Presentation of my thesis research in which I behaviorally defined coworker support, developed a measure, and demonstrated its relationship to employee engagement
4. RESEARCH QUESTIONS
What is CDS?
What are the behaviors that comprise CDS?
Does it reflect two distinct factors?
Does it Matter?
Is it related to engagement?
Does it depend on whether a person is
relationship-oriented or not?
4
14. ADDITIONAL FINDINGS
Differentiated
Coworker Support
Affective
Instrumental
Coworker Support
mostly instrumental
But always with
emotional impact
Literature Review Interviews
14
15. PHASE II: SURVEY - CONTENT
Screening Questions
U.S. Based
At least one year
Coworkers
CDS Questions
Relationship Orientation (RO)
Engagement
15
16. PHASE II: SURVEY - SAMPLE
133 Respondents
Mostly private/for-profit
Across industries
Across occupations
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17. PHASE II: SURVEY - RESULTS
What is CDS?
Finalize behaviors
One factor or two?
Is it related to Work
Engagement?
Does Relationship-Orientation
moderate the CDS-Engagement
relationship?
17
19. SURVEY RESULTS: THE SO-SO NEWS
Testing the Model (CFA)
Factor loadings were appropriate in either model
Model fit indices fell just short
Affective and Instrumental factors correlated .88
Two-Factor Model
One-Factor Model
CDS
Affective
Item 1 Item 2 Item 3 Item 4
Instrumental
Item 5 Item 6 Item 7 Item 8
CDS
Item 1 Item 2 Item 3 Item 4 Item 5 Item 6 Item 7 Etc.
19
21. SURVEY RESULTS: THE GOOD NEWS
CDS & Engagement
are positively
correlated
.566 (p < .001)
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22. SURVEY RESULTS: THE INTERESTING NEWS
Relationship Orientation did not impact the CDS-
Engagement relationship
+
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23. LIMITATIONS
Interviews framed around CDS
Small sample size
Ignored other variables related to
engagement
Survey method
Self report
Single point in time
23
24. FUTURE DIRECTIONS
Collect more data
Examine CDS – Engagement with other
variables
Look for direct relationships between CDS
and other outcomes
Reciprocal effects
Increased performance outcomes
Solutions for leadership
24
25. TO RECAP
I Developed a Reliable and Behaviorally Based
Measure of CDS
CDS showed a Significant, Positive Relationship to
Engagement
How Relationship Oriented Employees are Does
NOT Appear to Impact the CDS - Engagement
Relationship
25
26. LEADERSHIP: WHERE DO WE GO FROM
HERE?
26
CDS Matters, so Pay
Attention
Measure and Model it
I’ve been interested in employee engagement for a long time, and last summer, when I was trying to narrow down my topic, a couple of things happened:
Interview with Bob Hogan about who is responsible for engagement: Manager? Team member? And he said, everyone
Then, I coworker called me up very upset about feedback she got from a peer.
I was appalled. I thought, how rude! The person who gave that feedback should be reprimanded.
In my experience, the people I work with make all the difference.
There have been times, even when I love what I do, that I’m ready to move to the beach and sell flip flops. But my coworkers have pulled me through – I spend more time with coworkers than with my boss or my clients,so to the extent that we can, I big believer in pitching in when you can.
But I’m a Hufflepuff. Help when it’s needed. Is it just me? My personality quirk? Is it important to other employees? Should leaders be paying attention to this idea?
So I decided to study it.
I didn’t want to study toxic coworkers or coworker incivility. I wanted to focus on the positive.
First, what this is about: Coworker discretionary support is the support your colleagues provide that they aren’t required to.
Example: IT person fixing your computer versus helping you carry a large box of materials to the conference room.
What it isn’t about. It’s not about having friends at work, although that’s often an important part of workplace wellbeing
What I found in the literature:
There’s quite a bit about social support in occupational health and it’s primarily divided into two categories, affective support (emotional) and instrumental support (task oriented)
It might be an “ENGAGEMENT ENABLER” important because it is:
A Job Resource: Meet challenges and hindrances – Talk JOB DEMANDS RESOURCES
Contributor to Psychological well being – trusting coworkers
Is the Work meaningful? What is the ROI
Is it safe for me to be myself? (guarantees?)
How available am I? Being able to devote personal resources toward accomplishing work in spite of demands (esp. hindrances) and distractions
(c) Intrinsic motivator – there are “motivators” and “satisfiers” Motivators increase engagement to the work whereas “satisfiers” such as pay or compensation, replace engagement in the work.
But, in engagement studies: How it’s measured: Very inadequately. An item or two; conflated with supervisor support, asks people to make inferences about “valued and supported” and it is not the primary focus of any engagement study I could find.
