Employee Engagement and Retention: A Study of Software Professionals

Abstract

Employee engagement is a topic of enormous interest to both management practitioners and academicians alike as building an engaged employee base is the biggest differentiator for businesses. In India, employment numbers in industry and services is expected to grow from 223 M in 2010 to 319 M by 2020 as per the India Economic Survey. A person needs to be motivated to go beyond his/her brier and ‘step up’. To get to that stage, it becomes important to look at aspects of work that tells us how someone experiences her or his work and be engaged in work rather than look only at job satisfaction. Such experiences that drive an employee to be engaged have become really important for organizations to retain talent in a highly competitive world where there is a ‘war for talent’. Employees play an important role in enhancing the growth and profitability of organizations. The
phenomenon of employee engagement has been attracting attention of both academicians and practitioners. Previous studies reported that an engaged employee increases self as well as organizational performance. The objective of the study was to understand the construct of employee engagement and examine its relationship with core self-evaluations, organizational culture, job satisfaction, and employee retention and test the proposed framework among software professionals in India. The four constructs were measured through adapted scale namely employee engagement, job satisfaction, organizational culture, and employee retention, besides an existing scale for core selfevaluations. Initially, literature helped in identification of factors used in previous research. Subsequently, expert panel shortlisted factors on the four constructs for their applicability on
software professionals. Later, data were collected from 410 respondents representing three information technology companies from large, medium, and small capital category. Exploratory factor analysis was adopted to identify a number of factors in each construct and confirmatory factor analysis to verify the measurement model for each construct. All the scales were examined for their reliability and validity. The relationship among variables was tested through the second order structured equation modeling. All the hypotheses were accepted except one that no significant relationship exists between core self-evaluations and satisfaction. The study concluded that core selfevaluations and organizational culture construct has significant relationship with employee engagement and employee retention. Additionally, employee engagement mediates the relationship between organizational culture and job satisfaction among software professionals in India.