A Study on Employee Voice and its Effect on Work Engagement: Explicating from the Turkish Teachers’ Perspectives

Yücel Şimşek,Muhammed Gürler

doi:10.5539/ies.v12n7p80

Abstract

The objective of the present study is to investigate the effect of employee voice on work engagement according to the views of the Turkish teachers. The sample of the study consisted of 713 teachers randomly selected at 40 public schools from kindergarten to high school from Ayaş, Beypazarı, Güdül and Sincan districts of Ankara, the capital city of Turkey. In order to collect the data for this study, Employee Voice and Work Engagement scales were used. All scales were adapted to the school environment by translation and back translation method. The construct validity and reliability of the scales were examined through Exploratory Factor Analysis, Confirmatory Factor Analysis and Cronbach Alfa, Composite Reliability, Average Variance Explained values. In the first step of the data analysis process; arithmetic means, standard deviations, skewness and kurtosis values were calculated. Relations between the variables were measured by the Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient and regression analysis. Consequently, the results of study show that there is a positive and significant relationship between employee voice and work engagement. Besides, employee voice is a significant predictor for work engagement. The findings of the study exhibit that the level of teachers’ employee voice and work engagement are high degree.

Highlights

In today’s rapidly growing and evolving world, challenging and overcoming the work issues and difficulties without employees’ help by top managers in the organizations seem to be a thing of the past
This study aims to reveal the relationship between employee voice and work engagement
Findings from the analyses revealed that employee voice (S=.66) is more homogenous distribution than work engagement (S =.50)

Summary

Introduction

In today’s rapidly growing and evolving world, challenging and overcoming the work issues and difficulties without employees’ help by top managers in the organizations seem to be a thing of the past. That is why it remains as a memory from the old days that the executives decide and employees perform (Senge, 1990). As a result of employee participation in decision making, employees gladly devote more time and take more responsibilities at work, developing organizational commitment, efficiency and knowledge-sharing (Han, Chiang, & Chang, 2010). Teachers are at the heart of the educational improvement and change (Hopkins & Stern, 1996; Al Bataineh & Awaleh, 2005). Hargreaves and Shirley (2011) emphasized that teachers are mostly the very last persons who hear, learn and speak ies.ccsenet.org

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