Back to Basics: Facilitating Engagement in Modern Work Environments

We seek a simple model of job characteristics and leadership for workers in a digitalized work place, where self-management is increasingly required as more work is done through enterprise digital and social media rather than face-to-face interaction. We look to work location, supervisor communication, feedback from the work itself, technology support, and work-related knowledge as precursors to work engagement. Here, we assess some of the basics of work design and management for employees across a range of work strategies as part of a larger study on flexible work and work-life balance in metropolitan areas. We find the strongest relationship with work engagement to come from feedback from the work itself and the knowledge to work independently. Supervisor communication also plays a role in work engagement, but location is surprisingly of little importance. We discuss the generalizability of these results and how future research can consider location in greater depth.