Employee Engagement on Wellbeing: An Analysis of PERMA Framework

Abstract

Driven by the urgency of COVID-19 health pandemic and its impact on tourism and hospitality, a holistic approach to employee wellbeing as a part of movement toward the sustainable human resource management brings forward calls to examine what influences employee quality of life. In this chapter, we investigate tourism and hospitality employee work and personal wellbeing through the lens of the PERMA framework. Introduced by Seligman in 2011, the PERMA framework is widely used to measure individual wellbeing in various domains, and is understood as the pathway to human flourishing. In this study of 289 tourism and hospitality employees, using partial least-square equation modeling statistical analysis (PLS-SEM), we demonstrate that service climate significantly influences all five components of PERMA: positive emotion, employee engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment. Yet, only employee engagement revealed a significant and positive effect on employee subjective wellbeing. No significant differences between front-line employees and managers in their perceptions of service climate, work and personal wellbeing were detected. The chapter concludes with recommendations for practitioners and directions for further discussion.