Abstract:
Work engagement has received a great body of research in recent years. Consequently, identifying the antecedents and outcomes of this phenomenon is regarded as important research topics. This paper investigates the association of work engagement and proficiency. Proficiency has been studied as an antecedent of work engagement in this article. The suggested relation was examined in a sample of 395 employees in four public organizations in Iran. The finding indicates that there is a positive and significant relationship between work engagement and proficiency. Moreover, only one of the subscales of proficiency (organization member proficiency) could predict the variance of work engagement.
Machine summary:
Work engagement is a positive state of mind on-the-job that is not a temporary state and do not focuses on any specific individual, or behavior and is presented by three subscales: vigor, dedication, and absorption (Schaufeli, Salanova, González-Romá, & Bakker, 2002).
Hence, it has received a sharp interest in the literature lately and this study is to determine work engagement and suggest a potential driver of this phenomenon which is an important issue(Rothmann & Rothmann Jr, 2010).
One possible driver is proficiency that consist of individual task proficiency, team member proficiency, and organization member proficiency that is related to derivers of work engagement such as social support from colleagues and supervisors and skill variety (Bakker & Demerouti, 2008).
Job resources and personal resources are positively related to work engagement (Christian, Garza, & Slaughter, 2011).
This paper suggests proficiency as a job resource that helps employees be more engaged and efficient at work.
Our main hypothesis is suggested as follows: Proficiency is positively related to work engagement.
48** Table 5 indicates that there is a significant relationship between work engagement and proficiency (r=.
Moreover, proficiency was related to work engagement subscales in a significant level.
It was concluded that work engagement and proficiency had positive and significant relationship together.
In this case, our research finding is in consistent with Gorgievski, Bakker, and Schaufeli (2010) that found a positive relationship between work engagement and task performance.
Nevertheless, team member proficiency and organization member proficiency could not predict work engagement in a significant level.