EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT AND JOB SATISFACTION __________________________________________________________________________ Ng Kim-Soon* Gunasegeri Manikayasagam Faculty of Technology Management and Business Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia *Corresponding email:
[email protected] Abstract Employee engagement is on the decline and there is a deepening disengagement among employees today. During economic downturn, engaged employee with full workforce can make differences of survival or success of business organization. The construct and dimensions to measure employee engagement are unclear. There is still no any well known and acceptable concept of these constructs and measures. In other words, researchers and reviewers do not use the same components and dimensions to describe employee engagement. Today’s works environment has evolved considerably. The process by which we expect engagement to happen needs to be fully understood so that managers can have strategies or manage other context issues to enable full employee engagement. The paper aims to determine the components and dimensions of employee engagement, and investigate its effect on job satisfaction of an oleo chemical company. Factor, reliability and multiple regression analyses were employed to analyze the data. This study answered the research questions formulated. Recommendations to organization are reported. Key words: employee engagement, job satisfaction, leadership, communication, employee involvement _________________________________________________________________________
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1.1 INTRODUCTION According to [1], Manager Director of Tower Perrins, higher levels of employee engagement can lead to stronger business performances which in turn lead to higher levels of engagement. A survey carried out by Global Workforce Study 2007-2008 found that high levels of employee engagement enjoyed an average increased of 13.7% in their net income and companies with low levels of employee engagement averaged a 3.8% drop in net income. Engagement is a relatively new field of study [2]. [3] are among the earlier researchers on employee engagement. According to [2] and [3], employee engagement focuses on the issues of commitment, satisfaction and organizational behaviour. [4] perceived engagement in the form of personal engagement where people use varying degrees of themselves in their work roles by having their own perception and definition of the both engagement and disengagement is where people employ and express themselves physically, cognitively, and emotionally during role performances. Engagement is characterized by energy, involvement, and efficacy and this is a directly opposite to the three burnout dimensions of exhaustion, cynicism, and inefficacy [5]. Social Exchange Theory provides a theoretical foundation to explain why employees choose to become more or less engaged in their work and organization. The conditions of engagement in both [4] and [5]’s models can be considered economic and socio-emotional exchange of resources. When employees receive these resources from their organization they feel obliged to repay the organization with greater levels of engagement. In terms of [4]’s definition of engagement, employees feel obliged to bring themselves more deeply into their role performances as repayment for the resources they receive from their organization. On the other hand, [4] explains the disengagement of the employee engagement occurs when people withdraw and defend themselves physically, cognitively, and emotionally during role performances. When the organization fails to provide these resources, individuals are more likely to withdraw and disengage themselves from their roles. In this case, the amount of cognitive, emotional, and physical resources that an individual is prepared to devote in the performance of one’s work roles is contingent on the economic and socio-emotional resources received from the organization. [6] of Towers Perrins reported that employee engagement makes it meanings as the degree to which employee think, feel and act in line with company goals which includes the extend to which employees go the extra mile in their work in the form of discretionary effort, creativity and energy. [6] added that if an employee wants to be fully engaged, they need to possess rational understanding of the organization's strategic goals, values, and how employees fit. Employee must have emotional attachment to the organization and motivation and willingness to invest discretionary effort to go above and beyond. [7] explained that an engaged employee is a person who is fully involved in, and enthusiastic about, his or her work. In his book, Getting Engaged: The New Workplace Loyalty he explains that truly engaged employees are attracted to, and inspired by, their work (“I want to do this”), committed (“I am dedicated to the success of what I am doing”), and fascinated (“I love what I am doing”). Engaged employees care about the future of the company and are willing to invest the discretionary effort – exceeding duty’s call – to see that the organization succeeds. Rutledge urged managers to implement retention plans so that they could keep their top talent. According to [8], employee engagement can be achieved through the creation of an organizational environment where positive emotions such as involvement and pride are encouraged, resulting in improved organizational performance, lower employee turnover and better health. [9] argued that when individuals feel positive emotions, they are able to think in 2
