ROLE OF EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT IN BUILDING JOB SATISFACTION AMONG EMPLOYEES OF AUTOMOTIVE INDUSTRIES IN INDIA

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1 International Journal of Human Resource Management and Research (IJHRMR) ISSN Vol. 3, Issue 1, Mar 2013, 1-6 TJPRC Pvt. Ltd. ROLE OF EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT IN BUILDING JOB SATISFACTION AMONG EMPLOYEES OF AUTOMOTIVE INDUSTRIES IN INDIA C. SWARNALATHA 1 & G. SURESHKRISHNA 2 1 Professor & Head, Department of Management Studies, Anna University of Technology Madurai, India 2 Full Time Research Scholar, Department of Management Studies, Anna University of Technology Madurai, India ABSTRACT Employee engagement and job satisfaction play an important role in increasing the morale of the organization. The managers have to play a role in building satisfaction among the employees and make them engaged in their work. This paper focuses on employee engagement and job satisfaction in automotive industries in India. Automotive industries are a well developed and grown sector all over the world. Automotive industry produces a rapid growth in profit and it makes the customers satisfied with their products and accessories. This paper explains how the role of employee engagement delivers employee satisfaction in their job and how it makes him committed to work for the welfare and productivity of the organization. A total of 315 samples were taken for the study and questionnaire was developed based on the detailed literature review collected. KEYWORDS: Employee Engagement, Job Satisfaction, Organization Commitment, Automotive Industries INTRODUCTION Employee engagement is a route to business success. An engaged workplace encourages commitment, energy and productivity from all those involved to help improve production and business performance. Employee engagement is a workplace approach designed to ensure that employees are committed to business the organizations business values and goals. By making the employees involved in organization business, the HR manager will have to motivate them to contribute to the business and productivity success and at the same time it increase their sense of well being. Employee engagement is the extent to which employees think, feel and act in ways that represent high levels of commitment to their organization. Engaged employees are motivated to contribute 100% of their knowledge, skills and abilities to help their organization succeed. Engaged employees care deeply about their company, want to contribute to its success and regularly have peek experiences at work. Employee Job satisfaction is the terminology used to describe whether employees are happy and contended and fulfilling their desires and needs at work. Many measures purport that employee satisfaction is a factor in employee motivation, employee goal achievement and positive morale in the work place. Factors contributing to employee job satisfaction include treating employees with respect, providing regular employee recognition, empowering employees, offering above industry-average benefits and compensation, providing employee perks and company activities and positive management within a success framework of goals, measurements, and expectations. Why Employee Engagement Important in Automotive Industry? Engagement represents the motivational capital that exists within an individual, a unit or an organization. Employee engagement is a valuable resource that can boost company performance. Engagement is linked to number of important business outcomes:

2 2 C.Swarnalatha & G.Sureshkrishna For example, Engaged employees offer significantly higher levels of service to customers Engaged employees are more likely to create a work environment that is collaborative, creative and stimulating. Engaged work teams tend to have fewer accidents and injuries. Factors Foster Employee Engagement There are three factors which foster Employee engagement. Achievement: The vast majority of employees want to achieve something important and meaningful at work. They want to grow and develop their skills and capabilities and they want to be rewarded and recognized for their efforts. Camaraderie: Employees enjoy working productively with others while developing healthy interpersonal relationships. How managers interact with their teams is especially important in motivating employees to go above and beyond. Equity: Employees want to be treated fairly when it comes to pay and benefits, day to day treatment and psychological and physical safety. When these three needs are met, employees are highly engaged and even enthusiastic at work. Why Should an Employer Care? It is important that employees care about the happiness of their employees. Recent statistics show that throughout their careers, American workers hold an average of eight jobs. The rate of turnover because employees are unhappy is alarming. Even in an economic downturn, employers must spend an enormous amount of money recruiting new employees, going through the hiring process and finally training new employees. Dissatisfaction has many negative side effects for the company, while satisfaction results in a much retention rate. The effects of dissatisfaction that result in an employee s withdrawal from job and company can range from mild to severe. Tardiness in showing up for work and coming back from breaks shows a lack of interest by the employee for his or her responsibilities. This may escalate to the employee for not showing up to work entirely. Some less obvious signs of withdrawal from job include: taking care of personal interest matters while at work, playing games, engaging in non-work related talk, spending time on social networks, and diminishing job performance. These withdrawal behaviors, when evidence of dissatisfaction, may end with an employee leaving the workplace. Therefore withdrawal will lead either to the employee voluntarily leaving the organization or being terminated for unprofessional behavior. How to Increase Employee Job Satisfaction in Automotive Industries The leaders of the organization have the responsibility for creating a high level of job satisfaction. The aim of leadership should be to improve the performance of man and machine, to improve quality, to increase output, and simultaneously to bring pride of workmanship to people. Leaders can improve motivation within their organizations by following this process: Provide a positive working environment

