The effects of employee engagement and self-efficacy on job performance: a longitudinal field study

Abstract

Self-efficacy’s influence on individual job performance has been well documented in laboratory studies. However, there have been very few rigorous field studies of self-efficacy’s relationship with objectively measured individual job performance in organizational settings. This research history might account for the low take-up of self-efficacy within the business literature as well as within business itself. When it comes to studies of employee engagement, the same lack of rigorous individual studies applies, although several organizational-level studies link employee engagement to organizational performance, while its claimed benefits have been widely discussed in the business literature. Finally, the degree to which employee engagement and self-efficacy have independent and additive effects on individual-level job performance remains unknown. In order to address these issues, a longitudinal field study was undertaken within an Australian financial services firm. Using survey data linked to objectively measured job performance, we found the additive effects of self-efficacy and employee engagement explained 12% of appointments made and 39% of products sold over and above that explained by past performance. This finding suggests human resource management (HRM) practitioners should address both self-efficacy and employee engagement in order to boost job performance while encouraging HRM scholars to incorporate both measures when conducting job performance studies.

Keywords:

• Self-efficacy
• employee engagement
• job performance
• longitudinal study
• field study

Notes

1. In keeping with Bandura’s original conceptualization of self-efficacy as being ‘task-specific’ and to avoid confusion with the construct ‘general self-efficacy’, any reference to self-efficacy in this article refers to task-specific self-efficacy. General self-efficacy is a holistic construct designed to assess an individual’s optimistic self-beliefs used to cope with a variety of demands in life.

2. The self-efficacy and employee engagement literature refer to both ‘work-related’ and ‘job’ performance. For consistency purposes, we use the term ‘job’ performance throughout our paper with the exception of two meta-analyses studies that include ‘work-related’ in their titles.