Employee Engagement in the Goal Setting Process: Can employee engagement theory improve the goal setting process?

This thesis explores how applying elements from the literature on employee engagement can improve the goal setting process within an automotive membership company. The employee engagement literature has a great deal of research that suggests that employees who report high engagement also have a high level of performance. The purpose of this research was to explore whether incorporating variables of engagement within goal setting conversations could create a better experience for the employee. Using an Action Research approach, I expanded my understanding of a workplace problem beyond my experience and use an evidenced-based level of knowledge. I followed the Action Research Cycle to identify themes in the literature, change my organization's goal setting process using variables for engagement from the literature, inquired about the employee experience of the goal setting conversation in pre and post interviews, and To analyze the results, I organized participant interview responses and goal setting document contents into themes, considered how they supported or deviated from the literature, and discussed how I reviewed the goal setting documentation. The findings suggested that using engagement principles, such as employee feedback, work environment, and development can improve the goal setting process for employees, as well as increase the parity between individual and organizational goals. Possible improvements to the redesigned process are to capture and understand participants’ feelings during the process, improve supervisor buy-in before the process introducing to employees, and to simplify the goals setting process further to a minimally viable process with the most significant impact. I recommend future research to measure the impact of an engagement-based goal setting process on performance and to explore how to use employee engagement theory to improve other business processes