Abstract
There is a dearth of research that examines the employee experience of feeling engaged at work or of how engagement is impacted by contextual factors. This study gives primacy to specific contextual factors, of the moments leading to the onset of a regulatory overhaul of the financial services sector in Australia, in understanding employee engagement of service based professional employees. Using the job-demands and resource (J-DR) theory, the study examined how job resources impacted engagement levels after the changing financial services environment. The study found engagement to be context dependent, especially in the finance sector where policy and legal developments in the external environment play a critical role. Job resources originally designed to support employees in their roles had an adverse impact on autonomy. Distal contextual factors impacted job control and consequently impeded employee engagement. Our findings extend JD-R theory with the dual effect of ‘job demands’. Team level resources were found to be most impactful in combatting the duality of demands.