IT professionals: Maximizing engagement in the rapidly changing business environment

Compared to the general employee population - only half of which is engaged at work [1] - IT employees fare worse. Just 26% report full engagement and 22% outright disengagement [2] with their jobs. Surprisingly, however, IT employee engagement has been largely ignored as a focus of scholarly research. To address this gap in the literature, we examined the relationship between IT workers' engagement and their work environment. Specifically, we sought to explain how organizational environment is affected by the behavioral competencies of IT professionals and their capacity for role breadth. Survey data from 795 IT managers and individual contributors in the United States and Canada revealed two competencies - Achievement Orientation and Influencing Others - powerfully impact environment and that three key features of the environment - vision, compassion and overall positive mood - influence IT professionals' engagement with work.