Employee engagement is the main topic of discussion among researchers and managers for over 24 years. Managing employee engagement is critical to the success of an organization, but 85% of manager's struggle with engaging employees. The purpose of this single case study was to explore employee engagement strategies that credit union managers use to increase productivity and organizational effectiveness. Expectancy theory was used to explore employee engagement, performance, and motivation of people in the workplace. Data were collected using semistructured interviews and observations with 6 credit union managers and company documents using thematic coding. Analysis of the data revealed that, among these credit union managers, effective communication, training and coaching, and rewards and recognition are management strategies required to improve employee engagement, productivity and organizational effectiveness. These findings may provide credit union managers with guidelines to measure and evaluate the effectiveness of engagement strategies to fit the culture of the credit union. The results of this study may provide credit union managers with guidelines on the causes of disengagement and how employee engagement could be improved within the organization. Researchers may consider conducting a multiple case study that include other credit unions within Louisiana to understand the similarities and differences between strategies used to engage employees. The results of this study may impact positive social change by improving the competitive environment of the credit union industry through engagement within community and society.

Nearly half of all frontline leaders in U.S. federal agencies during 2015 were unprepared to improve employee engagement. The lack of successful strategies to improve employee engagement in federal government agencies has led to decreased operational performance. Guided by the employee engagement theory as the conceptual framework, the single case study design was selected to explore the successful strategies that frontline leaders use to improve employee engagement at a federal agency in central Maryland. Data collection involved face-to-face, semistructured interviews with 4 frontline leaders and federal agency documents indicating employee engagement. The data analysis process included Yin's 5-step method and revealed 2 major themes: effective organizational communication, and enhancing employee development. Employee engagement improves if frontline leaders use strategies that involve effective organizational communication and enhancing employee development to promote open, transparent communication, teamwork, collaboration, skills development, incentives, rewards, and improved work-life balance. The implications for social change include the potential to implement successful engagement strategies in the federal agency, because employees who are more engaged generate better performance and productivity, build valuable work relationships, enhance career, and increase wages to improve the well-being and prosperity of themselves and their families. Improved performance and productivity could help to lower operating cost at the federal agency; thus, creating opportunities to reinvest savings into local community outreach programs that contribute to healthy living, well-being, and economic prosperity.

In the higher education industry, employee engagement is crucial to the survival of organizations because engaged employees increase profits, productivity, and sustainability. The purpose of this single case study was to explore leadership strategies that leaders of higher education organizations used to promote employee engagement. Expectancy theory was the conceptual framework for this study. Four leaders of a higher education organization in the southeastern United States were purposefully selected for the study based upon their experience implementing effective leadership strategies to promote employee engagement. Data were collected through face-to-face semistructured interviews, direct observation, and review of publicly available organizational documents. Data were transcribed and coded for common patterns and themes, then member-checked to reinforce the validity of the interpretations. Three themes emerged from the data analysis: engaging through communication, developing engagement strategies, and engaging through recognition and rewards. The findings from this study might contribute to social change by providing higher education leaders with strategies to promote a sustainable workforce, competitive edge, and increase productivity and profitability.

Title: Employee Engagement - Sporting goods retail stores in Gävle. Level: Second cycle, Final assignment for Master Degree in Business Administration Author: Maria Claudia Sun Han Cordova and Camille Besnault Supervisor: Maria Fregidou-Malama and Pär Vilhelmson Date: 2013 - May   Purpose: This study examines employee engagement. For that matter, we investigate the factors that influence employee engagement in sporting goods retail stores, and the impact of relationships interactions between the team and the manager.   Method: This study was conducted through a deductive approach. The data was collected from two sporting goods retail stores: Stadium and Intersport, located in Gävle, Sweden; through questionnaires for both store’s employees, and face-to-face interviews to the store managers and employees. Finally, data was analyzed with the programs Microsoft Excel and SPSS.   Result  &  Conclusions:  We  found  out  that  sporting  goods  retail  store’s  employees  were mainly motivated by personal factors, job satisfaction factors and intrinsic factors, such as belongingness to the team. It appears that employees give significance importance to the relationship  they  have  with  their  manager  and  coworkers.  We  also  found  out  that  the relationship with the customers has a huge impact on employee engagement. Suggestions for future research: This research was conducted in a geographic area in a specific  country  (Sweden).  Additionally,  it  is  based  on  the  sporting  goods  retail  market. Thus, it could be interesting to extend this research to others sectors and markets, or to do the same research in another country. Contribution  of  the  thesis:  While  theories  about  employee  engagement  consider  the relationship between employees and co-workers, and employees and manager as important for  employee  engagement,  we  empirically  discovered  that  the  relationship  between employees and customers influences employee engagement significantly. Key  words:  Job  satisfaction,  employee  engagement,  sporting  goods  retails,  motivation, relationships.

