What Are The Factors That Affect Employee Engagement

Chapter Three:

Literature Review

Introduction:

An engaged employee experiences a blend of job satisfaction, organisational commitment, job involvement and feelings of empowerment. It is believed that historically, changes to the world trade market in the 1980s and 1990s increased organisations interest in achieving competitive advantage . They began investing in concepts such as employee engagement. Gallup conducted studies on employee engagement during the 1980s, they felt their research proved that engaged employees are more ‘productive, profitable, customer-focused, safer, and more likely to stay with an organization’ (Gallup). Why study engagement? Actively disengaged workers were described by Cataldo, (2011) as “the most damaging employees

A review of research conducted by Ruyle, Eichinger & De Meuse (2009) identified the following 11 main factors that affect Employee Engagement:

1. Strategic Alignment – the employees work aligned with the business strategy

2. Trust in Senior Leadership – Employees believe in, trust and follow senior leaders

3. Immediate Manager Working Relationship – the quality of the management team directly impacts the performance and retention of employees

4. Peer Culture – effective peer relationships leads to highly engaged, productive employees and drives organisation performance

5. Personal Influence – employees feel that they can innovate new ideas and that their efforts will be recognised

6. Nature of Career – providing employees with meaningful career paths

7. Career Support – providing employees with the opportunity to develop through assignments or key jobs

8. Nature of the Job – providing employees with jobs that are designed to challenge them; that are a good fit with employees skills, qualifications,

Clark and Postel-Vinay (2009) showed empirically that permanently contracted workers felt more secure about their jobs than temporary workers. This affected permanently contracted employee’s well-being and job satisfaction and engagement levels positively. A review of Sverke et al (2002) as well as Knabe and Ratzel’s research (2010) showed that workers with perceived higher job security levels had significantly higher job satisfaction and engagement levels.

However some previous research on the matter of fixed term contracts and workers engagement shows no specifically clear pattern between engagement levels and workers contracts. Previous reviews of this research by Jahn et al (2012 P F116) and de Cuyper et al (2008 p26) have stated that the evidence is ‘mixed’ or ‘inconsistent and inconclusive’. This study aims to show categorically that having a fixed term contract in comparison to a permanent contact decreases workers engagement