Men don’t enjoy work – till the end
Wed, Jun 30, 2010
This lack of enthusiasm or ‘employee engagement’ in men remains lower than that of their female colleagues until they are within sight of the end of their careers - when it takes a dramatic jump.
The researchers say this should encourage employers to hang on to older, more experienced workers who are generally more ‘engaged’.
On the other hand, women tend to start their careers with very high levels of employee engagement which then show a steady drop over the course of their working lives until, at the end of their careers, they ‘bounce’ back, albeit not as dramatically as their male colleagues.
The research was carried out by scientists at the University of Portsmouth, Dr Darren Van Laar and Simon Easton from the Department of Psychology and who both work for university spin-out company, QoWL Ltd.
The research comes in the wake of government plans to raise the retirement age for men and women. Dr Van Laar and Dr Easton say their findings appear to offer encouragement to employers who want to take advantage of the high level of commitment of older workers who would like to work beyond the current statutory retirement age.
The academics found the pre-retirement ‘bounce’ in the quality of working life of employees in an earlier study, but the results of their latest research exploring employee engagement came as something of a surprise.
Dr Van Laar said: “The quality of people’s working lives is not as straightforward as it at first might appear.
“We had already discovered that men experience more of a pre-retirement ‘bounce’ as they neared retirement. But, until now, we hadn’t realised that men, unlike women, start their careers with very low levels of employee engagement, and only catch up with women at the very end of their working lives.”
The researchers used the Work Related Quality of Life Scale (WRQoL) to gauge nearly 4,000 people’s quality of working life in nine large educational organisations in the UK. This most recent research indicates that men experience a gradual increase in their levels of engagement throughout their working lives as well as an increase in quality of working life just before retirement. Women also tend to experience a slight increase in their levels of engagement just before they retire, but the increase is not as high as men’s.
At the start their careers, young women seem to enjoy the highest levels of both engagement and quality of working life, but levels of satisfaction and engagement at work then gradually decrease over the course of their careers until the very end, when they too experience a slight ‘bounce’ as they approach retirement.
Men, on the other hand, tend to start their careers less engaged, but as women then become less engaged, men’s engagement with their work begins to rise until, at the very end of their careers there is little difference between them.
According to Dr Van Laar, the findings suggest it would be beneficial for employers to identify ways of increasing young men’s engagement and satisfaction in the workplace. This could, he says, help employee retention, and mean higher productivity and reduced absenteeism. Employers could also try to better understand why women lose ‘engagement’ at work over their working lives, he said.
The results were presented at the University of Sheffield's Institute of Work Psychology Conference today (WEDNESDAY June 30).
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http://www.port.ac.uk/departments/academic/psychology/latestnews/title,112510,en.html
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