Laura Rowley Money & Happiness

How can you make work more engaging?

A new study by consulting firm Towers Perrin found that just 21 percent of employees feel engaged in the workplace. Another 38 percent were either wholly or partly disengaged -- meaning they were doing just the minimum to get by, or may not know the right things to do to add value to the company.

Engaging Engagement

Towers Perrin defines the engaged worker is someone who "connects with a company emotionally, understands what they need to do to add value, and is willing to put in the extra effort," says managing director Julie Gebauer. "It's the connection between the company and an individual's head, heart, and hands." Some 90,000 workers in 18 countries responded to the 100-question survey.

The key factor in engagement is a company's senior leadership, Gebauer notes. Engaged workers said their employers were sincerely interested in their well-being; acted in a socially responsible way; provided opportunities to learn and grow in the job; and were responsive to customers' concerns.

But where does that leave workers with less than inspiring leaders? What can individuals do to make a day in the trenches more engaging and fulfilling? I asked some leading researchers for insight.

Maximizing Flow

Psychologist and author Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced "chick-SENT-mee-hi"), director of the Quality of Life Research Center at Claremont Graduate University in California, has spent a half-century studying creativity and happiness. He coined the term "flow" -- the phenomenon that occurs when someone is so deeply immersed in a challenging activity he forgets the passage of time.

In a study of 20 different occupations, Csikszentmihalyi found that workers spent less than a quarter of their day on flow-producing tasks. "The rest of the time was spent on things they needed to do to prepare to do the work they like," he says. "What happens is you are chomping at the bit, because you are not doing what you like to do."

In his book "Good Business: Leadership, Flow, and the Making of Meaning," Csikszentmihalyi suggests workers closely track each step involved in the workday and ask these questions: Is this step necessary? Can it be done faster or more efficiently? Can I delegate it, and spend time on something that makes my contribution more valuable? He advises to match your skills to the challenges; figure out how to get training or help if you're overwhelmed; or transform the task by breaking it into smaller parts.

Hard Work Doesn't Hurt

On the job, you need to "take control of your own psychic energy, of your attention; screen out the distractions or the conflicts," Csikszentmihalyi told me. Establish priorities among the numerous demands of the job using a to-do list or flowchart.

You may also want to redouble your efforts. "Most people say the smart thing is to do a job with as little thinking and effort as possible, to cut corners," Csikszentmihalyi says. "But if that's the attitude you take you'll get bored and frustrated.

"It's kind of counter-intuitive, because it means working harder is what makes you feel good. But after a while it doesn't feel like working hard -- it feels the same as an athlete trying to beat the record."

Meaning Makes the Job

Another strategy to boost engagement is to reframe work so it has more meaning. Amy Wrzesniewski, associate professor of organizational behavior at the Yale School of Management, has found the highest levels of engagement among employees who view their jobs as a calling -- as opposed to those who are working for a paycheck or career advancement.

"People who see work as a calling generally have significantly higher job and life satisfaction," Wrzesniewski says. "Some findings suggest there are health benefits."

Research by the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center (NORC), for instance, found clergy, firefighters, and physical therapists ranked highest in fulfillment.

"Professions that involve helping, teaching, and mentoring others are the ones that are highest in satisfaction," says Tom W. Smith, director of the General Social Survey at NORC. "Researchers who have done in-depth studies of clergy say it is not only the actual practice, but that they see themselves as doing God's work."

Crafting Meaningful Work

But a sense of calling can occur in low-skill, low-status professions as well. Along with University of Michigan researchers Jane Dutton and Gelaye Debebe, Wrzesniewski studied hospital cleaning staff. "We found some people who were incredibly engaged and find it deeply meaningful," Wrzesniewski says. "They see their work as very important to the healing of patients."

People who viewed this work as a calling performed different tasks than their peers, even though their jobs are closely supervised and constrained in terms of power and status. "They notice patients who seem to be upset as they are in the room cleaning, and will finish their work and double-back to have a conversation," says Wrzesniewski. "They will pay attention to what's happening with the monitors of cardiac patients, and pick up on things that they think need to be passed along to the medical staff."

Researchers call this "job crafting" -- taking liberties on the boundaries of tasks and relationships to instill more meaning in work. "If you are not engaged, think about something you could be doing differently so you can change the meaning of the work," says Wrzesniewski.

Focus on Who Benefits

Look to the beneficiaries of your work for inspiration in making work meaningful. Adam Grant, assistant professor of organizational behavior at the University of North Carolina, did an experiment with student telemarketers who were paid to seek donations from alumni.

One group of workers was given testimonials from students who had benefited from the fundraising. Workers exposed to these essays subsequently raised more money than a control group, according to the paper, which is forthcoming in the Journal of Applied Psychology.

The Towers Perrin study confirmed this effect: Among engaged workers, 80 percent said they can and do contribute to the quality of products and services and to customer satisfaction. Only half as many of the disengaged workers share that view. "Even a trash collector can see what they are doing as beautifying the community or making the world work," says Wrzesniewski. "Without that job, the health of the community would suffer. It's crucial work, and everyone is the beneficiary."

Be Yourself, Be Engaged

If you can't connect with beneficiaries, think about the last environment in which you felt you could truly be yourself and look for a similar work setting. People who experience work as an extension of their identity are more likely to be engaged, says Suzanne Coshow, a Ph.D. and researcher with Press Ganey, an Indiana-based firm that works with health care organizations to improve service quality.

Coshow conducted studies of 190,000 workers at 300 health care facilities. Employees who reveal their true selves rather than playing a role are more involved, more connected, try harder or give more while carrying out work-related tasks, she found.

"It's a meshing of true self and work self," says Coshow. These employees typically work in a supportive social setting, where they're comfortable taking risks and speaking up.

Meanwhile, revealing your true self at work means you're more likely to make true friends -- an important component in engagement. The Gallup Organization, which has studied engagement since 1970, found that 82 percent of engaged employees say that their organization "encourages close friendships at work," compared to 53 percent of those who are not engaged and 17 percent of what Gallup calls "actively disengaged" workers.

Engagement and the Bottom Line

The bottom line? Smart companies know engaged workers bring home the bacon.

Towers Perrin did an analysis of 40 global companies looking at financial results against engagement data. It found that firms with the highest percentage of engaged employees collectively increased operating income 19 percent and earnings per share 28 percent year-to-year. Companies with the lowest percentage of engaged employees showed year-to-year declines of 33 percent in operating income and 11 percent in earnings per share.

"We measured engagement first, and then looked at financial performance in the ensuing thirty-six months," says Gebauer. The most successful companies "don't assume [employees] are interchangeable cogs, that if one breaks you can go out and buy another one. They focus on the development of their people."

For more on engagement, happiness, and success at work, see my blog.