The everyday experiences of personal role engagement:what matters most?

Abstract

Despite increasing interest from the HRD community, little is known about how personal role engagement is experienced in everyday work situations and which factors are most important for facilitating or thwarting such experiences. A total of 124 employees from six U.K. organizations were interviewed about the factors that heighten versus reduce their everyday experiences of the emotional, cognitive, and physical aspects of personal role engagement. Template analysis revealed that task, relational, and organizational resources were the most relevant for heightened personal role engagement whereas relational and organizational hindrances were the most prominent for reduced personal role engagement. There was some variation in the salience of task and personal resources as well as challenge demands across organizational settings. Moreover, resources and demands seemed to influence personal role engagement through the psychological conditions of meaningfulness, availability, and, to some degree, safety. This study is one of the first to qualitatively explore the everyday experience of personal role engagement. In doing so, it provides deeper insight into how an HRD approach to engagement can be further advanced with an appreciation of the situational and organizational context.