Role of Individual Differences in Employee Engagement- A Select Study among Faculty of Higher Education Institutes

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1 Volume-6, Issue-5, September-October 2016 International Journal of Engineering and Management Research Page Number: Role of Individual Differences in Employee Engagement- A Select Study among Faculty of Higher Education Institutes P.Hima Bindu 1, Dr. B. Muralidhar 2 1 Research Scholar Osmania University & Faculty,Dept of MBA,CMRCET, INDIA 2 Professor, Department of Business Management, Osmania University, INDIA ABSTRACT Imparting quality education with respect to global standards is vital in higher education, high quality teaching staff is the key point of a successful educational system. Thus, the university teachers are the main actors in imparting knowledge, skills, attitude and nurturing the new generations. The quality of teaching depends upon the teacher s intellectual and emotional involvement. Moreover, the quality teaching depends upon the discretionary efforts put forth by the teachers, the enthusiasm they show for their job and the willingness i.e. engagement. The present study evaluates the role of personal background variables like Age, Gender, and Education level, Tenure of service and Designation in engaging faculty of private affiliated technical educational institution. The study reveals that number of years of experience and educational qualification of the faculty does not influence the level of engagement but age, gender and designation have an impact on level of engagement. Keywords--- Demographics, Level of engagement I. INTRODUCTION Employee Engagement refers to a multidimensional concept that involves some kind of twoway interaction between the employee and the organization. A fully engaged employee is actively involved in and enthusiastic about his or her work. He or she is willing to go the extra mile to ensure that one renders quality work which results in organizational success, spreading the enthusiasm within his or her team and beyond. On the other hand the partially engaged employee does the minimum to get by, concentrates on the job at hand and adds little extra value. The disengaged employee demonstrates negativity at work and undermines the accomplishments of others, potentially creating a negative atmosphere in the workplace. Engaged employees feel personally connected to an organization, are more productive, are less likely to seek alternative employment, and act as supporters for their organization s success. Today, engaged employees are more important than ever. As the best resources to any organization is always its human resources, the attainment of an workplace with high caliber employees are the key to success & the way to set competitive advantage in the global scenario. A well functioning organization is the product of its healthy, committed and motivated employees, who can be termed as engaged employees. Engagement takes place when employees are committed to their job. They are interested and indeed excited about what they do. It involves loyalty, faith and pride in the organization, a willingness to advocate for his organization and a sense of personal responsibility. According to Paul D. Umbach & Matthew R. Wawrzynski (2005) students report higher levels of engagement and learning at institutions where faculty members use active and collaborative learning techniques, engage students in experiences, emphasize higher-order cognitive activities in the classroom, interact with students, challenge students academically, and value enriching educational experiences 184 Copyright Vandana Publications. All Rights Reserved. II. IMPORTANCE OF THE STUDY Today s higher education institutes requires to provide an environment that fosters a culture of engagement that which encourages and motivates the teaching faculty to take up challenges and be proactive in the way they render education to the fast changing generation The institution should work to design, measure and by evaluate proactive workplace policies and practices that could help in attracting and retaining talent with skills and competencies necessary for growth and sustainability. Highly engaged employees demonstrate higher levels of

