ENGAGED EMPLOYEES IN INSTITUTES OF HIGHER EDUCATION.

Abstract

Employee engagement has become a popular theme amongst Industrial and Organizational Psychologists today due to the global dictum " perform or perish " and the strong competition for projected profits and continued existence among organisations. Employee engagement is a broadly studied concept in the corporate sector and defined elaborately by various authors. Generally, it is defined as the emotional attachment and commitment an employee has got towards his/her job, colleagues and organization that profoundly influences the level of performance, commitment and loyalty. Since the defining concept and parameters used to explain employee engagement purely originate in the industrial sector, the researchers of this study speculate whether or not this concept could be applicable in the educational sector too. This descriptive and exploratory study using employees from educational institutions in and around Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu, defines engaged employee as " one who is highly resourceful, driven by a pious and holy objective of helping and assisting students in terms of imparting knowledge, development of skills, inculcating values and thus committed to their overall development " . Further, the study also answers the following questions. i) What are the characteristics of engaged employee in institutes of higher education? ii) What are the antecedents of engaged employee in IHE? and iii) What are the managerial factors contribute to employee engagement and disengagement in IHE?