and moderation analyses revealed support for our hypotheses. AL seems especially relevant for LGBT leaders, particularly at low levels of CSEs.Leadership development programmes emphasizing AL could be particularly beneficial for LGBT managers, especially those low in CSEs. Harnessing a leader’s sense of identity could help those who have been marginalized.We propose, explain, and demonstrate that relationships between AL and leader outcomes will likely be different between managers with and without stigmatized identities, in this case those who are (not) LGBT