Does proximity to service delivery result in greater engagement? A quantitative analysis of the relationship between status as a staff or operational organization and q12 engagement results at the business unit level supervised

This study examines the relationship between employee/workforce engagement results (overall Q12) for business units and the organizational proximity of the business units to the organization's service delivery points. Data for the results of a Gallup, Inc. Q12 assessment administered under contract to the Air Traffic Organization (ATO) within the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) was gathered via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. Direct results for business units supervised with enough respondents to register an "Overall Q12" result (n=2,224) were divided between operational and staff organizations by matching the operational facility and direct operational facility support codes (e.g. DEN, ZKC, WWH1-DEN, WCF6-ZKC, etc.) with the organizational code for the business unit reporting (n=1,470) - all not matching operational business units were designated as staff ( n=754). A two-tailed t-test revealed a statistically significant (p<0.001) difference in the means for the operational and staff groups, indicating a statistically significant difference between the level of engagement in operational and staff business units. Salary data were examined to undetermined effect due to unclear relationships between bonuses and achievement of engagement outcomes. Practical implications and recommendations for future research are discussed.