When the job is a calling: The role of applying one's signature strengths at work

Abstract

This study investigates the role of applying the individual signature strengths at work for positive experiences at work (i.e. job satisfaction, pleasure, engagement, and meaning) and calling. A sample of 111 employees from various occupations completed measures on character strengths, positive experiences at work, and calling. Co-workers (N = 111) rated the applicability of character strengths at work. Correlations between the applicability of character strengths and positive experiences at work decreased with intraindividual centrality of strengths (ranked strengths from the highest to the lowest). The level of positive experiences and calling were higher when four to seven signature strengths were applied at work compared to less than four. Positive experiences partially mediated the effect of the number of applied signature strengths on calling. Implications for further research and practice will be discussed.

Keywords:

• character strengths
• signature strengths
• job satisfaction
• calling
• pleasure
• engagement
• meaning
• VIA-IS
• positive psychology

Notes

1. Another environment or situation (e.g. leisure time, project a versus project b) can be studied by emphasizing it in the instruction of the ACS-RS.

2. Example given in the instruction is about kindness rated by a nurse: A nurse's job description entails many comments about hygiene but less about kindness and they do not talk much about it in the team. That is why she would rate ‘it is demanded’ as seldom (rating = 2). As she realized that caring for patients is easier when being kind to them, she rates that ‘it is helpful’ often (rating = 4). Furthermore, it is usually important for her to interact with patients in a kind way and she would therefore rate ‘it is important for me’ as 4 = often. However, the workload is very high and therefore impedes kind interactions some of the time (‘I do it’ = 3). In total, kindness would have an applicability score of 3.25, which means that kindness is sometimes applicable at work.

3. Ratings of the applicability of the character strengths were restructured from a content wise order (i.e. for creativity, curiosity, etc.) to a rank wise order (i.e. applicability of character on rank 1, rank 2, etc.). The character strengths at rank 1, rank 2, etc. up to rank 24 differs individually. Ranks were derived from the VIA-IS scores that were rank ordered within each individual.

4. Peterson, Park, Hall, and Seligman (2009) showed that zest is the character strength of the VIA classification that plays the most important role for calling. The question arises how the relationship between the number of applied signature strengths and calling changes when zest is controlled for. We highlighted that the application of signature strengths is important for calling irrespective of the strengths’ content. Therefore, if the results remained the same when controlling for zest, it would be a support for this statement. Analyses of the data were conducted with two different changes in data analyses to check for the influence of zest on the results. These were: (a) zest was not included when computing the number of applied strengths at work and (b) zest entered the analysis as covariate in an ANCOVA (UV = number of applied signature strengths; AV = calling rating). The results remained the same (version a: F[7, 110] = 2.13, p = 0.048, partial η²= 0.130; version b: F[7, 110] = 2.60, p = 0.017, partial η²= 0.155). Again, planned comparisons (all p < 0.001) showed that especially those employees applying four to seven of their signature strengths see their work as a calling compared to those applying none to three strengths at work irrespective of the influence of zest (0–3 strengths versus 4–7 strengths: [version a] M = 2.31 versus 3.05; [version b] M = 2.32 versus M = 2.95).

5. The calling orientation was very similarly related to each of the positive experiences at work with correlation coefficients of 0.31, 0.34, 0.34, and 0.35 with meaning at work, engagement at work, job satisfaction, and pleasure at work, respectively (all p < 0.001).

6. The authors would like to thank one of the anonymous reviewers for this comment.