Love of the Job: What It Is, How to Measure It, and Why It Matters for Work Outcomes

Abstract

Employee retention, motivation, performance, and well‐being remain enduring priorities in human resource management, yet existing constructs such as engagement, commitment, and satisfaction do not fully capture the depth of emotional attachment that some employees feel towards their jobs. We introduce Love of the Job (LOJ) as a higher‐order form of affective attachment to one's job that integrates passion for one's work, non‐romantic intimacy with coworkers, and commitment to organizational membership, grounded in Sternberg's triangular theory of love. Across a four‐stage, eight‐sample program of research (total N = 1,801), we develop and validate a concise and reliable LOJ scale using diverse working‐adult samples and longitudinal designs. The measure demonstrates strong psychometric properties and discriminant validity from related constructs, establishing LOJ as a distinct form of work attachment, and shows incremental predictive validity for key outcomes, including discretionary performance, innovation, and job crafting, as well as retention and well‐being indicators such as turnover intentions, partial absenteeism, and work neglect. Together, these findings position LOJ as a novel, theoretically grounded construct with strategic relevance for HRM and provide scholars and practitioners with a robust tool to assess and better understand employees' deep emotional attachment to their work.