2 performance, commitment and loyalty in comparison with disengaged employees. As all organizations strongly focus on performance, employee engagement has become a popular topic. The present study tends to focus on individual or personal determinants of employee engagement in private affiliated colleges that provides higher education, so that these factors could be mastered to develop a loyal and committed teachers. III. REVIEW OF LITERATURE A large volume of previous studies are available that shows the linkage between engagement level with individual differences. Researchers have claimed that employee engagement is dependent on both organizational and individual factors. Different studies have included diverse independent variables of organisational and individual significance. Scholars like Miles (2001) and Harter et al. (2003) claimed that employee engagement is something that is dependent upon various aspects in the workplace. While few others like Harter et al. (2002) and Goddard (1999) asserted that engagement is resultant of individual factors. Elaborating individual factors determinant of employee engagement Ferguson (2007) stated that individual differences may not be trivial and could have significant effects on employee engagement. Kahn (1990) argued that psychological differences may have a decisive impact on individuals capability to engage or disengage in their role performance. Individual experience, age etc. may shape an employee s ability and willingness to be involved and committed at work. People get engage differently at work place. Robinson (2006) it is argued that individual differences play a vital role in determining an employee s potential level of engagement. He explained that the process of perception is the key factor that commands the individual behavior, defined by a number of independent individual variables like age, experience, education etc. A number of studies have produced quantitative research findings that demonstrate the impact that biographical and job characteristics can have on employee engagement. One of the most in-depth was conducted by the Institute for Employment Studies (IES) (as analysed by Robinson et al 2004) which analysed attitude survey data for 2003 from 14 organisations in the NHS (>10,000 completed questionnaires). Which evaluate demographic factors such as gender, age, ethnicity, years of work experience. One of the predictors of work engagement is individual characteristics, which includes demographics, personality characteristics, and goals. Work engagement has been shown to increase with age (Taipale et al., 2011; Van den Broeck et al., 2008) as well as with the freedom to choose when to quit working (van Wijhe, Peeters, Schaufeli, & van den Hout, 2011One s job position is also related to work engagement, with those in managerial or supervisory positions experiencing higher work engagement across all dimensions (Kim et al., 2009). Temporary employees also have higher dedication to their work than those employed by an organization full-time; those in professional positions experience more engagement than those in non-professional positions (Mauno et al., 2007). Personality characteristics can predict work engagement. Higher work engagement is associated with lower levels of neuroticism (Kim et al., 2009; Shorbaji et al., 2011), higher levels of agreeableness (Kim et al., 2009) and social optimism (Salmela-Aro, Tolvanen, & Nurmi, 2011) Work engagement is also positively associated with Type A behaviour, autonomy, and achievement striving (Hallberg et al., 2007). High selfesteem and optimistic beliefs that one will adequately meet work demands and will experience positive outcomes are predictive of work engagement (Mauno et al., 2007; Salmela-Aro & Nurmi, 2007). Characteristics of teachers. Much of the research on teacher work engagement has investigated the role of individual characteristics in engagement, yet many of the findings in this area are equivocal (e.g., Klusmann et al., 2008a; Kong, 2009; Rutter & Jacobson, 1986). Female teachers have been found to have higher levels of work engagement than male teachers (Klusmann et al., 2008a; Rutter & Jacobson, 1986), however the opposite has also been identified as male teachers scored higher than female teachers on two of the three dimensions of engagement in one study (Kong, 2009). Higher work engagement is reported among teachers working in large schools in comparison to those working in small schools, possibly due to the increased availability of resources in larger work environments (Rutter & Jacobson, 1986). There are findings in relation to work experience and engagement. Higher engagement has been found in teachers with more experience (Rutter & Jacobson, 1986), yet the opposite has also been identified (Kong, 2009). Teachers with 0-5 years of teaching experience reported the highest level of engagement on all three dimensions, and those with years of experience reported the lowest level (Kong, 2009). Similarly, teachers who had 4-10 years of experience reported being more engaged in their work than when they began teaching due to their increased confidence and competence, which increased flexibility in how they allocate their time and energy at work (Kirkpatrick, 2007, April). Conversely, older age has been associated with lower work engagement (Klusmann et al., 2008a). Due to the conflicting findings in this area, clarification is needed regarding the relationship between years of teaching experience and teacher work engagement. 185 Copyright Vandana Publications. All Rights Reserved. IV. RESEARCH GAP

3 The literature review suggests that despite the existence of common factors that affect engagement, different individuals are influenced by different factors. Some studies suggest that individual differences like age, gender or experience shape up employee engagement while other refutes the same. Thus present study tries to identify the role of these individual difference viz.. age, gender, educational level, designation& qualification of faculty in higher education institutes towards factors that contribute to employee engagement. This study is significant in spite of work done on role of individual differences, due to the fact that this signifies role of individual differences among teaching faculty in higher education institutes. V. OBJECTIVES OF STUDY 1. To explore employee engagement among teaching faculty of technical education institutions. 2. To study level of engagement of faculty in private colleges. 3. To analyze role of individual differences in engaging employees VI. HYPOTHESIS H 0: There is no significant difference of employee engagement due to demographic variables like age, gender, designation, number of years of experience, qualification. H 1: There is significant difference of employee engagement due to demographic variables like age, gender, designation, number of years of experience, qualification. VII. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY The present study is focused on measuring employee engagement among faculty members employed in higher education institutions. This research is undertaken to identify the dimensions and predictors of employee engagement with respect to the university teachers in higher education in India. Higher education covers many disciplines. For the sake of feasibility and economy the scope of the study has been narrowed down to specific domains of higher education programs and study will be limited to certain private colleges. The present study would cover the following important domains of higher education: i. Commerce and Business Management ii. Science, Engineering and Technology iii. Pharmacy iv. Humanities and Sciences The target population of this study was the faculty of higher education private colleges. A total of 120 faculty members from different private colleges that offer technical education of affiliated to select university were selected using simple stratified sampling. In order to measure the engagement level of employee s nine questions were asked to the respondents. These questions aimed at measuring the sense of purpose, work expectation from employee feeling about work, organization, relisation of organizations mission which are key indicators to measure employee level of engagement. These nine questions were measured using Likerts scale strongly disagree = 1, disagree = 2, neutral = 3, agree = 4, and strongly agree = 5.The mean score findings were scaled as 1-2(Disengaged), (Moderately engaged),3.6-5(engaged).these scaled indicators of level of engagement then were interacted with age, gender, experience, designation and qualification using one way ANOVA VIII. DATA ANALYSIS The summary of survey is presented in Table 1. From the 120 questionnaires received (representing a 60 % response rate), 46% of the participants are females and the remaining 54% are males. In terms of age, participants range from 21 to 64 years old with a mean of 34 years and the work experience varies from 1 to 35 years with an average of 9 years working experience. Designation has categorized in to Professor, Associate professor, Assistant professor, with respective to individual departments of teaching faculty at different colleges. Age No. of Respondents % of responses Gender No.of Respondents % of responses Male Female Copyright Vandana Publications. All Rights Reserved.

