Business Research Methodology Submitted to: Professor Charu Upadhyaya

CHANGING DIMENSIONS OF EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENTEKDISH KAUR – 68

ANURAG SAHA – 129MUKTI SHETTY - 154

M RAVISH MALGI – 208

ABSTRACT

Employee engagement is a vast construct that touches almost all the parts of human resource facets. If any part of Human Resource is not addressed in appropriate manner, employees fail fully to engage themselves in their job in response to such kind of mismanagement. Motivated and engaged employees tend to contribute more in terms of organizational productivity and support on maintaining higher commitment level leading to higher customer satisfaction. This paper makes an attempt to study the different dimensions of employee engagement with the help of Primary Data collection. This can be used to provide an overview and references on some of the conceptual and practical work undertaken in the areas of employee engagement practices.

KEYWORDS: Employee engagement, job satisfaction, performance management, new dimensions, works culture.

INTRODUCTION

Employee Engagement refers to positive feelings held by the employees about their jobs and also the motivation and efforts they put into work. It leads to positive employee behavior that leads to organizational success. Engaged employees care about the future of the company and are willing to invest their efforts to make their organization grow leap and bounds.

Our paper clearly shows how the transition of employee engagement practices that has moved from employee involvement to employee satisfaction and finally towards employee engagement.

How Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs influences Employee Engagement

Maslow argued that individuals needed to satisfy basic needs such as warmth, safety and security in order to then realize their own personal growth and development. The same theory can be applied to how an organization treats and engages with their staff.

For many people the basic needs of a job are that the salary allows them live a lifestyle they have wished for. Having a sense of financial independence is innate in almost all of us with very few people brave enough to run a risk and disregard monetary reward in favor of other factors. For many of us this is SURVIVAL.

Next comes a sense of stability and what is commonly known as job SECURITY. Given the volatile nature of the job market, most people fear the thought of losing their job and the prospect of having to join the unemployment line. While the concept of a ‘job for life’ is all but

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Business Research Methodology Submitted to: Professor Charu Upadhyaya

dead, people generally crave security and structure in the workplace-and much like salary would put this above other aspects of a job.

Let’s face it while we may like to think we are motivated by other criteria, the two questions we often ask when reading jobs ads are “what’s the pay” and “is it a permanent position”. When these two things don’t meet our needs the job instantly becomes less attractive to us.

Many larger employers have no issues satisfying those needs especially when it comes to higher level positions. A big company recognizes the importance of attracting the best talent. But what do you do once you have them? This is where Maslow’s needs theory really comes into play.

The next level in the needs hierarchy is a sense of BELONGING and holding trust and acceptance within a group. Organizational structures generally follow a team principle so creating a sense of camaraderie should just come naturally right? As the graph demonstrates, employees need to feel like they are part of something bigger but that they are also valued and their contribution is valuable to the business. This can only be achieved by instilling those beliefs from the top-down whilst also creating a sense of parity between staff and senior management.

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Business Research Methodology Submitted to: Professor Charu Upadhyaya

This leads us on to the thing that really enables individuals to engage with their job and the company they work for-a sense that their contribution is IMPORTANT. This feeling of significance, especially within a large company is absolutely vital if a member of staff is going to feel any real affinity and advocacy towards their paymasters. If you make your staff feel as though they are integral to the company’s values and goals then that’s when you have reached the huge engagement holy grail.

But how do you achieve this? And how do you take engagement even further? One of the key things as an employer is displaying a genuine concern and interest in your staffs progression and development within the company. Most people harbor some kind of ambition and want to move forwards so the important role of the organization is to harness that ambition and facilitate an individual’s growth. When employees have access to opportunities this is meeting their SELF-ACTUALIZATION needs and will enable them to be highly successful and become an asset to the organization, inspiring others along the way.

