International Journal of Human Resource
Management and Research (IJHRMR)
ISSN 2249-6874
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. SWARNALATHA1 & G. SURESHKRISHNA
2
1Professor & Head, Department of Management Studies, Anna University of Technology Madurai, India
2Full 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 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
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 C.Swarnalatha & G.Sureshkrishna
RESEARCH FRAMEWORK
Figure 1: Relationship between Employee Engagement and Job Satisfaction
METHODOLOGY
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 five-
sub 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 3.43. Moreover, level of job satisfaction for each sub factor calculated separately and the results
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 3.33 0.9
Engagement 2.73 1.04
Opportunities for promotion 2.93 0.8
supervision 3.71 0.81
Team work 3.53 0.61
Another factor that got low mark in level of satisfaction is opportunities for promotion. Based on collected data,
the average mean level is 2.93. 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 14.6 50.8 34.6
Engagement 36.8 44.1 19.1
Opportunities for promotion 23.9 57.9 18.2
supervision 6.4 41.2 52.4
Team work 4.3 62 33.7
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
6 C.Swarnalatha & G.Sureshkrishna
employee engagement. Many reasons for employee dissatisfaction are well within the control of the firm and good
management practices will enable a company to diminish, or remove, those reasons. Satisfied employees will work harder
for the company and plan to stay at the company ultimately reducing that company’s labor cost. So managers must have to
play a major role in enriching employee engagement inside the organization which will correspondingly improves the job
satisfaction level of employees in automotive industries.
REFERENCES
1. Aamodt, M. (2009). Industrial/Organizational Psychology. Belmont, CA. Cengage Learning.
2. Baker, W. K. (2004). Antecedents and consequences of job satisfaction: Testing a comprehensive model
using integrated methodology. Journal of Applied Business Research, 20(3), 31-44.
3. Bright, J. (2008, February 9). Happy staff get a life; The ladder. Sydney Morning Herald, p. 7.
4. Drafke, M W., and Kossen, S. (2002), The Human side of organizations (8th ed). New Jersy Prentice Hall, Inc.
5. Farrell, D., & Stamm, C.L (1988), Meta-Analysis of the correlates of Employee absence. Human Relations, 41(3),
211-227.
6. Fields, D. (2002). Taking Measure of Work: A Guide to Validated Scales for Organizational Research and
Diagnosis. Thousand Oaks, CA. SAGE Publications.
7. Hunter, J. A. (2006). A correlational study of how airline customer service and consumer perception of airline
customer service affect the air rage phenomenon. Journal of Air Transportation, 11(3).
8. Jex, S. M. (2002). Organizational psychology: A scientist-practitioner approach. New York, NY: John Wiley &
Sons, Inc.
9. Judge, T. A., & Church, A. H. (2000). Job satisfaction: Research and practice. In C. L. Cooper & E. A. Locke
(Eds.), Industrial and organizational psychology: Linking theory with practice (pp. 166-198). Oxford, UK:
Blackwell.
10. Kreitner, R., and Kinicki, A. (2004). Organizational behavior (5th ed.). New York:Mc Graw-Hill Inc.
11. Leach, F. J., & Westbrook, J. (2000). Motivation and job satisfaction in one government research and
development environment. Engineer Management Journal 12(4), 3-10.
12. Locke, E. A. (1968). Toward a theory of task motivation and incentives. Organizational behavior and human
performance, 3(2), 157-189.
13. Muchinsky, P. M. (2006). Psychology applied to work. Belmont, CA: Thomson.
14. Pearson, N. (2010). Basic Research Skills in Psychology. University Park, PA:.The Pennsylvania State
University.
15. Saari, L. M., & Judge, T. A. (2004). Employee attitudes and job satisfaction. Human Resources Management,
43(4), 395-407.
16. Wexley, K., and Yukl, G. (1984). Organizational Behavior and Personnel Psychology. Homewood, IL: Richard D.
Irwin.
Top Related