4 Work Experience No.of Respondents % of responses 1 to to to to Designation No.of Respondents % of responses Asst Prof Assoc Prof Professor Department No.of Respondents % of responses Mechanical Civil ECE EEE CSE/IT MBA Humanities Pharmacy Qualification No.of Respondents % of responses PhD PG Table 1: Summary Of Survey Respondents(Source (primary data) Table 2 manifests the mean and standard deviations for the level of employee engagement dimensions. The table reveals that engagement is higher among faculty of higher education within the private colleges with (avg mean= 3.23, avg std. Deviation= 0.9) respectively. This indicates that majority of the faculty are more than moderately engaged. Descriptive Statistics Level of Enagagement N Minimum Maximum Mean Std. Deviation My work gives me sense of purpose I know what is expected from me at work I find my work enjoyable I feel proud to tell people where I work I feel that my work is in line with the mission of the organization I feel that my work is valued in the organization I feel that my talent is properly utilised in the organization I feel my talent is properly recognized Copyright Vandana Publications. All Rights Reserved.

5 I am happy to work in my organization Valid N (listwise) 120 Table No 2: Measuring Engagement(Source Primary Data) The mean scores of the level of engagement were computed with a scale 1-2(Disengaged), (Moderately engaged),3.6-5( Highly Engaged).The computed values revealed findings as interpreted in table no.3. Engagement Level No.of Responses % of responses Highly Engaged % Moderately Engaged % Disengaged % N % Table 3: (Source Primary Data) Descriptives Level of Enagagement 95% Confidence Interval for Mean N Mean Std. Deviation Std. Error Lower Bound Upper Bound Minimum Maximum Male Female Total Table 4: Descriptives Gender(Source: Compiled data) Level of enagagement Sum of Squares Df Mean Square F Sig. Between Groups Within Groups Total Table 5: Analysis Of Variance Gender Vs Employee Engagement(Source: Compiled data) A one-way between groups analysis of variance was conducted to explore the impact of Gender on level of engagement. Participants were categorized to male = 65 and female = 55.Results of the ANOVA, in a summary table 5. Consider to look up a critical value for F to decide whether to reject the null hypothesis or not. Comparing the "Sig." value to alpha (0.05) in this case, because the significance value of is less than α = 0.05, we reject the null hypothesis. Interpreting report the results of this ANOVA by saying, "There is a significant difference in the level of employee engagements due to gender. 188 Copyright Vandana Publications. All Rights Reserved.

6 95% Confidence Interval for Mean N Mean Std. Deviation Std. Error Lower Bound Upper Bound Minimum Maximum Professor Assoc. Prof Asst Prof Total Table 6: Descriptives-Designation(Source: Compiled data) Sum of Squares Df Mean Square F Sig. Between Groups Within Groups Total Table 7: Analysis Of Variance Designation Vs Employee Engagement(Source: Compiled data) Analysis of variance was conducted to explore the impact of designation on level of engagement. Participants were categorized to Professor-13 Associate professor -51 and Assistant Professor- 56 Results of the ANOVA, in a summary table 7. Consider to look up a critical value for F to decide whether to reject the null hypothesis or not. Comparing the "Sig." value to alpha (0.05) in this case, because the significance value of 0.00 is less than α = 0.05, we reject the null hypothesis. Interpreting report the results of this ANOVA by saying, "There is a significant differences in the level of employee engagements due to designation. Descriptives 95% Confidence Interval for Mean N Mean Std. Deviation Std. Error Lower Bound Upper Bound Minimum Maximum 21-30yrs yrs yrs yrs yrs Total Table 8: Descriptives-Age (Source: Compiled data) Sum of Squares df Mean Square F Sig. Between Groups Within Groups Total Table 9: Analysis Of Variance Age Vs Employee Engagement(Source: Compiled data) Analysis of variance was conducted to explore the impact of designation on level of engagement. Participants were categorized to years years years years & years. Results of the ANOVA, in a 189 Copyright Vandana Publications. All Rights Reserved.

