Who Are The Most Engaged At Work? A Meta-Analysis Of Personality And Employee Engagement

Keywords

energy management; engagement; meta-analysis; personality; personnel selection

Abstract

In order to identify the employees who are most likely to be engaged in their work, we conducted a meta-analysis of 114 independent samples (N = 44,224) to provide estimates of the relationship between eight personality traits and employee engagement. Results indicated that these personality traits explained 48.10% of the variance in engagement. Supporting energy management theories, relative weights analysis revealed that positive affectivity was by far the strongest predictor of engagement (31.10% of the explained variance; ρ =.62), followed by proactive personality (19.60%; ρ =.49), conscientiousness (14.10%; ρ =.39), and extraversion (12.10%; ρ =.40), whereas neuroticism, negative affectivity, agreeableness, and openness to experience were the least important. We highlight the importance of positive affectivity for engagement and support personality-based selection as a viable means for organizations to build a highly engaged workforce. Implications for using personality assessment to select engaged employees are discussed.

Publication Date

12-1-2018

Publication Title

Journal of Organizational Behavior

Volume

39

Issue

10

Number of Pages

1330-1346

Document Type

Article

Personal Identifier

scopus

DOI Link

https://doi.org/10.1002/job.2303

Socpus ID

85050503535 (Scopus)

Source API URL

https://api.elsevier.com/content/abstract/scopus_id/85050503535

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