Employee Engagement During An Organisational Change

Abstract: The changing nature of organisation life becomes more and more intense as organisations are constantly striving to adjust to serve the needs of an ever-changing environment. At the same time, the importance of keeping employees engaged is essential to organisations. The aim of this thesis was to contribute with a deeper understanding of employee engagement during an organisational change process. A deeper insight of how individuals perceive a changing work environment on an emotional level will help managers to go through the process while they are ensuring engagement of their employees. Our fundamental research questions were: How do employees describe their own state of engagement during an organisational change process? Which factors are important, according to employees, in order for them to stay engaged during the process? The existing literature is reviewed with special attention to state engagement, including job satisfaction, job involvement, organisational commitment and empowerment. The theoretical framework consists of the Job demand-resources model and attitudinal organisational commitment, which have been used as the analytical tools. Our empirical data was collected through a qualitative research design with semi-structured interviews at an insurance company in the middle of Sweden. The conclusion from this study was that the state engagement differed a lot according to dimensions as satisfaction, involvement and commitment, while most of the interviewees agreed that the empowerment and energy level decreased. We also discovered a special kind of engagement, frustration engagement, which was distinguished from the commonly positive view of engagement. The most important factors to continue being engaged were expressed by the employees as social support, managerial support as well as organisational support and communication.