7 summary table 9. Consider to look up a critical value for F to decide whether to reject the null hypothesis or not. Comparing the "Sig." value to alpha (0.05) in this case, because the significance value of 0.06 is more than α = 0.05, we accept the null hypothesis. Interpreting report the results of this ANOVA by saying, "There is no significant differences in the level of employee engagements due to age. Descriptives 95% Confidence Interval for Mean N Mean Std. Deviation Std. Error Lower Bound Upper Bound Minimum Maximum 1-5yrs exp yrs exp yrs exp yrs exp yrs exp yrs exp Total Table 10: Descriptives- No.Of Years Of Experience(Source: Compiled data) Sum of Squares df Mean Square F Sig. Between Groups Within Groups Total Table 11: Analysis of variance No. of Years of work experience Vs Employee Engagement (Source: Compiled data) Analysis of variance was conducted to explore the impact of no.of years of experience on level of engagement. Participants were categorized to 1-5 years; 6-10 years years years years years & years.results of the ANOVA, in a summary table 11. Consider to look up a critical value for F to decide whether to reject the null hypothesis or not. Comparing the "Sig." value to alpha (0.05) in this case, because the significance value of is more than α = 0.05, we accept the null hypothesis. Interpreting report the results of this ANOVA by saying, "There is no significant difference in the level of employee engagements due to no.of years of experience. Table no :12:Desriptives -Qualification 190 Copyright Vandana Publications. All Rights Reserved.

8 Table 13:Analysis of variance Qualification Vs Employee Engagement (Source: Compiled data) Analysis of variance was conducted to explore the impact of qualification on level of engagement. Participants were categorized to Postgraduates and Doctorates. Results of the ANOVA, in a summary table 13. Consider looking up a critical value for F to decide whether to reject the null hypothesis or not. Comparing the "Sig." value to alpha (0.05) in this case, because the significance value of is less than α = 0.05, we reject the null hypothesis, interpreting report the results of this ANOVA by saying, "There is a significant difference in the level of employee engagements due to qualification. IX. FINDINGS OF THE STUDY 1. Results revealed that engagement is higher among faculty of higher education within the private colleges with (mean= 3.23, std. Deviation= 0.9) respectively. This indicates that majority of the faculty are more than moderately engaged. 2. One way Anova test to evaluate significant effect of various demographics which revealed that: 3. There is a significant difference in the level of employee engagement due to gender 4. There is a significant difference in the level of employee engagement due to designation 5. There is no significant difference in the level of employee engagement due to age 6. There is no significant difference in the level of employee engagements due to number of years of experience 7. There is no significant difference in the level of employee engagement due to qualification. X. CONCLUSION Employee Engagement of the faculty of the higher education is found to be positive which is a good sign. As for as this research work is concerned the null hypothesis is nearly accepted as the faculty members did not differ significantly on their three personal background variables (Age, Experience and Qualification). The analysis has shown that, Designation and Age are the main demographic factors influencing Employee Engagement substantially. So it is suggested to the promoters of the higher education that these two factors are to be given more importance like other Employee Engagement practices. REFERENCES [1] Avery, D. R., and Mckay, P. F. (2007) Engaging the aging workforce: relationship between perceived age similarities satisfaction with co-workers and employee engagement, in Journal of Applied Psychology, 92(6). [2] Bakker, A. B. (2008) Towards a model of work engagement, in Career Development International, 13(3), [3] Barman, A. (Jan 2006) Employee Engagement- A New HR Fulcrum, Relevance in Higher Learning Institution in India, in Journal of Assam University, Issue Jan-2006 [4] Barman, a., Saikat, R., (2011) Faculty Engagement in Higher Educational Institution -A proposed model,revista Romaneasca pentru Educatie Multidimensional, Year 3, No. 7, August, pp: [5] Jaupi, F. and Llaci, S. (2015) The Impact of Communication Satisfaction and Demographic Variables on Employee Engagement. Journal of Service Science and Management, 8, [6] Kahn, W. A. (1990). Psychological conditions of personal engagement and disengagement at work. The Academy of Management Journal, 33, [7] Kong, Y. (2009). A study on the relationships between job engagement of middle school teachers and its relative variables. Asian Social Sciences, 5, [8] May, D.R., Gilson, R.L. and Harter, L.M. (2004). The psychological conditions of meaningfulness, safety and availability and the engagement of the human spirit at work.journal of Occupational & Organizational Psychology, 77, [9] Purang, Pooja and Anuradha Sharma Value Institutionalisation Enhances Commitment: Perspective of Culture in Indian Organisations, Indian Journal of Industrial Relations, 43(1): [10] Robinson D., Perryman S., Hayday S., (2004) The Drivers of Employee Engagement published by IES Research, London- 408 [11] Robinson, D., Perrymen, S., Hayday, S. (Nov,2004) The Drivers of Employee Engagement(IESReport) 191 Copyright Vandana Publications. All Rights Reserved.

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