Why so stressed? Effects of Challenge, Hindrance, and Threat Stress on Work Engagement

The current study expanded the Challenge-Hindrance Model of Stress (Cavanaugh et al., 2000) to also include threat stress (Tuckey et al.,2015) and studied how these different types of stress influence employee work engagement (Schaufeli et al., 2002; Schaufeli et al., 2010). Research has shown that job resources (Bakker & Demerouti, 2008) and personality (Makikangas et al.,2013) are important constructs that help explain an employee’s level of work engagement. Therefore, this study analyzed the moderating effects of the job resource, social support (Cobb,1976), and the personality trait, hardiness (Kobasa et al., 1982) known to buffer the effects of stress. A total of 148 employees from an international pharmaceutical service company located in Montreal, Quebec took part in this study. Multiple regression analysis showed that hindrance and threat stress were negatively related to work engagement. Furthermore, social support moderated the relationship between challenge stress and work engagement such that in the presence of social support challenge stress had a significant positive relationship with work engagement. Although the study did not find any significant moderating effects for hardiness, the construct had a high correlation with work engagement. The study expands the literature on stress by differentiating between hindrance and threat stress which in turn expands the challenge-hindrance model. Furthermore, it suggests that hindrance and threat stress are types of stress that practitioners should try to limit, while also suggesting they provide social support for employees when they are faced with a challenge stress, in order for them to stay engaged in their work. Keywords: work engagement, hardiness, social support, challenge stress, hindrance stress, threat stress