Creating a measure to operationalize engaged well-being at work.

Area of Science:

• Organizational Psychology
• Occupational Health
• Human Resources Management

Background:

• Mental well-being and work engagement are crucial for employee functioning.
• Existing research highlights the importance of assessing these states concurrently.
• A validated instrument for characterizing workforce engaged well-being is needed.

Purpose of the Study:

• To operationalize and empirically validate a construct termed 'engaged well-being'.
• To develop a replicable measure for assessing combined mental well-being and work engagement.
• To explore the longitudinal changes in engaged well-being.

Main Methods:

• Utilized longitudinal employee data (n=13,538) from the German Linked Personnel Panel (2012-2017).
• Employed exploratory factor analysis and cluster analysis (hierarchical and non-hierarchical) with within-sum-of-squares statistics.
• Identified distinct profiles and established cut-offs for engaged well-being categories.

Main Results:

• Exploratory factor analysis confirmed mental well-being and work engagement as distinct factors.
• Cluster analysis identified four profiles: engaged well-being (46.9%), disengaged well-being (27.5%), engaged strain (8.8%), and disengaged strain (16.8%).
• The developed engaged well-being indicator showed measurable changes over time.

Conclusions:

• The engaged well-being measure effectively characterizes workforce mental well-being and work engagement simultaneously.
• The measure's sensitivity to change over time indicates its utility for organizational interventions.
• Further research is recommended to explore antecedents, correlates, and effects of engaged well-being.