3 Role of Employee Engagement in Building Job Satisfaction among Employees of Automotive Industries in India 3 Reward and recognition Involve and increase employee engagement Develop the skills and potential of your workforce Evaluate and measure job satisfaction From the figure.1 it shows that all the managerial qualities and the steps taken by the manager such as leadership competencies, employee development, sharing business strategies, trust and respect, job design, teams and working together, safety, diversity form as a drivers of engagement and it leads to employee job satisfaction resulting in reduced absenteeism and turnover, improved quality and safety and product innovation. OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY The following are the specific objectives of the study. To study the relationship between leadership and employee engagement. To study the relationship between Team work and job satisfaction. To study the relationship between employee engagement and job satisfaction. LITERATURE REVIEW Organizations strongly desire job satisfaction from their employers (Oshagbemi 2003). Due to important role of human resource on organization performance, they try to keep employees satisfied. Satisfied employees would produce superior performance in optimal time which leads to increase profits. When employees are satisfied with their work, would be more creative and innovative and offer advances that allow company to evolve positively over time with changes in market conditions. Farrell and stamm (1988) draw the conclusion that high employee satisfaction will reduce the happening of the absenteeism, accident and employee stress, improve employee satisfaction with life and thus increase productivity and profits. Organizations that desire to improve their customer satisfaction must be concerned about internal issues related to employee s satisfaction and view their employees as customer too (Harter et al., 2002: wangenheim et al., 2007). Employee s behavior is critical and poor treatment of customers may directly impact on their image (Hunter, 2006). Social relationships and psychological factors are the main causes of job satisfaction and productivity in employees (Robbins, 2002). Job satisfaction is an affective and emotional response to various facets of one s job (Kreitner and kinicki, 2004) and Locke (1968) describes as being an emotional response that results from the employees perceived fulfillment of their needs and what they believes the company to have offered. The concept of job satisfaction and its definition have continually grown, expanded and unfolded through the previous decades. Although basically it is a work related positive affective reaction in majority of the definitions, less consistency can be observed in the factors that bring about job satisfaction. This inconsistency may be because job satisfaction can be influenced by various factors including personal traits and characteristics of the job (Wexley and Yukl, 1984).

4 4 C.Swarnalatha & G.Sureshkrishna RESEARCH FRAMEWORK METHODOLOGY Figure 1: Relationship between Employee Engagement and Job Satisfaction The study uses for both primary data and secondary data. Primary data are collected through a structured questionnaire. The questionnaire was mainly based on the objectives of the study and a set of questionnaires was circulated to employees. The secondary data are collected through books, magazines and journals. The original questionnaire was developed in English. From the target sample, 330 of them responded and returned the questionnaires. After eliminating the incomplete responses, 315 samples were obtained. The questionnaire was developed based on detailed information which was gathered from comprehensive literature review. The section of questionnaire covers employee s satisfaction facets. The cronbachs alpha was calculated by Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) version 18.0 software. The results shows that questions was reliable (alpha=0.76). Table 1: Cronbachs Alpha Reliability Value of Questionnaire Job Satisfaction Reliability Nature of work 0.82 Engagement 0.75 Opportunities for promotion 0.74 supervision 0.71 Team work 0.85 Total 0.77 The level of job satisfaction among the employees of automotive industries has been investigated with the fivesub factors define that include nature of work, engagement, opportunities for promotion, supervision, team work that contain statements related to each other measures. By using the Likert scale ranging from very dissatisfied=1, dissatisfied=2, sometimes not satisfied or sometimes satisfied=3, satisfied=4, very satisfied=5. Table.1 shows the result of descriptive analysis for level of job satisfaction. Level of Employee s Job Satisfaction in Automotive Industries Descriptive analysis was performed to determine level of job satisfaction among employees of automotive industries in India. The result show that employees are moderately satisfied with their job since mean value for overall employee s satisfaction is Moreover, level of job satisfaction for each sub factor calculated separately and the results

5 Role of Employee Engagement in Building Job Satisfaction among Employees of Automotive Industries in India 5 show employees are more satisfied with their supervisor (mean=3.71, SD-0.81), followed by the relationship with Team work (mean=3.53, SD=0.61) and the nature of work (mean=3.33, SD=0.9). They are however less satisfied with opportunities for promotion (mean=2.93, SD=0.8) and employee engagement (mean=2.73, SD=1.04). It shows that respondents of research are more satisfied with supervision, while they are least satisfied with their employee engagement. The level of satisfaction with each dimension of job satisfaction and overall employee s job satisfaction is shown in Table.3. Table 2: Level of Employee Job Satisfaction Mean SD Nature of work Engagement Opportunities for promotion supervision Team work Another factor that got low mark in level of satisfaction is opportunities for promotion. Based on collected data, the average mean level is It shows that employees have medium level of job satisfaction with their opportunities for promotion. Majority of participants believe promotions are not based on employee s ability. They might feel satisfied when their job prospects looks good (Drafke and Kossen, 2002). Table 3: Percentage of Employee s Satisfaction with Various Aspects of Job Satisfaction Low Medium High Nature of work Engagement Opportunities for promotion supervision Team work Do s by the Employer to Ensure Employee Satisfaction The employer has a responsibility to ensure the satisfaction of all its employees. There are many precautions that managers can take to make certain that they are meeting the working needs of their employees. Employers also should be more cautious during the hiring process. Employers should prepare for the interview by doing a job assessment to see what skills are necessary for the position, then testing applicants to see if they have the ability to be trained to the position and have the skills and knowledge that correspond with the job description. Managers must learn to communicate better with lower level employees. Connection to the company gives staff a better feeling of belonging and worth. Managers need to convey a good understanding of the mission and goals that the company is trying to attain so that the staff recognizes what the organization is working toward. Performance reviews are a good managerial tool because they give administrators an idea of those employees that are contributing to the organizations success and those who need to work harder. Providing employees with opportunity for growth is also a major contributor to satisfaction. Because performing the same job becomes uninteresting. CONCLUSIONS Management should have a positive effect on, and seek to support the happiness of, the firm s employees. The leaders of the organization must have to take measures of enriching the ethical activities inside the organization to foster

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