Employee Engagement is an increased area of interest to businesses, contributing towards a business being a success. When employees are engaged at work, they are more motivated to invest in the business, resulting in higher-quality results. A company’s efficiency, work quality, and ability to retain top people will all benefit from investing in employee engagement. This study aims to explore what factors impact employee engagement in Small and medium-sized enterprises (SME), using Company X as a case study. Company X is a local digital print specialist organisation.
The study will investigate and discuss factors impacting on employee engagement from both employees and managements perspectives. The study reviews both professional literatures and existing models of employee engagement, namely The Zinger Model (2009), The Deloitte Model (2015) and The AON Hewitt Model (2011), identifying potential gaps within these. Identifying potential gaps in these models is vital for organisations and business owners to understand how to ensure their employees are engaged within the workplace. A new test model was also created as part of this study, to test if these potential gaps do have an impact on employee engagement within an SME and need addressing.
The approach taken to collect data for this study was a mixed method approach, collecting quantitative data through an online a survey, followed by conducting semi structured interviews so qualitative data could be collected to explore emerging themes in greater depth ensuring enough data is collected relating to the research question and objectives. The online survey was distributed via JISC from the 30th of August until the 20th of September, allowing 3 weeks to recruit participants and attain data. Following this, interviews were then scheduled, with participants being selected through purposive sampling to ensure a mix of participants were selected covering different roles, positions within the Company and departments ensuring a broad representation.
The researcher’s conclusion is that the study successfully answered the research questions through investigating the defined research objectives. Whilst findings supported existing literature, gaps were detected and additional factors influencing employee engagement were identified.
The key recommendations are re-establishing management meetings, consideration to be given towards an organisation restructure, implementation of management training, conducting regular employee reviews, training on existing policies and procedures and investment into an employee of the month scheme and possible mental health first aid training.
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