Exploring the relationship between self-managed work teams and work engagement in a gold processing plant

Abstract

The general aim of this study was to determine the nature of the relationship between self-managed work teams and work engagement in a gold processing plant as compared to that of employees within the same company with less freedom to manage themselves and their levels of engagement. The value of this investigation lies in determining if there is a favourable difference in the levels of work engagement of members of self-managed work teams as compared to their counterparts and if so, how these findings could be used in mining organisations to effect higher levels of employee performance through increased work engagement, empowerment and teamwork. The study was conducted on two groups of individuals within the same mining organisation. One group consisted of individuals who worked within self-managed work teams and the other group consisted of individuals who functioned in their traditional hierarchical structures. Three previously validated questionnaires were used to administer and obtain data from employees. Firstly, The Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (Schaufeli & Bakker, 2003) was used to measure work engagement. Secondly, The Psychological Meaningfulness, Safety and Availability questionnaire designed by May (May et al., 2004) was used to measure the participants' perceptions about themselves, their jobs and co-workers. Thirdly, The Empowered Teamwork questionnaire was used to measure the participants' perceptions regarding Empowerment and Teamwork (Slocum & Hellriegel, 2011:352). Using the data from the above questionnaires, a statistical analysis was done to determine relationships. The study concluded that there is a positive relationship between self-managed work teams and work engagement as well as other constructs measured, like empowerment and teamwork. Recommendations were made to organisational managers and future researchers.