The Impact of Psychological Capital and Work Meaningfulness on Work Engagement in Generation Y

摘要

Generation Ys are known as a lazy, demanding, and ungrateful generation, especially at work (Alch, 2006). Generation Ys are also seen as job-hoppers, needy, and deluded narcissistic (Gani, 2016). However, those stereotypes are not necessarily true. When asked, those young people said that they wanted to play meaningful roles and doing meaningful works (Martin, 2005). Psychological Capital (PsyCap) also expected to increase Generation Ys' engagement to their work (Luthans et al., 2006). Previous studies found that both meaningfulness and PsyCap have a significant impact on work engagement separately (Nugroho, Mujiasih, & Prihatsanti, 2013; Jacobs, 2013) but it is still uncommon to see the effect of these two variables altogether to work engagement, especially on Generation Ys employees. Therefore, this study was conducted to see the effect of PsyCap and work meaningfulness to work engagement on Generation Ys employees. The survey was conducted to 52 participants (Male = 20; Female = 32), across Jakarta, Tangerang, Bekasi, and Bogor, with age ranging from 20 to 27 years. Results showed that there were significant and positive correlations between all dimensions of PsyCap and work meaningfulness with all dimensions of work engagement. Together, PsyCap and work meaningfulness also can significantly give a positive impact to work engagement by 65.1%. Consistently, optimism (one dimension of PsyCap) has a significant and positive impact to all of work engagement dimensions.