EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT AND ITS CROSSOVER FROM SUPERIORS TO SUBORDINATES: AN EXPLORATORY STUDY OF LICENSED COMMERCIAL BANKS OF SRI LANKA

Abstract

Emphasizing the importance of the human resource as a competitive asset for modern organizations, this paper investigates how Employee Engagement has become an emerging concept in the field of management in Sri Lanka. Drawing insights from the discipline of Human Resource Management, this study was conducted to explore the perceptions of Sri Lankan managers within Licensed Commercial Banks (LCBs) on the concept of employee engagement and the crossover impact of employee engagement from superiors to their subordinates. Both the quantitative and the qualitative approaches were utilized within the study. Exploring the concept of Employee Engagement was done through the Literature Review and the qualitative element of the study, to better understand it and to identify its relevance within the context of Sri Lanka. A dyadic approach was adopted focusing on the HR managers of the selected LCBs and selected direct reports of them. The findings suggest that there is a growing understanding among the managers about the importance about the concept of employee engagement and that their awareness on it is significant. However, the findings also gave rise to the fact that they lacked the ability to distinguish between the concept of employee engagement as a unique concept which is different to other concepts such as extra role behavior, personal initiative, job involvement, job satisfaction and work holism. There needs to be more discussion and understanding about the concept and the importance of achieving it by organizations in the country. It was also established that there is a clear crossover impact from the role of superiors on the Engagement of their subordinates. Implications are drawn from these findings and directions for future research are discussed.