Date of Graduation
12-2023
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Education in Human Resource and Workforce Development (EdD)
Degree Level
Graduate
Department
Rehabilitation, Human Resources and Communication Disorders
Advisor/Mentor
James Maddox
Committee Member
Charkasova, Aynur
Second Committee Member
Grover, Kenda
Keywords
health-related lifestyle choices, employee productivity, employee performance, human resource development (HRD), employee wellness programs
Abstract
Employers have a vested interest in the health of employees, but employee wellness programs have not proven themselves an effective tactic for employers to motivate employees to live healthier lives. Employees who suffer from chronic disease are less productive than healthier peers, are more expensive to insure, have higher rates of absenteeism, and are more prone to suffer from performance-reducing levels of stress and burnout (Shuck et al., 2021; Jones et al., 2019; Mattke et al., 2013). The problem is that employee wellness programs are often not effective at improving the health of employee populations (Song & Baicker, 2019; Jones et al., 2019; Merrill et al., 2011) and an alternate approach to employee health improvement has not been widely explored (Shuck et al., 2022). This study applies the Self-Determination Theory and the Job-Resources Demands Theory in evaluating whether employee engagement levels relate to health-related lifestyle choices in the interest of progressing our understanding of the motivational construct of health-related behavior change in an employee population. This is a correlational, cross-sectional, non-experimental study reflecting a point-in-time experience of employees of a single healthcare employer using numerical data from the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale and the Good Health Practices Scale. This strategy of inquiry is a correlational design as it uses a correlational statistic to measure the relationship between two variables (Creswell, 2014). The independent variable is employee engagement, and the dependent variable is the health-related lifestyle score, compared using simple linear regression. The study found that employee engagement and health-related lifestyle choice are related but not to a statistically significant degree.
Citation
Buffenbarger, A. (2023). The Intersection of Employee Engagement and Employee Health: A Quantitative Evaluation of the Use of Engagement Tactics in Improving the Health of a Workforce. Graduate Theses and Dissertations Retrieved from https://scholarworks.uark.edu/etd/5155