But how do you determine where on the needs spectrum your employees actually are? The simplest and most effective way of finding out is to carry out a tailored staff survey based around how your employees perceive their job and the values they attach to being part of the organization as hole. A tailored survey will not only give you this information but also allow you to rank your staff on the needs hierarchy and provide detailed guidelines on the actions required to move them up the ladder from ‘just surviving’ to highly engaged, productive individuals.

To gain a competitive edge, organizations are turning to effective HR practice for employee commitment. Organizations are moving forward to attract, develop and retain talent for success. It is important for them to satisfy HR needs and to secure HR commitment that foster a culture of employee engagement for organizational growth and sustainability.

The challenge today is not just retaining talented people but fully engaging them capturing their minds and hearts at each stage of their work lives.

OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

To study the changing dimensions in employee engagement To study the impact of employee engagement activities on employee satisfaction for

long term retention. To measure the impact of work culture on employee performance. To study the benchmark practices in employee engagement

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Business Research Methodology Submitted to: Professor Charu Upadhyaya

SCOPE OF THE STUDY

The scope of studying Employee Engagement as topic was to understand the level of engagement that the employee is during Employee Engagement activities and also to understand if such activities act as a goal of company which ensures growth. So here we targeted 34 respondents working in private sectors not catering to a specific industry as Employee Engagement is a companywide program to enhance employee involvement. It is a technique and largely a work improvement too.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Mr. D. Mehta and Mr. N.K. Mehta conducted a research on “UNDERSTANDING THE BASIC CONCEPT OF EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT AND TO STUDY THE DIFFERENT DIMENSIONS OF EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT”. This paper explains how the concept of employee engagement is a measurement of how happy employees are with their respective jobs, working environment and how efficient their performance levels are in an organization. This paper is based upon review of literature and secondary data collected from various websites, journals, magazines, newspapers and reference books. Literature review has shown prior research work done in this area. After reviewing research, it can be concluded that high levels of employee engagement may lead to improved employee commitment & involvement towards respective jobs and thus creating a motivated workforce –that will work together to achieve the common goals of the organization.

Ekta Sinha, Asst. Professor, Uka Tarsadia University, Gujarat performed a research to measure the satisfaction level of employees with special reference to KRIBHCO, Surat. According to her, in order to sustain in such a competitive market it’s very important to retain good employees that contribute towards the attainment of Organizational goal and customer satisfaction as well. She went ahead with sample size of 150 employees based on systematic sampling. Data was collected based on structured questionnaire method on Likert five point scale for 23 major variables which were reduced to five factors namely Empowerment & Work Environment, Working Relation, Salary & Future prospects, Training & work Involvement and Job Rotation. By her research she found the employees to be satisfied on the basis of above said five factors. Chi-Square tests were performed to view the satisfaction level of the employees against each major variables found after dimension reduction. She also found out that a few important factors that normally contribute to the employee satisfaction, didn’t have much influence on employee satisfaction in KRIBHCO, Surat, such as: welfare measures, role clarity, freedom of decision making and recognition at work. The innovativeness and creativeness of employees also took a back seat as far as satisfaction level was concerned

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Business Research Methodology Submitted to: Professor Charu Upadhyaya

Mr. T.M. Gunaraja conducted a research on “ORGANIZATIONAL CORPORATE CULTURE ON EMPLOYEE PERFORMANCE”. The purpose of the research paper is to measure empirically the effectiveness of organizational corporate culture on employee performance as well as employee productivity using Indian banking industry. A survey research design was adopted. The population consists of the workers from the Chennai banking sector. All the data was collected through questionnaires. Analysis was done using chi-square test and it revealed that majority of the respondents strongly agree that corporate culture has effect on employees job performance and productivity. It is recommended that banks or corporates that are interested in changing their culture in order to develop their employees job performance.

