Driving Employee Engagement Through Five Personality Traits: An Exploratory Study

Abstract

An attempt has been tried to explore the personality factors in predicting employee engagement among the middle-level employees in the IT industry. Based on an empirical investigation of 383 middle-level employees working in IT firms, the researcher cognizes their perception of various personality-related factors extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness to experience. The present study was exploratory in nature. A variance-based structural equation model (SEM) approach was adopted for the measurement of the model. The study confirmed that personality-related factors extraversion, conscientiousness neuroticism, and openness to experience significantly related to employee engagement. In addition to this extraversion, conscientiousness, neuroticism, openness to experience significantly predicted employee engagement, contrary, the insignificant effect was seen of agreeableness on employee engagement. Grounded to this study, it is strongly recommended that individual possess the extraversion, neuroticism, openness to experience, and conscientiousness qualities seen to be more engaged in their job while agreeableness person is seen to be less engaged. The corporate entity herein suggested that to keep the talented and valuable employees, must strategically think about these factors. To the best of my belief, this is the first and foremost article that address the personality-related factors in predicting employee engagement in the Indian context.

Evolving approaches to employee engagement: comparing antecedents in remote work and traditional workplaces

“…This is explained by the lack of social interaction and the lack of clear structure when working remotely. This finding contradicts that of traditional workplace where extraversion and conscientiousness are significant predictors of employee engagement (Ansari, 2020).…”

“…Perceived organizational support also includes support for training and learning opportunities, which were positively linked with employee engagement (Lee et al , 2017) and employee performance (Arwab et al , 2022b). Research also indicated a positive relationship between the five personality traits and employee engagement, including extraversion, conscientiousness, neuroticism and openness to experience (Ansari, 2020). In addition, existing literature indicated three types of related psychological conditions: psychological meaningfulness, psychological safety and psychological availability (Saks and Gruman, 2011).…”

Disentangling the relationship between Big-Five personality characteristics and work engagement: Evidence from India

“…However, the results did not support a positive association between conscientiousness and vigor (H7), which is surprising. Second, the results suggest that conscientiousness and openness to experience are positively related to dedication and absorption (H3 and H14), and these are consistent with the literature [1,9,10,31,40,[45][46][47] . Third, the results provide empirical evidence in support of the negative association of neuroticism with dedication (H11) but the diametrically opposite effect concerning vigor and absorption (H10 and H12).…”

“…In a recent study on 152 employees of small and medium-sized organizations in Bosnia, the researchers found that extroverted individuals showed higher levels of work engagement [30] . A recent study conducted on 383 employees in the information technology sector in India found that extraversion was positively associated with work engagement [31] . Extraverted people enjoy working and do not get tired; they continue to work till the work is done (vigor).…”

“…Conscientiousness is reflected in an individual's tendency to be dutiful and competent. Several researchers documented that conscientious employees have a strong sense of responsibility and strive to reach the goal of completing tasks [1,3,9,10,31] . As individuals high on conscientiousness tend to be trustworthy, time-conscious, and well-organized it is more likely that they show higher levels of work engagement.…”