I used a mixed method approach, including:
Literature review
Interviews
Survey
Phase I:
Identified CDS behaviors and gathered information about the meaning of CDS through:
Lit review
Interviews collecting “critical incidents” – examples of CDS
Developed a questionnaire
Phase II:
Administered a survey asking people to rate the extent to which they:
Experienced CDS
Were engaged
Their level of relationship orientation
Analyzed survey results
Assess reliability and underlying structure of the CDS questionnaire
Evaluate relationship between CDS and Engagement
Evaluate whether or not relationship-orientation moderated the relationship
Searched for articles related to work engagement
Social support
Organizational citizenship behavior
Collected examples of coworker support, perceptions of coworkers (e.g., “ feel supported by my coworkers”), organizational citizenship behaviors that were directed to individuals.
Categorized 80 examples from 20+ studies
Interviewed 12 subjects representing:
Commercial
Non-Profit
Government
Military
They provided 16 examples of CDS and we talked about what they felt or valued about those examples specifically
And then about Coworker support in general: Did it matter? Is it something they want, need, find burdensome…?
HP: Brainstorming and planning
Helping plan a project, develop an approach to work, or letting an employee test out an idea or presentation
From the literature:
Affective – or emotionally related support: Empathy and encouragement, Sacrificing time
Instrumental – or task/performance related support: Help perform tasks to meet deadlines, share resources, provide advice and guidance
Instrumental
2 Brainstorming on a work process or product
7 Performing a task for Interviewee
3 Providing job-related resources of information
Affective
2 Providing sympathy or encouragement during a challenging work event
Instrumental and Affective
1 Advocating to a supervisor on behalf of Subject
1 Providing sympathy and resources for dealing with a challenging life event
DWP: Mentoring, Providing resources, to help the recipient learn how to do something, to do it better, to enhance credibility, and/or skills
From the literature:
Affective – or emotionally related support: Empathy and encouragement, Sacrificing time
Instrumental – or task/performance related support: Help perform tasks to meet deadlines, share resources, provide advice and guidance
Instrumental
2 Brainstorming on a work process or product
7 Performing a task for Interviewee
3 Providing job-related resources of information
Affective
2 Providing sympathy or encouragement during a challenging work event
Instrumental and Affective
1 Advocating to a supervisor on behalf of Subject
1 Providing sympathy and resources for dealing with a challenging life event
OS: Providing Empathy, sympathy, encouragement, and acknowledgement of personal and professional events
Affective – or emotionally related support: Empathy and encouragement, Sacrificing time empathizing
Instrumental
2 Brainstorming on a work process or product
7 Performing a task for Interviewee
3 Providing job-related resources of information
Affective
2 Providing sympathy or encouragement during a challenging work event
Instrumental and Affective
1 Advocating to a supervisor on behalf of Subject
1 Providing sympathy and resources for dealing with a challenging life event
LOTR: Helping you complete a task that you couldn’t otherwise get done because it’s so challenging or time consuming. Either helping do them, or creating a process or product that makes it easier for the employee to accomplish something.
Advocating for the employee to others in the organization
Instrumental – or task/performance related support: Help perform tasks to meet deadlines, share resources, provide advice and guidance
Instrumental
2 Brainstorming on a work process or product
7 Performing a task for Interviewee
3 Providing job-related resources of information
Affective
2 Providing sympathy or encouragement during a challenging work event
Instrumental and Affective
1 Advocating to a supervisor on behalf of Subject
1 Providing sympathy and resources for dealing with a challenging life event
Specifically
Grateful – they don’t have to do that!
Relieved – takes the pressure off; focus on what I need to be doing; don’t have to worry about my job
Obligated – guilty, need to reciprocate
“I bake them cupcakes because you better believe I want to encourage them to keep it up!”
“I don’t like feeling obligated, but I do things for them, too.”
“It does make it feel like we’re one team, not a bunch of different departments.”
“It makes me feel like I can be myself.”
Generally
Critical – must have – I look for in a job - must be in a collegial environment
Unnecessary – don’t really notice or care. Nice, but not something I think about
Depends – if I have a terrible boss or a difficult coworker, I need some other support network.
Depends: If I am having a problem with other coworkers, or my boss, or there’s an unusual stressor.
To some people, it’s the same thing
“It’s about having friends at work.”
To
“I don’t need to be all buddy-buddy, but we need to be able to work well together to get the job done.”
others, it’s about getting the job done.
So, there were certainly examples of what I thought of, and what was described in the literature as affective and instrumental types of support. But, all of them provide some instrumental help and all of them had some affective impact. That is, helping production – performing concrete tasks, reduced pressure and eased stress; created a welcoming or “safe” environment. People who described affective support usually described some additional instrumental support.
Negatives: Some feelings of guilt and obligation, which manifested itself into reciprocation.
Northouse: Developed for leadership but successfully used for the general population
There are really two scales – RO and TO. I was only interested in RO, but used the intact measure so it wasn’t “too” obvious what I was getting at.
UTRECHT: 9 items assessing vigor, dedication, and absorption
Original N=Over 160, dropping all records with some missing data, dropping a record where the person made the same rating for every value. Came out to 133.
Asked a couple background questions drawn from the Bureau of labor statistics to get an idea of the variety work experience of respondents.