The use of social networks, as a business tool is becoming more and more frequent in this day and age. Companies are exploring various ways in which to optimise social media in gaining a competitive advantage. Social platforms give organisations the ability to communicate better with their staff, to market their products more effectively to potential customers and also to drive behaviour within the workplace. Employee engagement, sense of belonging and organisational commitment can be considered as components of employee well-being. Companies are investing large amounts of resources to lower employee turnover by creating an environment that is favourable for the employee. Within the call centre environment a well established technological infrastructure exists. This creates a setting that is very prone to launch a social media platform. The average age of employees is also quite young, which in most cases means that they understand and interact on social networks with ease. The applications for social media also seems to become second nature for younger generations and this also speaks volumes as to implement social network strategies within working environments. The experimental research design included a pre- and post assessment with samples of 74 employees for the pre-test and 36 employees for the post test. A qualitative and quantitative approach was utilised in order to gain better insight of what employees define as social networks and what effect it has on employees. To measure the various constructs, the following instruments were utilised: Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES), a self-constructed Sense of Belonging Questionnaire and the Affective Organisational Commitment Questionnaire (AOC). The results indicated that the exposure to a social network resulted in lower levels of employee engagement and lower levels of sense of belonging. The exposure to a social network however increased the levels of participants? affective organisational commitment. / Thesis (M.B.A.)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2011.

Employee engagement is a relatively new construct in academic literature and an increasingly popular idea in practice. Proponents of employee engagement claim a strong positive relationship between engagement and business success, both at the firm and individual levels, and outcomes including retention, productivity, profitability, and customer loyalty and satisfaction. Despite numerous academic and practitioner publications on employee engagement, no consistently-accepted conceptualization of the construct or its sub-dimensions exists, and there is an ongoing debate regarding whether the employee engagement construct is a new idea or a re-hashing of old ideas. Similarly, no consistently-accepted tool to measure employee engagement exists. In the absence of consistent conceptualization and measurement, relationships between employee engagement and its antecedents and outcomes cannot be empirically tested. Drawing on prior literature and practitioner interviews, the present study defines employee engagement as an attitude towards one’s work at one’s company, comprising feelings of vigor, dedication, and absorption; cognitive appraisals of psychological empowerment; and motivation to act, both within role and extra role, in the service of the organization’s goals. In addition, the present study validates a self-report instrument to measure this conceptualization of employee engagement, using construct and scale validation procedures accepted in marketing and information systems literature.

The use of social networks, as a business tool is becoming more and more frequent in this day and age. Companies are exploring various ways in which to optimise social media in gaining a competitive advantage. Social platforms give organisations the ability to communicate better with their staff, to market their products more effectively to potential customers and also to drive behaviour within the workplace. Employee engagement, sense of belonging and organisational commitment can be considered as components of employee well-being. Companies are investing large amounts of resources to lower employee turnover by creating an environment that is favourable for the employee. Within the call centre environment a well established technological infrastructure exists. This creates a setting that is very prone to launch a social media platform. The average age of employees is also quite young, which in most cases means that they understand and interact on social networks with ease. The applications for social media also seems to become second nature for younger generations and this also speaks volumes as to implement social network strategies within working environments. The experimental research design included a pre- and post assessment with samples of 74 employees for the pre-test and 36 employees for the post test. A qualitative and quantitative approach was utilised in order to gain better insight of what employees define as social networks and what effect it has on employees. To measure the various constructs, the following instruments were utilised: Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES), a self-constructed Sense of Belonging Questionnaire and the Affective Organisational Commitment Questionnaire (AOC). The results indicated that the exposure to a social network resulted in lower levels of employee engagement and lower levels of sense of belonging. The exposure to a social network however increased the levels of participants? affective organisational commitment. / Thesis (M.B.A.)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2011.

