A STUDY ON EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT AND ITS IMPACT ON JOB SATISFACTION

Abstract

The concept of employee engagement has become one of the most actively debated concepts in contemporary human resource management in part due to organisations starting to realise that engaged and motivated employees can be (relatively) directly converted into better business results. The current paper explores the ways in which the workplace engagement influences the overall satisfaction of their jobs among professionals employed in the Indian corporate environment with a specific focus on the post-pandemic, hybrid period. A survey questionnaire was distributed via Google Form and fifty responses were obtained as valid through the employment at IT and ITeS, BFSI, manufacturing, retail, medical and education. The measure was constructed based on four main themes, which included demographic profile, organisational context, drivers of engagement and self-rated levels of engagement and satisfaction. The data has been analyzed through frequency analysis, tabulation using percentage and simple cross tabulation which have been supplemented with Likert-scale items wherever appropriate with attitudes. The results imply that engagement is positively predicted by career growth, recognition and quality of manager support with the least frequently identified factor being compensation as a constituent of definition of satisfaction. Approximately eighty four percent of the respondents indicated that they self-rated themselves as highly or moderately engaged and a larger proportion of the respondents indicated minimally low or very high levels of overall job satisfaction. Eighty per cent of the respondents believed that the increased engagement results in the increased job satisfaction thereby justifying the main hypothesis of the research. Perceptions of dissatisfaction in terms of workload, a lack of upward career advancement and a perceived disparity between recognition seemed to be most prevalent. This is complemented by the report giving a list of recommendations including structured recognition, transparent career frameworks, manager-capability training and a more frequent feedback culture which are all practical levers that HR teams in mid-to-large Indian organisations can tug.