Engagement among trainees

Abstract

To gain more insight into the psychological mechanisms that underlie work engagement of trainees, this study investigated the role of person-environment fit, psychological meaningfulness, –safety , and –availability. These were include as mediators in the Job Demands-Resources model. Questionnaire data were collected among 104 management trainees (22-34 years, M = 27.8) of a Dutch bank. As hypothesized, person-environment fit partially mediated the relationship between job resources and engagement, but unexpectedly not the relationship between personal resources and engagement. Psychological meaningfulness and –availability also partially mediated the relationship between job resources and engagement, while psychological safety did not. Additionally, person-environment fit, psychological meaning and –availability together fully mediated the relationship between job resources and engagement. Moreover, we found an underlying factor representing these three scales which showed the same mediation effect. These results suggest that job resources may alter trainees’ perception of fit with the work environment, represented by person-environment fit, psychological meaningfulness and –availability, which in turn fosters work engagement. More specifically, especially job resources that foster learning and development (i.e., task variety, feedback, social support and learning opportunities) are important for trainees in this process, whereas other job resources (i.e., job control) seem to be less important.