Relationship between nurse's work engagement, structural empowerment, and workplace incivility

Given that nurses’ work engagement is linked with such outcomes as organizational commitment and job satisfaction, effort to improve nurses’ work engagement seems necessary. So, the first step is to demonstrate the factors influencing work engagement that in Iran, few studies have been conducted concerning this issue. This study aimed to assess the relationships between structural empowerment, workplace incivility, and work engagement as well as some factors influencing it among staff nurses. In this cross-sectional, descriptive-analytical study, data were collected through purposeful sampling from among 400 staff nurses (with at least 1 year of experience and a baccalaureate degree in nursing), working in six hospitals, affiliated to Birjand University of Medical sciences (BUMS), in 2014. Data were gathered by questioners; The Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (2003), structural empowerment was measured by Conditions of Work Effectiveness Questionnaire-II (2001) and Workplace Incivility Scale (2001) was applied. As for reliability, Cronbach’s alphas were calculated 0.88, 0.92 and 0.92 for these questionnaires respectively. Data were analyzed in SPSS 16.0 using descriptive statistics, as well as inferential statistics including Pearson correlation coefficient, independent t-test, one-way ANOVA, and multiple regression at the significant level of p<0.05. For the whole sample, the overall mean for the Iranian version of the CWEQ-II, UWES, and WIS were 16.21 (SD=3.29), 64.09 (SD=19.19), and 1.95 (SD=0.76) respectively, indicating moderate levels of structural empowerment and work engagement and a low incidence of incivility experienced by nurses. A significant positive correlation was found between nurses’ work engagement and their perceived levels of structural empowerment (r=0.37; p<0.05). However, there was not a significant association between work engagement and the incivility experienced by nurses (p>0.05). Also, levels of perceived structural empowerment among participants significantly correlated with their experienced workplace incivility (r=0.26; p<0.05). In total, structural empowerment, sex, marital status and age explained 19% of variance of wok engagement. Nurse managers must consider strategies aimed to increase nurses’ work engagement and for decreasing workplace incivility perception by improvement structural empowerment within the organization.