Providing Safe Space for Honest Mistakes in the Public Sector Is the Most Important Predictor for Work Engagement after Strategic Clarity

Thais Gargantini, Michael Daly, Joseph Sherlock and Teddy Lazebnik
Additional contact information
Thais Gargantini: Department of Psychology, Reichman University, Herzliya 4610101, Israel
Michael Daly: Center for Advanced Hindsight, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708, USA
Joseph Sherlock: Center for Advanced Hindsight, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708, USA
Teddy Lazebnik: Department of Cancer Biology, Cancer Institute, University College London, London WC1E 7HU, UK

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 12, 1-12

Abstract: Multiple studies highlight the link between engagement at work and performance, influencing organizations to put more effort into improving employee engagement levels. In this study, we begin to examine the influence of multiple psychological parameters on employees’ work engagement (WE) within the public sector. The idea is to break the concept of WE down into eight individually measurable parameters that will allow for a better understanding and development of stronger interventions. Based on this analysis, we reproduce the outcome that strategic clarity is the most connected property to WE. More importantly, we introduce a new concept, honest mistakes, and show that having a safe space for making mistakes and learning from it is the second most important property of WE. This result is of interest, as allowing mistakes, even if they were made innocently, is considered taboo in the public sector. These outcomes are based on the reports of n = 7682 public sector employees from Brazil. In particular, the analysis shows that these outcomes hold for both professional and management positions across the health, administrative, justice, police, social work, and education offices.

Keywords: honest mistakes; public sector management; work engagement; dominance analysis; behavioral economics factors (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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