Thematic Investigation of Employee Engagement Experiences: Predictions for Effective Departmental Performance Management
Non-academic staff represent a substantial portion of higher education institution (HEI) workforces yet remain consistently excluded from empirical research on employee engagement and performance management. This qualitative study investigated whether refining a performance management tool to the department level could improve non-academic staff engagement with the tool and the tool’s feasibility for achieving the department’s strategic plan. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with five HEI library assistants at a large Midwestern research university. Contrary to both hypotheses, participants did not generally predict greater engagement with the proposed department-scoped tool nor improved feasibility for achieving the department’s strategic plan.
The central finding was an emergent theme, “Performance Management Credibility Breakdown,” which comprised 65.4% of all thematically coded segments across all five participants, indicating that skepticism toward the proposed tool stemmed from widespread distrust in the current institution-wide performance management tool rather than direct opposition to the department-scoped tool. Participants expressed strong interest in role-specific, staff-developed goal frameworks and shorter assessment intervals as conditions to earn the credibility needed for a department-scoped tool. These findings suggest that performance management credibility is a necessary prerequisite for any structural refinement meant to meaningfully improve non-academic staff engagement in HEI settings.