An assessment of the predictors and outcomes of employee engagement in the Zimbabwean building societies

Abstract

Employee engagement has become a subject of interest to the majority of business leaders and human resource practitioners. Despite this, there remains a paucity of critical academic literature on the subject, and relatively little is known about how employee engagement can be influenced by management. The purpose of the study was to establish the predictors and outcomes of employee engagement for the Zimbabwean Building Societies. Due to poor people practices the Building Societies were experiencing productivity deficits, high staff turnover, loss of market share, high work related accidents, to mention but a few. These symptoms suggested that there was a colossal managerial challenge of employee disengagement which manifested itself in various forms. While it may also be clear that an organisation needs an engaged workforce what also needed to be answered is whether or not rising engagement levels would result in improved or better organisational performance as well. Literature revealed that the predictors of employee engagement are not exhaustible and therefore there is no one size fit all groups of employee engagement predictors unique to a particular sector, country or region. The group of predictors selected for the study include work output, people philosophy, total rewards, well-being, business alignment and employee growth. Similarly literature has revealed that employee engagement is associated with positive outcomes. The associated outcomes considered in the study include, customer service, productivity, employee retention and absenteeism and discretionary effort. The study was quantitative in nature, and a survey research was adopted. Participants were randomly selected and a structured questionnaire was used to collect data. The research findings revealed that work outputs, business alignment and total rewards had a significant explanatory power on employee engagement, whilst employee engagement significantly predicted it’s associated outcomes. Though less emphasis maybe given to people philosophy, well-being and employee growth, it is also important for the Building Societies not to shelve them because employees are unpredictable, unique and that times change. It is important to allude that corporate leaders need to value employee engagement the same way they emphasize on the attainment of corporate targets so that the benefits of employee engagement are realised.