a more flexible, open-minded way and are also likely to feel greater self-control, cope more effectively and be less defensive in the workplace. 1.2 PROBLEM STATEMENT [10] and [11] state that employee engagement is on the decline and there is a deepening disengagement among employees today. In the time of economic downturn, engaged employee with full workforce can make differences of survival or success of the organization [1]. Employee engagement has been defined in many different ways and the definitions and measures often sound like other better known and established constructs like organizational commitment and organizational citizenship behavior [8]. According to [12], the constructs and dimensions of the employee engagement are in the development stage. The specific employee engagement is unclear and there is no acceptable constructs. In the other words researchers and reviewers do not use the same components to describe employee engagement. In the above concerned, this study is significant in the development of employee engagement constraint and to find its relationship with job satisfaction. In relation to the above problem statement, the objectives of this study are to find the components of employee engagement, the components of job satisfaction and to study the relationships between employee engagement and job satisfaction. 1.3 RESEARCH QUESTIONS To provide better insights into the areas that enable employer to improve the management of their employees, the following research questions were formulated: i. What are the components of employee engagement? ii. What are the components of job satisfaction? iii. Is there a relationship between employee engagement and job satisfaction? 1.4 SCOPE OF STUDY This study was conducted at an oleo chemical factory located at Rawang town, in the state of Selangor, Malaysia. The population of this study is the production operators and supervisors. All the identified eighty (80) production operators and supervisors were distributed the survey questionnaire to answer. 1.5 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY Current researches are difficult to generalize its findings on components of employee engagement. Thus, this study has the potential to provide awareness to the company on the components of employee engagement and improvement to job satisfaction and the relationship between them. Such study will also be able to provide new evidence and reference material to researchers who are interested to further delve in this area.
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1.6 RESEARCH FRAMEWORK The research framework for this study is presented in Figure 1.1. Employee Engagement
Job Satisfaction
- Communication
- Intrinsic
- Leadership
- Extrinsic
- Employee involvement - Commitment Figure 1.1: Research Framework 3.0 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 3.1 Type of Study This is a cross-sectional study. Survey method was employed to collect the data to answer the research questions. It is conducted among the targeted population through selfadministrated questionnaire. The unit of anlaysis is the production operators and the supervisors at their workplace where they answered the specified questions in the questionnaire. 3.2 Population All the identified eighty (80) production operators and supervisors were given the survey questionnaire for them to answer. However, a total of 66 of them responded to this study and were used in this study. This gives a response rate of 82.5 per cent. 3.3 Questionnaire Design and Measurement The survey questionnaire form for this study (refer to Appendix A attached) is made up of three parts. Part A is questions requiring respondent to answer about their background. Part B are questions about the respondent perception about their pperceived employee engagement at their workplace covering items on leadership, communication, commitment, and employee involvement. Finally, Part C comprises of questions related to job satisfaction. The respondents were required to circle on the appropriate score base on a scale of 1 to 5 for each of the statement of their level of agreement of employee engagement and job satisfaction respectively. 