Managers should deliberately engage in behaviors that will bring about gratitude from their employees. Braun and Clarke’s thematic analysis revealed five themes, namely, (1) gratitude for no negative work-life changes (2) gratitude for a caring workplace (3) gratitude for a new way of working (4) gratitude for the ability to put oneself first and (5) gratitude for having resilience, optimism and spirituality as a psychological buffer. Data were gathered through 21 semi-structured interviews of working people in South Africa. Participants were sourced from various industries in South Africa using purposive sampling. The purpose of the study was to understand what aspects of work and the organization employees were grateful for during the pandemic. The pandemic brought on many negative experiences but employees could still find things to be grateful for during this time. Gratitude has been linked to wellbeing and gratitude in the workplace is positively associated with constructs such as performance and organizational citizenship behavior. Gratitude or the appreciation of being given something of value, is an important element in positive emotions within positive psychology. Thus, employees’ level of self-efficacy, optimism, and job engagement can be enhanced by designing and implementing business initiatives that are relevant to positive change. Further, significant indirect effects support the mediating role of job engagement in relationship between these psychological strengths and performance outcome. Also, the higher levels of cognitive, emotional, and physical engagement significantly predict performance. The results indicate that higher levels of self-efficacy and optimism significantly predict higher levels of cognitive, emotional, and physical engagement. The hypothesized relationships were tested in AMOS 20 using structural equation modeling. These respondents were asked to assess their own self-efficacy, optimism, and job engagement, along with their perception of the team-level performance of the branch office in which they work. While all of the respondents are based in the UAE, the sample is international in nature, encompassing 15 countries. Responses were collected from 406 employees who participated in the RACE initiative. It further provides an explanation of this relationship through the mediating role of three dimensions of job engagement, that is, cognitive, emotional, and physical. This study explores the relationship of self-efficacy and optimism with performance outcome. Employees who are engaged in the jobs bring in their complete selves by investing physical, emotional, and cognitive energies. Employees’ with higher levels of optimism tend to maintain positive expectation about what will happen to them in the process of change. Self-efficacy is a specific, positive expectation of success based on belief in one’s individual abilities. In the context of RACE initiative, this study examines the role of self-efficacy, optimism, and job engagement in positive change. To generate positive change, a Middle Eastern financial services firm designed and implemented a positive business initiative ‘RACE’, which involved various sports, arts, cultural, and everyday business activities, intended to engage employees and build their psychological strengths. Positive change comprises an examination of the factors that influence the adaptation of a positive lens, positively deviant performance, the effects of an affirmative bias, and the impact of pursuing the best of human conditions in an organization.
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