Table 1_Satisfied employees, stronger teams: linking need satisfaction to team-boosting behaviours via work engagement.docx

Participants completed validated self-report measures of BPNS, work engagement, and TBB. Structural equation modelling using a bifactor exploratory structural equation modelling framework tested relationships, isolating global and specific need satisfaction factors.</p>Findings<p>Global BPNS positively predicted work engagement and all team-boosting behaviours (mood-enhancing, energising, unifying). Work engagement mediated between global need satisfaction and each team-boosting dimension.

Specific competence satisfaction predicted all TBB, while relatedness satisfaction predicted only mood-enhancing behaviours. Effects were primarily driven by global BPNS.</p>Practical implications<p>Organisations should prioritise need-supportive environments that foster overall psychological need satisfaction, which may in turn relate to greater engagement and more frequent team-directed discretionary behaviours. Interventions should focus on autonomy-supportive leadership, competence development through feedback and mastery experiences, and relatedness support through psychological safety and connection-building practices.</p>Originality/value<p>This study uniquely integrates BPNS, work engagement, and team-boosting behaviours within a single model and suggests how individual motivational experiences may relate to team-directed behaviours, consistent with a bottom-up pathway to team climate enhancement.</p>