Measuring employee engagement of South African managers

Abstract

This paper reports the level of employee engagement exhibited by managers in South Africa. The model employed to measure employee engagement was validated as a measuring tool, and consequently the selection thereof as a measurement tool. The paper provides a brief rationale of the validation process, where after it continues to provide the demographic profile of the respondents and the level of employee engagement as measured by the model. The model employs seven employee measurement criteria, namely management and leadership, behavioral engagement, change management and stress-free environment, career growth opportunities, emotional engagement, nature of the job and feeling valued/involved. 260 employee responses were collected by means of a structured questionnaire from a stratified sample of 300. Although all the factors showed high levels of importance towards employee engagement, behavioral engagement was deemed to be the most important factor. Furthermore, correlational analysis indicated that none of the demographic variables significantly influence the employee engagement factors, suggesting that stratified managerial interventions are not required to improve employee engagement.