Employee engagement has taken over the corporate world. Whether it is the media, consulting firms, business leaders or human resources, everyone is talking about it. Despite the buzz in the corporate world and millions of dollars pumped into the industry, employee engagement has remained relatively unchanged and our comprehension of it is hazy. Examining the concept of employee engagement from conceptualization to present day helps provide a solid understanding of its foundation and where major evolutionary failings occurred. Prompted by Gallup’s takeover of the concept – from packaging, selling, measuring and intervening – the essence of employee engagement has been lost in overdrive and is now focused on statistics rather than people. The purpose of this paper is to identify the major flaws in the current state of employee engagement using its past as a basis of restoring viability to the concept.

The purpose of this applied study was to examine the role of mentoring relationships in shaping employees’ views of how supportive the organization is of the employee and how engaged the employee is in their job duties. The extent to which employees perceive the organization as supportive was also examined as a mediator between mentoring functions and employee engagement. Employee engagement encompasses how much employees are absorbed with, excited by, and dedicated to their work. Previous research suggests that leaders and other high-status employees can increase employees’ perceptions of organizational support (Eisenberger, Huntington, Hutchinson, & Sowa, 1986; Kurtessessi et al., 2017; Orpen, 1997; Park, Newman, Zhang, Wu, & Hook, 2016; Rhoades & Eisenberger, 2002). Likewise, perceived organizational support (POS) has been shown to increase employee engagement (Biswas & Bhatnagar, 2013; Gupta, Argarwal, & Khatri, 2016; Saks, 2006). However, there is little research that considers mentoring as a mechanism to increase both POS and employee engagement. Surveys including instruments measuring perceptions of mentoring functions (i.e., Academic Mentoring Behavior Scale), POS (i.e, the Scale of Perceived Organizational Support), and employee engagement (i.e., Utretch Work Engagement Scale-9) were completed by 2,326 participants across nine universities in the state of Illinois. Hierarchical regression analyses were used to assess the differences in POS and employee engagement between mentored and non-mentored individuals and to assess the impact of gender and racial/ ethnic background on perceptions of mentoring functions. Lastly, a mediation analysis with POS mediating the relationship between employee engagement and mentoring was conducted. Results showed that mentored individuals had significantly higher levels of POS and employee engagement than non-mentored individuals regardless of their job positions. However, neither gender nor racial/ethnic background significantly predicted participants’ perceptions of mentoring functions. Finally, POS partially mediated the relationship between employee engagement and mentoring. These results suggest that mentoring can increase employees' perceptions of being appreciated, noticed, and cared for by employers and this could partially explain why employees may be more inspired by, enthusiastic about, and proud of their work when involved in mentoring relationships.

Fundamentally the aim of corporate social responsibility (CSR) is to initiate social and/or environmental change. Because of the increased awareness of stakeholders and other public actors, it has become of any company’s interest to uphold their public image. The question remains whether companies undertake CSR activities for intrinsic moral reasons or to only uphold their reputation. Most research regarding CSR focuses on the influence of external factors (such as major stakeholders) and how different goals and opinions between these major actors reciprocate. One stakeholder within the sphere of CSR which has often been overlooked but has gained increased attention is the employee. So far, little attention has been paid to the people at work, like the human experience of the worker, thus questions remain regarding the influence of CSR activities on the identification, commitment, and satisfaction of employees.