THE EFFECTS OF JOB CHARACTERISTICS ON WORK ENGAGEMENT

Work engagement is one of the most important things in achieving company goals because the company's main driving factor is employees. Work engagement refers to the energy that employees have to be directed to organizational goals (Macey, et al., 2009, in Bakker, 2011). Employees who have a high level of engagement will exert more effort in achieving company goals (Sidharta & Meily, 2012). One of the factors in achieving employee work engagement is job characteristics (Saks, 2006). Job characteristics in this study use Hackman & Oldham (1974) theory. There are five dimensions in job characteristics (autonomy, feedback, skill variety, task identity and task significance) (Hackman & Oldham, 1974). This research was conducted to find out whether there is an influence of job characteristics on work engagement. This research was conducted at a port service company located in Surabaya. The samples in this study were 119 employees. The sampling technique used is simple random sampling. The data collection tool in this study is a questionnaire, the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES) (Schaufeli & Bakker, 2004) and the scale of the Job Diagnostic Survey (Hackman & Oldham, 1974). Analysis of the data used is partial least square using the SmartPLS 3.0 program. Based on the results of the study it was found that the five dimensions of job characteristics (autonomy, feedback, skill variety, task identity, and task significance) had a positive and significant relationship to work engagement.