MS. Leena P. Singh (Assistant Professor – ME & HR) and MS. Binita Pandita (Assistant Professor – OB & HR) conducted research on “EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT IN INDIAN SENARIO – A CASE STUDY OF TATA TELE SERVICES LIMITED (TTSL)”. The paper shows insights on how TATA TELE SERVICES had developed Ten Cs of employee engagement i.e.CONNECT, CAREER, CLARITY, CONVEY, CONGRATULATE, CONTRIBUTE, CONTROL, COLLBORATE, CREDITIBILITY & CONFIDENCE. This they analyzed by studying the organization with the help of Descriptive Research method. Tata Teleservices has an excellent reward and recognition policy and a career progression policy which shows the connect parameter. It has different programs to congratulate its employees. Further it also provides a platform to the employees to collaborate and increase the interaction between superior and subordinates. The company is high on meeting ethical standards for which it has an ethical officer to deal with the local issues. It is suggested here that the company can clarify the roles of the employees from the very first step by giving them a realistic job preview and conducting a strong induction and orientation program as a part of the performance management system. Strategies can be suggested to form some more communication forums including team meetings and monthly updates on corporate goals etc. to add more to the credibility component. The paper attempts to do an analysis of employee engagement strategies adopted by the organization on the basis of the widely accepted Ten Cs Model of Employee Engagement.

Dr. Padmakumar Ram, Director of Experiential Education & Associate Professor of School of Management, New York Institute of Technology & Dr. Gantasala V. Prabhakar, Department Assessment Director & Assistant Professor, School of Management, New York Institute of Technology, has researched on the topic ‘’ The role of employee engagement in work-related outcomes’’. According to them employee engagement has become an important topic in recent years among consulting firms. In this research they have found out the preceding’s & the consequences of Employee Engagement in Jordanian Industry. A snowball sample size of 310 were taken and Karl Pearson Correlation coefficient was used to analyze the data collected. It can be found out that by using matrix of engagement predictors organizations can increase motivation, retention and productivity.

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Business Research Methodology Submitted to: Professor Charu Upadhyaya

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

The targeted population was employees in Private Sector not catering to specific industry as Private Sectors are known to be proactive when it comes to undertaking various company related initiatives. A questionnaire was compiled taking into account the various practices of Employee Engagement which all employee would be familiar to, its meaning and interpretation.

Type of Research

UniverseTools of Data CollectionPrimary and Secondary Data

Profiles of RespondentsSample TypeSample Size

Descriptive ResearchCasual ResearchAll the Private Sector CompaniesQuestionnaire and online form for Data CollectionPrimary Data by collecting using Survey MethodSecondary Data obtained via research papersAge Group of Employees 22 – 50 yearsConvenience Sampling34 Respondents

1. PROBLEM DEFINITION:

As organizations pay more attention to employee engagement and Human Resource Department professionals are trying their best to fill in the gap between the needs of an organization and the ability for professionals to respond effectively through the employee engagement activities. Organizations need HRD professionals who have well-researched, effective and meaningful approaches to creating, building and maintaining employee engagement and practitioners are finding ways to improve their current employee engagement activities.

The Problems faced during our research were, our sample size was restricted to 34 therefore we could not evaluate employee engagement activities in the different organizations on a larger scale. After distributing our questionnaire to various people, we received only 34 respondents and after analyzing the data collected it shows us that the respondents who have filled the questionnaire are not happy with the Employee Engagement activities performed by their respective organizations.

We noticed that Employee performance partly depends on the employee engagement activities by the organization, and organizations are improving and adapting to the latest activities, hence our main problem was to study the changing dimensions of Employee Engagement activities whether it affects employee performance or not.

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Business Research Methodology Submitted to: Professor Charu Upadhyaya

2. HYPOTHESIS

a) To study the impact of employee engagement activities on employee satisfaction for long term retention.

