Personality as Predictor of Employee Engagement: An Empirical Study

Abstract

Employee engagement has been labelled as one of the “hottest topics in management” in recent times. Moreover with an incessantly deepening “engagement gap” reported amongst employees (Kowalski, 2003), that is threatening to cripple organisational growth and productivity, it becomes imperative to advance research on the construct thus leading to a better appreciation and application of the same in the interest of the organisation. Therefore, it becomes crucial to understand whether personality acts as a predictor of employee engagement or not. Therefore, this research paper seeks to explore the relationship between personality (Five factor model [FFM]) and employee engagement of Employees of Corporation. The data for the present study is collected from 100 working executives employed in a trading corporation in New Delhi. To measure Big Five Personality Traits, the short form of the WorkPlace Big Five ProFile (WPB5) which is an abridged version of a 107-question FFM personality assessment especially designed for the workplace was used. The Employee Engagement survey is based on Kahn's model of employee engagement derived from Gallup Q12 instrument. Statistical analysis tools such as regression analysis, correlation analysis, t-test and ANOVA are being used for the purpose of analysis of data. The study indicates that there is a significant relationship between employee engagement and conscientiousness. It has also been found that the other four factors of personality namely – openness to experience, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism do not have any significant relationship with employee engagement. There is no significant difference in employee engagement scores of males and females and also across the three levels of management namely higher, middle and lower levels of management. Employee engagement scores of the employees in the general cadre and those in the finance cadre are same. There is no significant correlation between the number of years of service and employee engagement scores. The relationship of the FFM of Personality to employee engagement is much less studied, especially in Asian countries. And, moreover, no study of such nature was done on a sample set comprising Indians.