Review: CPP’s Newest Assessment - The Work Engagement Profile
posted by agammy
This week CPP released the Work Engagement Profile , a new A-Level assessment that examines how intrinsic rewards affect employee engagement. Being the curious and self-exploratory person that I am, I was first in line to try it out. Not only do I love taking assessments, but I thought I would review my experience to give you all a better idea of what this new product is and how it works.
A little background: the Work Engagement Profile was developed by Kenneth W. Thomas (co-author of the TKI assessment) and Walter G. Tymon, a professor at Villanova University who specializes in empowerment, motivation, and leadership in organizations. The idea behind the assessment is that two kinds of factors shape employee engagement: extrinsic rewards—pay, benefits, promotions, awards, and so on—and intrinsic rewards—psychological rewards that fuel engagement by providing a positive emotional charge. The extrinsic rewards are important, but the intrinsic rewards are the ones that really increase job satisfaction, innovation, concentration, professional development and effectiveness, and are the ones that should be measured to assess true job satisfaction.
According to the Work Engagement Profile, there are 4 intrinsic rewards you should get from your work environment:
Sense of Meaningfulness - the opportunity you have to pursue a worthy purpose at work
Sense of Choice - the opportunity to select activities that make sense to you, and do things the way you think is best
Sense of Competence - the accomplishment you experience when you do your job well
Sense of Progress - the accomplishment you experience when you advance towards a purpose
Based on your scores in these categories, the Profile assesses your current level of engagement, and recommends a course of action to help you become more satisfied at work.
It only took me about 5 minutes to answer the 24 questions, but in spite of the assessment’s brevity, I found it to be pretty insightful. I spent about 15 minutes debriefing myself afterward (I imagine you could spend 20-30 minutes doing this with a client) and picked up some tips about improving my engagement at work . . . although, if you’re reading this from work you should know I am always 100% engaged!
Honestly, based on how I feel about my job I thought I would score in the top quadrant for each section, but my results revealed that I was in the top 25% for only 1 of the categories - I guess even someone who sees herself as "highly engaged" has room for improvement.
Reading through my resulting profile, I thought the WEP accurately defined how I feel about myself in my current position, and I liked that it offered specific suggestions for improvement based on my scores. For example, I got a moderate score for "Sense of Progress" - to enhance this, my Profile recommended that I spend more time developing milestones for myself so I don’t lose track of the passing days and months, and celebrate when I reach my milestones. That is something I definitely DON’T do now that maybe I’ll try in the future. I got similarly useful suggestions for the other categories as well.
CPP recommends using the Work Engagement Profile in conjunction with the Myers-Briggs ® and FIRO-B ® instruments, and I can see how that would definitely provide a super clear (and interesting) picture of a client’s engagement levels. For example, as an ENTP, a low "Sense of Competence" score would probably signify higher disengagement for me than for someone else, because I value competence so highly as a core part of my personality. In the same way, perhaps the "Sense of Choice" score would be more important for someone who had scored highly on the FIRO-B for Wanted Control. A good trainer or coach could probably draw some pretty powerful conclusions from taking a wholistic approach with this new assessment.
Overall, I can see how the WEP would be useful in a lot of different settings - pick up a copy and try it for yourself - (I’d be interested to hear your ideas for maximizing this assessment’s usefulness with clients too!)
