The objectives of this study were to investigate whether
psychological job demands, personal control and social
support affect the negative health measure of depression
differently than the positive measure of work engagement
and to investigate whether work engagement mediates the
effects of job demands and resources on the level of depression.
We discuss the implications of using engagement
as an outcome measure in workplace health promotion.
We performed a cross-sectional questionnaire study
among a general working population in Norway (n ¼
605). In the multivariate analysis, high psychological job
demands as well as high control and social support correlated
significantly with high work engagement. High
demands as well as low control and social support correlated
significantly with high levels of depression. When we
included engagement as an independent variable together
with demands, control and social support in the multivariate
analysis, the positive correlation between demands and
depression remained as well as the significant correlations
between the level of depression and control and social
support became non-significant. This indicates that engagement
mediates the effects of control and social
support on the level of depression. Encouraging enterprises
to improve engagement in addition to focusing on
preventing diseases may be worthwhile in workplace
health promotion. Promoting engagement may have more
positive organizational effects than a more traditional
disease prevention focus, because engagement is contagious
and closely related to good work performance and
motivatio