Ho : There is no significant impact of Employee Engagement activities on Employee Satisfaction

H1: There is significant impact of Employee Engagement activities on Employee Satisfaction

b) To measure the impact of work culture on employee performance. Ho : There is no significant impact of Work culture on Employee Performance H1: There is significant impact of Work culture on Employee Performance

DATA ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION

1. T – Test: Paired Two Sample for Means

Variable 1 Variable 2Mean 3.405882353 3.5Variance 0.873903743 0.863636364

Observations 34 34Pearson Correlation 0.51275055Hypothesized Mean Difference 0Df 33t Stat -0.596435428P(T<=t) one-tail 0.277477075t Critical one-tail 1.692360309P(T<=t) two-tail 0.55495415t Critical two-tail 2.034515297

Interpretation:

In an organization Employee Engagement activities should bring a difference on Employee Satisfaction but through our survey we interpret that Employee Engagement activities does not bring a significant difference on Employee Satisfaction which further means that the level of Employee Engagement activities of these companies should improve which will lead to a higher satisfied employee and it will improve the productivity of the employee resulting the organization to achieve its goals easily.

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Business Research Methodology Submitted to: Professor Charu Upadhyaya

2. T -Test: Paired Two Sample for Means

Variable 1 Variable 2Mean 2.5392157 2.4705882Variance 1.1381462 0.4317687Observations 34 34Pearson Correlation 0.8566418Hypothesized Mean Difference 0Df 33t Stat 0.6588581P(T<=t) one-tail 0.2572791t Critical one-tail 1.6923603P(T<=t) two-tail 0.5145582t Critical two-tail 2.0345153

Interpretation

An organizations Work culture should bring a difference on Employee Performance but through our survey we interpret that the work culture does not bring a significant difference on Employee Performance which further means that work culture of the organization should improve which will automatically improve or increase the level of Employee Performance, thereby achieving the organizational goals.

Interpretation: As per our survey the organization allows 64.7 % employees to contribute in the decision making process which shows that the organization follows a two way communication process.

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Business Research Methodology Submitted to: Professor Charu Upadhyaya

We tried understanding the various dimensions of employee engagement activities carried out by the Private Sectors out of which we analyzed that Rewards and Recognition Programs is highly carried out by the organizations. 38.2% s voted for R&R activity which is either on monetary or non-monetary terms. Second highest activity is L&D in the organization with 20.6% and rest 14.7% to Communication Practices and Performance Management each. And 11.8% is voted for Employee Care and well-being.

NO YES0

5

10

15

20

25

Count of Does your company treat all em-ployees equally?

Interpretation: As per our survey in maximum organizations the company treats all the employees equally.

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Business Research Methodology Submitted to: Professor Charu Upadhyaya

FINDINGS

A Majority of respondents strongly agree that corporate culture has effect on employee’s job performance.

Employees also agree that corporate culture decide the productivity level of the organization.

The paper indicates that employee engagement activities do not play a pivotal role in employee satisfaction. This statement is backed by the calculation, where the calculated value -0.5964 is way lesser than the table value of 2.0345

This research paper also shows that there is a negative relationship between corporate work culture and employee’s job performance. This is proved in the calculation where it shows that calculated value 0.6588 is lesser than the table value of 2.0345

We have found out from this research that there doesn’t seem to be a healthy relationship between employee engagement activities and employee satisfaction. And so as per the calculations, our null hypothesis [H0] is accepted & the alternate hypothesis [H1] gets rejected

CONCLUSION

In the current economy, where job seekers are accepting positions below their qualification level and most employees are just happy to have a job, it’s easy to let the importance of a good corporate culture fall by the wayside. But due to poor work culture & employee engagement activities the employee performance goes down which harms the organization in the long run and although at the moment managers can easily attract top talent, if they ignore the importance of a good working environment, they’re likely to see a spike in attrition the moment economic conditions improve.

RECOMMENDATIONS

State a clear mission, and then live it daily. Build a culture where everyone is part of the team.

Develop a strategic plan that’s understood and embraced by all levels of the organization.

Have a good communication channel. Be flexible to change. Empower and trust. Reward and Recognition

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Business Research Methodology Submitted to: Professor Charu Upadhyaya

Annexure – Survey Questionnaire

We the students of “LALALAJPATRAI INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT COLLEGE”, are presently doing a project on “CHANGING DIMESNSIONS IN EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT”. We request you to fill in the below questionnaire and assure you that the data generated shall be kept confidential.

