Is employee engagement pre-determined?

Employee engagement is a topic on the hitlist for all managers at the moment.  We are all trying to get our teams more involved at work and more excited about what they're doing.

Whilst as managers we like to think that we have some control over this, some new research from the University of Sheffield suggests that it might in fact be purely down to personality types.

Ilke Inceoglu and Peter Warr analysed around 700 employees across the so called 'Big 5' personality types and a six item job engagement scale.

They found that two clear personality indicators for employee engagement were extraversion, emotional stability and achievement orientation.  These are the energetic components of our personality.

All of which suggests that a major part of employee engagement is having the kind of personality that can make the best of a given situation.

So if personality is so important, yesterdays news that a quick glance over a candidates Facebook profile is a much better indicator of job success than any more traditional personality test may be of interest to HR managers.

Adi Gaskell is head of online at the Process Excellence Network