Motivation and engagement at work (part 2)

8 min readJun 8, 2021

☞ To read the first part of this article, find out more about motivation at work, and learn about a great Mousse au Chocolat recipe… click here.

Part 2: The journey to Engagement

Engagement shares similarities with motivation but is fundamentally different. The literature on engagement isn’t as prolific as what we can find on motivation, but it has become a very hot topic and is now widely discussed and measured. After looking at the old and recent models of engagement, it appears to me that engagement has slowly transformed into… a ratatouille. Everyone has a different recipe for it, nobody agrees on what it should be made of, but somehow we all know what it looks like 😅.

The Components Model of Commitment

We constantly talk about engagement but it’s actually the term commitment that was more widely studied. They don’t exactly mean the same thing and authors have suggested a core difference between them: commitment would refer to attitudes, while engagement would be linked to the way people act. Some even suggest that commitment has a wider meaning and includes engagement as one of its pieces, alongside loyalty and identification.

💡 In this perspective, studying the theories and models of commitment will also inform us about engagement.

The dominant model of organizational commitment came from Meyer and Allen with their Components Model of Commitment. They intended to study what drives employees' commitment and their work has been extensively used by researchers to predict key employee outcomes, like turnover, performance, or even absenteeism. Meyer and Allen suggest that commitment is an attitude experienced by employees on three different dimensions (not all necessarily at the same level of intensity):

Normative commitment: it refers to the sense of obligation to stay, it’s a form of moral commitment. The driver to stay here is the sense of “duty” that an employee will have developed. Researchers found that employees tend to have a high normative commitment when their company invests a lot of time and money in training and developing them. Here’s what normative commitment looks like when I approach people on LinkedIn:

Affective commitment: it’s the emotional attachment employees have to their job or company, when they identify with the company and genuinely want to stay. Meyer and Allen have linked affective commitment to lower absenteeism and turnover, and better workplace behavior. If you’re lucky enough to work in a company with great culture and amazing colleagues, you surely have a high affective commitment like this person:

Continuance commitment: it alludes to the fear of loss, when someone weighs up the pros and cons of leaving their company. According to Meyer and Allen, employees who perceive that they have many employment alternatives may display a weak continuance commitment and vice versa. Since the beginning of the covid pandemic, I’ve seen more and more examples of high continuance commitment when headhunting:

Thévenet and the conditions to commitment

You might identify some of the drivers that make you stick to your company while reading Meyer and Allen’s model? Their work has been largely accepted and used, however, some argued it was incomplete and suggested adopting an enhanced model. One example is the approach put forward by Thévenet, a french pal 🇫🇷. He agrees that commitment is a multiform concept, but he considers that it has more components than the three suggested by Meyer and Allen. Thévenet suggests that commitment is explained by, but not limited to:

Work value: it refers to how much employees value working in the same way they value other activities or more personal aspects of their lives, which drives their organizational commitment. Some old-farts would argue that younger generations are increasingly less work-oriented… but the truth is, many people are driven by the value they place into work.
Immediate environment: we’re talking about how employees value their working environment, the office, the dog-friendly policy, their team, etc. Having comfortable conditions can be an important driver to commitment and impact the attitude employees have towards their company.
Product or activity: it’s when employees value their company’s product or activity. It could be explained by a lifelong dream fulfillment — like working in the video games industry, the social status that comes with working for a renowned company, or simply because it’s in sync with their personal beliefs.
Role: it refers to the attachment employees have to their job and what it represents to them. There’s a sense of proudness that will drive employees' commitment. I’m sure you can think of people you know who are passionate about their job and area of expertise, like doctors, teachers (or recruiters 🙋‍♀️).
Company: it points out how strongly employees endorse their company’s goals and values and develop a feeling of belonging and pride. It refers to how much employees can feel attached to the culture and values of their workplace.

This approach focuses a lot on the affective side of commitment and doesn’t mention the idea of continuance commitment (fear of loss), which is a bit of a shame. But the one thing I really like about Thévenet’s approach is that he describes commitment as a personal journey. He argues that commitment can only come from within, hence its complexity. He believes that companies can’t directly impact employees' commitment, they can only create the right conditions for commitment.

He suggests three conditions for organizational commitment:

Consistency: employees need to understand the company strategy, and they need to receive consistent signals from top management about it.
Reciprocity: employees need to receive signs and evidence of the company’s commitment toward them.
Appropriation: employees need to have a sense of belonging, they need to be given enough room to make the company’s culture their own.

💡 If you want to influence your employees commitment, you should start by ensuring that these three conditions are met according to Thévenet.

Modern view of engagement

The models offered by Meyer and Allen, and then Thévenet, give us great foundations to understand what drives commitment in the workplace. Yet… we don’t talk much about commitment these days, so let’s focus on engagement. Despite the difference suggested in the literature, engagement has become a one-size-fits-all concept that is used to refer to both concepts. A great example is the definition of engagement suggested by Culture Amp:

“Employee engagement represents the levels of enthusiasm and connection employees have with their organization. It’s a measure of how motivated people are to put in extra effort for their organization, and a sign of how committed they are to staying there”.

We have a mix of commitment (attitude “of enthusiasm and connection”), engagement (action “to put in extra effort”), and motivation in this definition. And while it doesn’t necessarily match with the traditional models of these three concepts… it offers a pretty holistic vision and incorporates everything we should care about and measure. I like Culture Amp’s definition because it’s short, easy to understand, and most importantly it gives everyone (HR, people leaders, and employees) a common baseline for talking about these immensely important topics.

I’m not sure how Maslow, Adams, Thévenet, and the others would feel about this definition though… Probably the same way as my dad when I describe a roman catholic gothic cathedral from the 13th century as an “old church”. The ones who really know their shit will always be annoyed by generic terms, but I feel like Culture Amp is actually working to join the two worlds. If you want to build an expertise on motivation and engagement, you should study the likes of Maslow, otherwise, a generic approach is more than enough.

Conclusion on motivation and engagement

Motivation and engagement at work have a clear impact on how people experience their work. They are similar in a way: both are not personality traits, both impact our behavior in the workplace and influence how we feel about our job and company. However, they don’t evolve on the same time scale, that’s one of their core differences. Motivation can be influenced directly by external factors and it can vary strongly and rapidly over time, whereas engagement is tied to our personal history and values, so it’s rather independent of external factors, and more stable over time.

Engagement can be influenced by long-term initiatives if the right conditions are present. For example, working on your Employee Value Proposition can create a great platform for engagement, because it will nourish the appropriation condition of commitment. Motivation can be approached with both long-term (using the right goal-setting method) and short-term initiatives (organizing team events to celebrate big wins). But they should never be taken for granted. Motivation and engagement move when employees join and leave, and with unexpected external events — like covid.

Managing motivation and engagement at work should be a duty shared between executive and HR teams, and also people leaders. That’s why companies must invest in their leaders, put leadership programs in place, and provide them with ongoing coaching. No matter what well-thought-out measures about motivation and engagement are launched, people leaders are the ones responsible to give them life…

Final thoughts. If you want to remember the difference between motivation and engagement, think of a relationship: motivation explains the daily ups and downs, and engagement informs the overall relationship journey. I’m always happy when my partner surprises me with a chocolate muffin. It represents a strong short-term motivation to share my life with him. However, there are other fundamental conditions for me to feel engaged and committed to my relationship with him, starting with honesty, respect, and kindness 🥰.