1. Does your company conduct Employee Engagement activities?

YES NO

2. What is the Employee Engagement score of your organization?

1 2 3 4 5

3. Changes noticed by you in Employee Engagement activities since you have joined? ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

4. Which are the trending Employee Engagement activities adopted by your organization?

Job rotation Job enrichmentJob re-engineeringJob enlargement

All of aboveNone of these

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Business Research Methodology Submitted to: Professor Charu Upadhyaya

5. To study the impact of Employee Engagement activities on Employee Satisfaction for Long Term Retention (On the scale of 1 - LOWEST to 5 - HIGHEST please give your ratings on the below factors)

1 2 3 4 5

Your happiness level at your workplace?

How often do you know what is expected from you at your work?

How likely would you leave for a raise from another company?

How likely you had opportunities at work to learn and grow?

How likely you are satisfied with the level of recognition given at work?

Employee job satisfaction is a top priority of senior management

6. To measure the impact of Organisation's Work culture on Employee Performance. Please share your views on below factors.

Strongly agree

(1)

Agree

(2)

Neutral

(3)

Disagree

(4)

Strongly Disagree

(5)

My organization work culture is sustainable

Two way communication is encouraged by my organization

Are your engagement activities able to create the employees to align their individual objectives with the organizational objectives?The work culture of my organization supports a balance between work and personal life

Workplace issues are resolved fairly and quickly

My pay matches my job performance

Employees are recognized for good work performance

The performance incentives are meaningful

Kindly share your agreement views for the below mentioned factors YES NO

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Business Research Methodology Submitted to: Professor Charu Upadhyaya

Does your organization let you contribute in the decision making process?

Does your company treat all employees equally?

7. Out of all the below practices which one is popular among the employees?

Rewards & recognitions

Learning &Development

Communication practice

Employee care & well being

Performance management

8. To study the Benchmark Practises in Employee Engagement please mention the level of involvement among the employees

Highly engaged

Moderately engaged

Slightly engaged

Disengaged

Rewards & recognition

Learning and development

Communication practise

Employee care and well being

Performance management

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Business Research Methodology Submitted to: Professor Charu Upadhyaya

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Maslows Need of Hierarchy http://www.scancapture.co.uk/how-maslows-hierarchy-of-needs-influences-employee-engagement/

2. References for research paper: Workculture RP : http://www.iosrjournals.org/iosr-jbm/papers/Vol16-issue11/Version-6/

E0161163842.pdf Recent Trends in Employee Engagement : http://www.aon.com/attachments/human-capital-

consulting/2013_Trends_in_Global_Employee_Engagement_Report.pdf Employee Engagement : Key to Performance of Organization

http://www.myopinionatbesix.com/besixsurvey/media/besix-survey/pdf/4.-employee-engagement-the-key-to-improving-performance.pdf

TATA case study: http://www.driems.ac.in/mba/Download/8%20EMPLOYEE%20ENGAGEMENT%20IN%20INDIAN%20SCENERIO-%20A%20CASE%20STUDY%20OF%20TATA%20TELE%20SERVICES%20LIMITED%20(TTSL).pdf

3. Prof. B. N Mishra nd Prof S. K Tripathy (2011), “Employee Engagement and HR initiative” , Himalaya Publishing House

4. Tripti Jha, “Work Culture and Employee Engagement”, Himalaya Publishing House5. Sushovit Mishra and R.N. Misra, “Employee Engagement (An Imperative for organizational success)”,

Himalaya Publishing House.6. Dr. Mahendra Kumar Mohanty, “Employee Engagement and Retention Strategy”, Himalaya Publishing

House.7. Dr. Anitha Ramachanber and Jayantee (Mukherjee) Saha, “HR and Enhancement of people and

capability”, Excel Books Publications.

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