Aim and Objectives of the Research - Customer Satisfaction

Aim and Objectives of the Research

The aim of this study is to determine the factors that contribute to high levels of work engagement in SMEs.

The objectives are to:

• Study the literature on work engagement and on SMEs in order to provide a framework for the research study;
• Determine employee’s expectation’s on work engagement;
• Describe the factors of work engagement that yield better results.

Background of the study

Employee engagement is a vast concept that touches almost all parts of human resource management planes known. If every part of human resources is not addressed in an appropriate manner, employees fail to fully engage themselves in their job in response to that type of mismanagement. The concept employee engagement is built on the foundation of concepts like job satisfaction, employee commitment and Organisational citizenship behaviour (Markos 2010,89).

The more significant the business experience is to the organisation, the more effort the organisation will expend in formalising their socialisation programmes to ensure employee engagement (Davies& Crane 2010,126). According to the Towers Watson concept, managers at all organisational levels should be involved in the communication process with their subordinates to increase employee engagement. Due to the spread of new communication technologies such as online networking platforms, leaders are provided with different possibilities to interact with their subordinates. They are now able to engage their employees through an online environment (Korzynski 2014, 583).

The literatures show that employee engagement is closely linked with organisational performance outcomes. Businesses with engaged employees have higher employee retention as a result of reduced turnover and reduced intention to leave the company, productivity, profitability, growth and customer satisfaction. On the other hand, companies with disengaged employees suffer from waste of effort and bleed talent, earn less commitment from their employees, face increased absenteeism and have less customer orientation, less productivity, and reduced operating margins and net profit margins (Markos 2010,94).  Most researches emphasize merely the importance and positive impacts of employee engagement on the business outcomes, failing to provide the cost-benefit analysis for engagement decisions. Therefore, the question to be answered is “what factors contribute to high levels of work engagement?”