Workaholic and work engaged employees: dead ringers or worlds apart?

Area of Science:

• Organizational Psychology
• Work and Health Psychology

Background:

• Self-Determination Theory and Effort-Recovery Model provide frameworks for understanding work behaviors.
• Workaholism and work engagement are often conflated but may represent distinct constructs.
• Understanding different types of hard-working employees is crucial for organizational well-being.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the nature, antecedents, and consequences of workaholism and work engagement.
• To differentiate between workaholism and work engagement as independent concepts.
• To identify distinct profiles of employees based on their levels of workaholism and engagement.

Main Methods:

• Confirmatory factor analysis to establish the independence of workaholism and work engagement.
• MANOVA and ANOVAs to compare four identified worker groups (workaholic, engaged, engaged workaholic, nonworkaholic/nonengaged).
• Analysis of motivation, working hours, and burnout levels across groups.

Main Results:

• Workaholism and work engagement were confirmed as largely independent constructs.
• Four distinct worker profiles emerged: workaholic, engaged, engaged workaholic, and nonworkaholic/nonengaged.
• Engaged workaholics exhibited high work hours and were motivated by both autonomous and controlled factors, unlike purely workaholic employees who were driven by controlled motivation.

Conclusions:

• High work engagement may buffer the negative effects of workaholism, as evidenced by lower burnout in engaged workaholics compared to workaholics.
• The study highlights the importance of distinguishing between workaholism and work engagement.
• A new category, 'engaged workaholics,' is introduced, characterized by high engagement and work hours, with potentially buffered negative outcomes.