Work Engagement and Employees’ Performance: Assessing the Linkage and Leverage in Classified Hospitality Firms in Kenya

Abstract

Work engagement which relates to personal investment of individual physical, emotional and cognitive resources to role performance has continued to gain prominence in human resource practice and theory. Empirical literature reveal that work engagement explains employees’ behaviour and outcomes that are consistent with organizational social and psychological contexts.  However, there is no consensus in literature on the measures of work engagement that have a direct influence on employees’ performance and how firms can create contexts for work engagement to drive performance at employees’ level. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to determine the configuration of work engagement elements that influence employees’ performance, assess the contextual factors that affect work engagement and ultimately examine how work engagement can be leveraged to enhance employees’ performance. Using purposive and stratified random sampling, a sample of 225 respondents was selected from 75 classified hospitality firms in Kenya. Data was collected using a self-administered questionnaire and analyzed using multiple regression analysis. The results showed that work engagement constructs of physical engagement, emotional engagement and cognitive engagement were positively correlated with employees’ performance.  The study revealed that physical engagement influenced the quality and quantity of employees’ output, emotional engagement influenced employees’ citizenship behaviour, and cognitive engagement had higher influence on employees’ efficiency in performance. The study established that work engagement is connected to employees’ motivation factors and is impacted by contextual factors. Organizations should manage the elements of motivation such as compensation and leadership support and job level elements such as decision making, scope of responsibility and supervision in order to create a climate for engaged workers. Work arrangement and job autonomy are crucial in improving employee’s devotion and commitment in his role.

Keywords: cognitive engagement, emotional engagement, employees’ performance, physical engagement, work engagement

DOI: 10.7176/EJBM/13-2-01

Publication date: January 31^st 2021