Org type: 105 commercial, 15 non-profit, 5 educational institutions, 8 gov’t employees
16 different Industries: largest representation from Hospitality, Wholesale and retail, education, recreation, healthcare, IT, manufacturing, social sciences, real estate
20+ different occupations, top represented were sales, education/training, management, administrative, healthcare, marketing, measurement
Mixed bag: Some of the results were not so good – or at least, hard to interpret, some were great, and some were interesting
CFA,
Analyzes item response patterns and accounts for shared variance and unique variance of item responses. These two items didn’t “hang together” with the other items and didn’t “load” or “hang on to” the main construct – CDS. So I dropped them.
Cover when coworkers have to be absent: Maybe it’s not discretionary
Personal (non-work) favors: maybe not well specified: Helping me move or dog sitting versus running statistical analysis to help me with my thesis
I ran a correlation matrix to see how the items related to each other
I conducted a confirmatory factor analysis to test out my two-factor versus one-factor theories
One thing was for sure, regardless of the model, these two items did not fit in with the others. So I got rid of them.
Cover when coworkers have to be absent: Maybe it’s not discretionary
Personal (non-work) favors: maybe not well specified: Helping me move or dog sitting versus running statistical analysis to help me with my thesis
Model Two types of fit indices:
Absolute Fit: Compares the theory to the data
Compares the model to a hypothesized model in which all variables are uncorrelated.
Absolute: Chi Square (shouldn’t be significant) & RMSEA: (should be <.10) but were significant and .12 (Root mean square error of approximation)
Comparative: CFI & NFI (>.95/.90) but were .906 and .866 respectively. (Normed fit and comparative fit)
The two-factor model had better fit indices, but neither model met any fit index threshold, I had to decide which way to go.
So, since:
Each CDS item was highly related to the single “CDS” factor
The questionnaire itself had high reliability (.94)
Since affective and instrumental were highly correlated anyway (.88)
Because a single factor accounted for a large amount of variance overall (Parallel analysis, Eigenvalues)
I went with one factor.
Computed the total CDS score.
Proceeded with the analysis.
Reliability = internal consistency
So, this is the final instrument and model I went with. 12 items, one factor.
it had good reliability.
So, since:
Each CDS item was highly related to the single “CDS” factor
The questionnaire itself had high reliability (.94)
Since affective and instrumental were highly correlated anyway (.88)
Because a single factor accounted for a large amount of variance overall (Parallel analysis, Eigenvalues)
I went with one factor.
Computed the total CDS score.
Proceeded with the analysis.
Interviews: could be more of a blind study- ask for behaviors that are supportive and rude
Collecting all information at a single point in time at once – may reflect a more temporal state (mood, recent positive or negative experiences)
I’d like to establish a direction – that receiving CDS predicts engagement
There may be other personality components that moderate the CDS-Engagement relationship
I wanted to include a measure of organizational engagement. I strongly believe that to the extent a leader models and promotes a collegial environment in which coworkers proactively help each other out, employees will be more committed and engaged to their organization. However, I did not examine that in this study.
Does engagement predicts engagement in CDS behavior? A study at a different level of analysis, such as pairs, teams, and/or organizations
And maybe a study that examines the direct relationship between CDS and other outcomes important to organizations, such as performance outcomes (e.g., productivity, customer service)
This is what I did in phase I & II
So what does this mean for leaders?
It’s not just Hufflepuff. Even slytherins benefit from coworker support
The evidence supports CDS as an important factor related to engagement so at least indirectly related to positive work outcomes.
Therefore, leaders should be concerned that their employees are supporting one another.
Benefits: Employees more likely to be engaged
Reciprocal benefits – employees experience CDS, provide CDS, and so forth, possibly increasing exponentially
Measure it and Model it:
Warning: This is not a substitute for good management or sufficient organizational support and resources for employees. But,
If you, as a leader, are concerned about engagement, you can use the tool I’ve created to assess the level of support in your organization. If there is a lack of support in the workplace, it is important to determine the right intervention.
Now, what you should do to promote it, that would be phase III, but I have a couple of suggestions:
There are lots of leadership models out there that have suggestions. Kouzes and Posner, authors of the Leadership Challenge, the primary leadership model we study in the MAOL program, identified five main practices and ten commitments that, employees around the globe, agree leaders should practice.
They specifically talk about how social support has been connected to engagement, psychological well-being, and even physical well being.
Two of these commitments are:
Fostering collaboration
Modeling the way (to build trust, trust first).
Facilitate relationships: Create norms of reciprocity
Maximize benefits of cooperation so that the more people cooperate, the more everyone wins
Get people interacting
Celebrating Values and victories.
Create a spirit of community
Get people interacting – encourage dialogue
Emphasize the power of affiliation (Paj Ann)
Reward collaboration
Celebrate of success
I lived it out, I couldn’t have done this without the help of my coworkers, classmates, and professors and OF COURSE, my family.
