Employee Engagement Among Millennial Workforce: Empirical Study on Selected Antecedents and Consequences

Abstract

Although employee engagement has been investigated by many scholars, there has been minimal research on this subject for millennial workforce. To bridge the research gap, the present study intends to examine employee engagement among millennial workforce of Saudi Arabia. In addition, the mediation effect of employee engagement on the relationship between antecedents; job characteristics, job satisfaction, and consequences; organizational commitment and intentions to quit is explored with social exchange theory (SET) as a theoretical underpinning. It tests the hypothesis by using data from 408 employees working in private sector companies located in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia through a self-administered questionnaire. SPSS Amos 25.0 was used to analyze the data. The results suggest that there exists a satisfactory condition of employee engagement among Saudi youth. Findings propose a significant positive relationship between job characteristics, job satisfaction, and organization commitment. Employee engagement was found to be a significant and partial mediator amid job characteristics, job satisfaction, and organization commitment. However, the results were not significant for the variable turnover intentions. There is a dearth of research on millennial workforce of Saudi Arabia, and this study would be perhaps, the first one to explore employee engagement in this context. It contributes to the current literature and theory development of employee engagement. Since the findings are based on limited millennial employees’ responses, there is no universal claim for generalization.

Employee Engagement and Innovative Work Behavior Among Chinese Millennials: Mediating and Moderating Role of Work-Life Balance and Psychological Empowerment

“…In their meta-analysis of 130 studies, Borst et al (2020) indicated that EE is positively related to two fundamental attitudinal outcomes: commitment and job satisfaction, and negatively associated with two behavioral outcomes: turnover intentions and Workaholism. Sahni (2021) found that EE was positively related to organizational commitment and negatively related to turnover intentions among millennials in Saudi Arabia. In their research on EE in UAE, Al Mehrzi and Singh (2016) called for more research on the probable antecedents and outcomes of EE.…”

“…Our study's targeted populations were senior employees working in Chinese IT, trade, real-estate, financial, and telecommunication companies located in four main cities in Zhejiang province: Hangzhou, Ninbo, Jinhua, and Wenzhou. Such industries are frequently employed as the research context for service industry research (Zhou et al, 2018;Khan et al, 2021b;Sahni, 2021;Tian et al, 2021). In addition, employees working in such service industries need to possess the skills and capabilities to exhibit IWB through interaction with customers.…”

“…Such a moderate response rate might be justified based on the required sampling criteria. However, extant literature shows the acceptance and utilization of low response rates such as 41% (Sahni, 2021), 34% (Culbertson et al, 2012), and 31% (Gemeda and Lee, 2020).…”

“…In this regard, we argue that EE has the potential to facilitate employees' IWBs. The concept of EE has received wide recognition from academicians and practitioners in the recent past (Saks and Gruman, 2014;Bakker and Albrecht, 2018;Sahni, 2021). The majority of research on work engagement and creativity was undertaken in a western context only (Hui et al, 2020).…”

“…Mansoor et al (2021) argued that organizational innovation and competitiveness depend mainly on the presence of an engaged and innovative workforce. Despite the vast research on employee engagement, there have been limited studies on this subject within the context of millennial employees (Sahni, 2021).…”