Measuring the personal perspective on work engagement: An empirical exploration of the self-anchoring work engagement scale in Poland

Purpose Work engagement is among the most influential constructs in human resource management, but work engagement's current understanding overlooks what employees consider as engagement. The author aims to advance the human resources theory and practice by discussing the need for understanding engagement from the employee point of view, and the author explores the properties of a self-anchoring work engagement scale – the measure capturing the personal perspective on work engagement. Design/methodology/approach The author has presented a conceptual discussion providing a rationale for capturing employee personal perspective on work engagement as supplementary to multi-item measures capturing researcher perspective. Based on empirical evidence, the author tests convergent and discriminant validity of self-anchoring work engagement in relation to job resources, job demands and burnout; the author confronts the nomological network of self-anchoring scale with previous work engagement meta-analysis. Findings The obtained results provided preliminary evidence supporting convergent and discriminant validity of self-anchoring work engagement. The analysis of the nomological network of self-anchoring work engagement in comparison to the previous meta-analysis revealed that self-anchoring work engagement might be more strongly related to challenging job demands than the multi-item researcher perspective work engagement. Research limitations/implications Practical implications Social implications Originality/value The author's findings provide a modicum of evidence that asking employees about self-assessment of employees' work engagement on a 0–10 scale provides researchers with access to a freely available measurement method of the personal perception on work engagement. Contribution to impact