Making people want to come to work: How transformational leadership and meaningful work improve motivation, work engagement – and productivity

Abstract

Purpose

To examine connections between transformational leadership, motivation and work engagement.

Design/methodology/approach

Conducts a self-report survey asking employees about their feelings toward their work and their evaluation of their supervisor’s leadership.

Findings

How do you tackle an expensive problem that keeps getting worse? It seems that people are becoming less and less engaged with the work that they do; and this means lower productivity. To put things in perspective, industry reports reveal that only a fifth of employees are engaged in their work – even fewer in Australia; engagement levels are steadily declining; and resulting losses of productivity now exceed $300 billion in the USA and $100 billion in the UK. So organizations urgently need fresh ways to motivate and engage their workforce.

Practical implications

Shows that both transformational leadership and meaningful work can affect employees’ engagement with their work.

Social implications

Notes that meaning in work mediates the effects of transformational leadership.

Originality/value

Recommends attention to the design of work to address employees’ needs and interests in addition to organizing transformational leadership training.

Citation

(2015), "Making people want to come to work: How transformational leadership and meaningful work improve motivation, work engagement – and productivity", Development and Learning in Organizations, Vol. 29 No. 5, pp. 28-30. https://doi.org/10.1108/DLO-05-2015-0047