4.0 ANALYSES AND FINDINGS 4.1 Profile of Responding Companies Table 1.0 tabulates the profile of all the 66 employees that had responded to the research survey. A total of 54 respondents are male and the remaining 12 are female. Eithteen of the respondents are of age between 21 to 25 years of age, 43 of them between 26 to 40 and the remaining 5 are over 41 years of age. Forty-five respondents are production operators with 10 being the production supervisors. A total of 5 respondents possessed primary education, 46 with secondary education, 9 possessed diploma and the remaining 6 of them possessed degree qualification. Twenty-nine of them are single and 37 are married. A total of 19 respondents have service of less than 3 years in the Company, 39 with 4 to 10 years and the remaining 8 have worked for more than 10 years with the Company. 4
Demographic (N=66) 1
Categories
Frequency
Percent
54 12 18 43 5 45 21 5 46 9 6 29 37 19 39 8
81.8 18.2 27.3 65.2 7.5 68.2 31.8 7.6 69.7 13.6 9.1 43.9 56.1 28.8 59.1 12.1
Gender
Male Female 2 Age 21 – 25 years 26-40 years Over 41 year 3 Respondent’s job position Operator Supervisor 4 Respondent’s education background Primary School Secondary Sch. Diploma Degree 5 Marital status Single Married 6 Number of years of service Less than 3 4-10 years More than 10 Table 1.0 General Characteristics of Respondents
4.2 Factor and Reliability Analysis All of the items on employee engagement and job satisfaction were subjected to factor analysis using Varimax rotation and reliability analysis. The number or items and description of these dimensions are shown in Table 2. Cronbach's alpha was used to assess the Dimensions of employee engagement and job satisfaction 1.Leadership
Number of Cronbach’s Items Description of Dimension Alpha 4
Transformational Leadership
0.667
2
Transactional Leadership
0.720
2
Peers Communication
0.602
2
Supervisor subordinate Communication
0.813
3.Commitment
4
Employee Commitment
0.807
4.Employee Involvement
4
Employee Job Involvement
0.783
5. Job Satisfaction
5
Extrinsic Job Satisfaction
0.819
5
Intrinsic Job Satisfaction
0.690
2.Communication
Table 2.0 Reliablity of measurements: Dimensions of Employee Engagement and Job Satisfaction
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consistency of the entire scale. Reliability scores of those in the range of = 0.70 are considered acceptable [13]. The items on employee engagement yielded 6 dimensions and were aptly named intrinsic leadership ( = 0.667), transactional leadership ( = 0.720), peers communication ( = 0.602), supervisor subordinate communication ( = 0.813), employee commitment ( = 0.807), and employee job involvement ( = 0.783). The items of job satisfaction yielded 2 dimensions. These are extrinsic job satisfaction ( = 0.819) and intrinsic job satisfaction ( = 0.690). All the above reliability coefficients results are acceptable. 4.3 Correlations Analysis The correlations result between the variables studied is tabulated in Table 3.0. It shows that
Correlations (n=66)
1
Variables Transformational Leadership
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
1
2
Transactional Leadership
.41**
1
3
Peers Communication
.46**
.11
1
.54**
.29*
.33**
1
4
Supervisor subordinate Communication
5
Employee Commitment
.44**
.27*
.53**
.54**
1
6
Employee Job Involvement
.29*
.20
.42**
.39**
.64**
1
7
Extrinsic Job Satisfaction
.59**
.42**
.34**
.37**
.33**
.31*
1
8
Intrinsic Job Satisfaction
.34**
.14
.49**
.24*
.53**
.36**
.22
*. Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed). **. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed). Table 3.0: Correlations between Variables all the components of employee engagement, transformational leadership, transactional leadership, peers communication, supervisor subordinate communication, employee commitment, employee job involvement, are correlated with extrinsic employee satisfaction. However, all the components of employee engagement except transactional leadership are correlated with intrinsic leadership. It is observed that the extrinsic and intrinsic components of job satisfaction are not correlated. 4.4 REGRESSION ANALYSIS For regression analysis, the threshold values of condition indices were usually in the range of 15 to 30 and the common variance values of factors (VIF) were from 1 to the cut-off of not to exceed 10 were used. Threshold value of 2.5 was used to check for outlier’s case and those outside the range were dropped from the regression analysis. All these were done to ensure that the results of regression are valid. 6
4.4.1 Regression between Employee Engagement and Extrinsic Job Satisfaction The result of regression of perceived uses of employee engagement and employee extrinsic job satisfaction is tabulated in Table 4.0. It indicates that R2 change is .325 and the R Square
.570
Adjusted R Square
.256
Change Statistics R Square Change
F Change
.325
4.728
df1 df2 6
59
Sig. F Change .001
DurbinWatson
1.608
Table 4.0: Regression between Employee Engagement and Extrinsic Job Satisfaction relationship is significant at p
